New Age Librarianship:the ecosystem, issues and challenges

H Anil KumarLibrarian, Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad

April 11, 2014

OUTLINE

• The New Age: What is happening?• What is Role of Libraries?• What is this New Age Librarianship?

http://onicra.com/intranet/2013/Onicra-Pulse-Jan-2013-Quality-of-Education-In-India-v2.html

Government Initiatives in Education• Improve Access

– More institutions– Improve infrastructure– E-learning– Improve GER

• Improve quality– Entry - admissions– Experience

• Design - curriculum• Delivery – pedagogy• Choice based credits• Teacher training• Learning materials

– Evaluation• Learning focus• Application orientation• Grades vs marks

India and education• Education

– Identify what to get educated on– Identify which institution provides it– Apply –Exam - Admission – Fees– Coursework – Exam – Certificate (credible)

• Education today– Too many applicants and too few seats– India GER is a little over 19%– Unemployable – skill deficiency– Employer is educating!

• Quality of education– Lack of access to

• Teachers• Courses• Information Resources• Something wrong in pedagogy

– Low reading – Academically adrift– 5% learning in the classroom

Technology Trends

• Technology and Hole in the wall• The power of the Internet and GOOGLE• Joyning, Betterment and Jailbreaking• Open Ecosystem

The Open Ecosystem

• Society• Government• Institutions

• Information• Data• Technology

• Scholarship• Publishing• Peer Review

• Education• Knowledge• Talent

www.opensocietyfoundations.org/

www.opengovpartnership.org

http://www.openscholarship.org

okfn.org/opendata/

https://index.okfn.org/

http://www.openscholar.org.uk/open-peer-review/

http://www.peerageofscience.org/

• The proportion of the UK’s total annual research output that was available through open access in 2012 was about 40%, compared to a worldwide average of 20%.

• The latest data from the UK Open Access Implementation Group shows that 35% of the UK’s total research outputs are freely provided through Green, through an existing network of more than 200 active institutional and disciplinary repositories

• Inevitable • All agree that it is needed but….funding!• Unsustainable subs

Serials expenditures have been rising at approximatelytriple the rate of the consumer price index over this time

Current business model in the scholarly publishing

• Currently, public funds are used three times in the research process– to pay the academics who conduct the research– to pay the salaries of the academics who conduct the peer review process– to pay for access to this research through institutional journal subscriptions

• UK HE libraries – More than £150m subscriptions annually – Yet cannot afford to access all the research that is needed

• Are we being charged more or less than another – No idea– The power to negotiate is driven down

• There is mounting concern that the financial benefits from the Government’s substantial investment in research are being diverted to an excessive degree into the pockets of publishers’ shareholders.

http://www.opendoar.org/

http://roar.eprints.org/

Hole in the wall

Self-Organized Learning Environments (SOLEs)

Technology Advantages

• Learn at your own pace and interest• Supplement learning in the classroom• Less dependency on formal support• Variety and wide range of choices• Explore new ways of learning

Learning and education

• Formal methods– Classroom training– Laboratory training– On the job or apprenticeship

• Non-formal methods– Self-study and Reading– Watching, seeing and trying

• Sources– Institutes / schools / industries / employers– Libraries and laboratories– Internet

Libraries

Why go beyond formal methods?• The 95 Percent Solution: School is not where most Americans learn most

of their science by John H. Falk and Lynn D. Dierking

• Recent findings challenge the longstanding belief that the place for science knowledge acquisition is the classroom.

• International comparisons of trends in science knowledge over lifetimes suggests that much if not most science knowledge is acquired outside of school.

American Scientist: v. 98 (Nov-Dec), 2010

A Magazine Is an iPad That Does Not Work.m4v.mp4

• The prison industry needs to plan its future growth –

how many cells are they going to need? How many prisoners are there going to be, 15 years from now?

• And they found they could predict it very easily, using a pretty simple algorithm, based on asking what percentage of 10 and 11-year-olds couldn't read. And certainly couldn't read for pleasure.

• Well-meaning adults can easily destroy a child's love of reading: stop them reading what they enjoy,

or give them worthy-but-dull books that you like, the 21st-century equivalents of

Victorian "improving" literature. You'll wind up with a generation convinced that reading is uncool and worse, unpleasant.

• China in 2007, at the first party-approved science fiction and fantasy convention in Chinese history.

• It's simple, he told me. The Chinese were brilliant at making things if other people brought them

the plans. But they did not innovate and they did not invent. They did not imagine. So they sent a delegation to the US, to Apple, to Microsoft, to Google, and they asked the people there who were inventing the future about themselves.

• And they found that all of them had read science fiction when they were boys or girls.

Universities, ours and theirs

Krishna Kumar (in The Hindu, August 9, 2012)

• Recruitment of faculty• Concept of teaching (periods)• Concept of knowledge – research

• Library

• The fourth critical difference lies in the library. In the West, even in the most ordinary universities, the library forms the centre of life, both for teachers and students. Librarians enjoy a high status as their contribution to academic life cuts across academic disciplines…..

New Age Librarianship…• Open Ecosystem

– Data –Information-Knowledge-Technology–Education–Talent

• Technology – On the Cloud– Mobile - remote– Open and Integrated– Drives customised solutions / services

• Library Services – Collection Owning to Content Access– Organising to Discovery OR Managing to Connecting– Focus from Collection to User– Customisation is demanded– Time is of essence - Delivery speed is faster now!

New Age Librarianship• Library talent

– Collection - Technology – Users– Domain expertise– Personal interactions– Traditional work is important - Move towards the Actual Tradition of – ‘Helping

to Discover’

• User needs– reference queries would be multidisciplinary – move beyond traditional subject

boundaries– Entrepreneurial objectives – Research in the Indian context

• IRs will become extremely useful• ILL has to be redesigned

– Safe – secure – social – learning space

New Age Librarianship• Content

– Beyond traditional boundaries and formats– Print vs Digital– Closed / proprietary Vs Open– Discoverable– Accessible

• Management– ROI and Advocacy– Content – Talent – Technology– Space is of prime importance– User participation– Individual Vs Team – Leadership

• Education and Libraries are not separate

• Move from support to partnering roles!

THANKS

anilkumar@iimahd.ernet.in