11.00 am 1B Professional Futures MR 10/11

Chair: Eleanor Whelan

Yes, We’re Special – But How Special?: The Futures of Corporate Information

ManagementSue Myburgh

Two Different Approaches to Mentoring New Library Information Professionals:

Chardonnay or ShirazGillian Hallam & Carol Newton Smith

The New Information Professionals:we’re special, but how special?

Sue MyburghUniversity of South AustraliaSue.myburgh@unisa.edu.au

Blood, sweat and tears

Subtitle:

Anomalies and differences in the understanding of what LIS is;Lack of clarity on what comprises different types of information work;Ignorance of the theoretical roots of the profession;Uncertainty regarding the future of the profession;Debates over red herrings;Lack of leadership from academia;Cognitive dissonance between academics and employers.

We cannot be like incremental policy analysts, who ‘often rule out of bounds the uninteresting (to them), the remote, the imponderable, the intangible and the poorly understood, no matter how important (Neill, 1991, p. 126).

Some definitions

Data ManagementKnowledge ManagementInformation ManagementDocument ManagementMetadata Management

We thought for many years that we were in the wine business. In

face, we were in the bottling business. And we don’t know a

damned thing about wine.

(John Perry Barlow, as quoted by Van House and Sutton, 1996)

Information as a strategic commodity

“The future of librarianship thus hinges on what happens in the perpetually changing work of the profession in these three contexts: the context of larger social and cultural forces, the context of other competing occupations, and the context of competing organisations and commodities” (Abbott, 1998).

However,

If knowledge is power, why don’t librarians run

the world?

LIS will almost certainly not survive in its present form or paradigm, and the greatest threat to the profession is the ‘librarian mindset”

Bourdieu’s gameYou need to know the rules

Action guided by habitus has the appearance of rationality but is based not so much on reason as on socially-constituted dispositions.Van House and Sutton, 1996

We are not always sure what game we are

playing.

Elements of the LIS habitus

Focus on documents, not informationFocus on physical stores (even when they are digital), not skills and knowledgeEmphasis on legitimizing such tasksEmphasis on LIS programs that focus on tools and institutions, rather in transferable concepts and analysis of information work.

The view of information as a commodity supports Popper’s description of World 3, the world of documents that contain information

Information thus exists independent of human action – and has its own order and organisation (a natural order?)

The name of the rose

Umberto Eco

Nothing is more dangerous than an idea

when it’s the only one you have.

Emile Chartier

The choice

Catastrophic change

Or

Collaboration, convergence and

diversification

The problems of ‘disjointed incrementalism’

(Braybrooke and Lindblom, 1963)

This means…

Change by defaultSmall decisions made by committeesLack of coherent theory to provide a basis for multidisciplinary intersections (and other words longer than corrugated iron)And simultaneous fundamental shift in the frame of reference

Too much discussion has ranged around what is core for LIS. This continues.

I think what we should be looking at is where the BOUNDARIES of the discipline are.

What do NIPs need to know?

Selection of materialsOrganisation of documents and knowledgeUser studiesInformation retrieval and reference work

Solutions for the LIS educator

Abbott (1998) – reduction and abstraction

1. The ‘new’ problem is identified as part of the existing field – similar (but different) – e.g. taxonomies;

2. ‘New’ problems are related to existing theories – e.g. classification theory accompanied by linguistics, semiotics, social construction of knowledge, contextual base of meaning etc. (Not just DDC)

Social responsibility

The mark of a professionSocial responsibility means that we can add pluralist perspectives;Reduce cultural and ideological differencesMove beyond the insulting notion of ‘information rich’ and ‘information poor’ which denies indigenous knowledges

What should NIPs know?These are a few of my favourite things….

How is knowledge created and organized;How are information, data, documents, knowledge and technology managed and evaluated;Social issues, information policies, international perspective;Knowledge of information systems, media and technologies;Knowledge of a wide range of information environments and contexts, to provide a customized gateway;Human information behaviour – in society, organisations and individually;Decoupling from libraries – focus on what we know, in a variety of circumstances.

Issues arising…

Less frequency of traditional rolesDifferent competencies and skills requiredConsideration of cognitive, social and situational processesChanging paradigmNeed for profound theoretical, holistic understanding of the discipline and professional applications

Differences between Trads and NIPs

Proactive versus passive provision of relevant information;Information versus documents;Narrow focus versus large scope;User awareness versus broad-brush ‘canons’;Qualitative versus quantitative;Communication of information, not information objects;Response to need, versus storing and organizing documents.

“Try? There is no try. There is only do or not do.”

Yoda the Jedi Warrior

(Note: not worrier).