The New Academic Librarian

Professor Peter BrophyManchester Metropolitan University

United Kingdom

OR“It’s life, Jim, but not as we know it”

Dinosaur

• What do you call a dinosaur that’s never at a loss for words?

Thesaurus

What we do is extraordinary!

“Most (eScience data) archives which contain primary research data are domain (i.e. subject) focussed. There is a consensus that domain experts are best placed to provide support for the users of the archive data, and moreover are best placed to define new data products and user services.”

[Digital Curation Centre, UK, 2005]

Emerging new/revised roles for the academic librarian

Supporting learning and research where they occur – within the users’ workflows

• Communicating and sharing meaning

• Engaging with the language and process of learning

• Five emerging roles

Critical issue 1 – Communicating and sharing

meaning

“Let us imagine a language ...The language is meant to serve for communication between a builder A and an assistant B. A is building with building-stones; there are blocks, pillars, slabs and beams. B has to pass the stones, and that in the order in which A needs them. For this purpose they use a language consisting of the words 'block', 'pillar', 'slab', 'beam'. A calls them out; - B brings the stone which he has learnt to bring at such-and-such a call. - Conceive of this as a complete primitive language.”

[Wittgenstein: Philosophical Investigations]

Etiquette

• A gift may be refused once or twice before it is accepted

• Do not give red or white flowers• Do not give scissors, knives or other

cutting utensils• Do not give clocks, handkerchiefs or

straw sandals• A small gift for the children is always

appreciated, but do not give green hats

Being part of the dialogue

Learning the language game

• Terminology• Concepts• Interpretation

Data – Information – Knowledge - Meaning

Language games in universities

“An academic discipline ……is not primarily content, in the sense of facts and principles. It is rather primarily a lived and historically changing set of distinctive social practices. It is in these practices that ‘content’ is generated, debated and transformed via certain distinctive ways of thinking, talking, valuing, acting and, often, writing and reading.”

Gee, 2003

WFAU “has recently recruited a dedicated science archive curator, who does not have an astronomical background. It is expected that the Unit will continue to require staff from a range of backgrounds, and with a range of skills: the technical requirements of WFAU’s science archive curation greatly exceeds that which can be comfortably provided by professional astronomers.”

Critical issue 2 – engaging with the language and process of

learning

What business are we in?

Academic libraries are fundamentally in the business of human learning rather than in the information business. Our resources and skills are dedicated to the sharing of knowledge and understanding and meaning, not simply to organising and preserving information artefacts, whether printed or electronic.

Learning is what libraries are for …

  "I want a poor student to have the same means of indulging his learned curiosity, of following his rational pursuits, of consulting the same authorities, of fathoming the most intricate inquiry as the richest man in the kingdoms."

Antonio Panizzi, 1836

Learning

the ‘information transmission’ model …

… is breaking down

Objectivism

“views the world as an ordered structure of entities which exists and has meaning quite apart from the observer or participant. Much of science and technology has traditionally been taught on this basis: what needs to be achieved by learning is a closer and closer approach to complete (and thus ‘correct’) understanding.”

Constructivism• “Learning is a constructive process in

which the learner is building an internal representation of knowledge, a personal interpretation of experience. This representation is constantly open to change, its structure and linkages forming the foundation to which other knowledge structures are appended. Learning is an active process in which meaning is developed on the basis of experience. This view of knowledge does not necessarily deny the existence of the real world .. but contends that all we know of the world are human interpretations of our experience of the world. … learning must be situated in a rich context, reflective of real world contexts for this constructive process to occur.”

Bednar et al.

Active learning

“If you hold a cat by the tail, you learn things you cannot learn any other way”

Mark Twain

Learning together

“Learning is a social process that occurs through interpersonal interaction within a cooperative context. Individuals, working together, construct shared understandings and knowledge.”

Johnson et al.

New roles for the academic librarian 1

Embedding the library in learning

“A vision of a multi-professional team of academics, learning technologists and information specialists creating a learning environment and learning experiences with the learner at the centre”

“Intelligent deployment of technologies must be predicated upon multi-professional dialogue”

Pedo-techno-gogs “librarians (or others) who are characterised by

their possession of pedagogic knowledge while also bringing specific expertise”

New roles for the academic librarian 2

Promoting literacies

“The word illiterate, in its common acceptation, means a man who is ignorant of … … Greek and Latin”

Philip Stanhope, 4th Lord Chesterfield

Literacies

• Adult literacy• Basic literacy• Business literacy• Children’s literacy• Computer literacy• Early literacy• Emotional literacy• Family literacy• Financial literacy

• Functional literacy• Health literacy• Information literacy• IT literacy• Media literacy• Numerical literacy• Technological literacy• Visual literacy• Workforce literacy

Information literacy

Librarians argue that IL is:• “the overarching literacy essential for twenty-first

century living”• “the foundation for learning in our contemporary

environment of continuous technological change”

and that• “information literate people are those who have

learned how to learn”

???????????????

Libraries and literacy

information literacy has to argue for its place alongside many other conceptions of literacy … (it is) literacy writ large and situated literacies … to which we must bring our skills and our contribution

New roles for the academic librarian 3

Publishing the outputs

“a set of services that a university offers to the members of its community for the management and dissemination of digital materials created by the institution and its community members”

Clifford Lynch

New roles for the academic librarian 4

Integrated environments

Merging the VLE, the VRE, the library portal and the rest into the users’ workflows to create a seamless experience

New roles for the academic librarian 5

Curating the data

“The advent of e-Science is a reflection of digital data curation’s importance to science more widely, given … the 'data avalanche' experienced by many scientific disciplines”

“Researchers across a wide range of domains are … finding themselves faced with new and challenging responsibilities for curating digital data.”

UK Data Curation Centre

“Change is the constant, the signal for rebirth, the egg of the phoenix”

Christina Baldwin