2007FallQ1Response

1. Developments in the 21st century require information professionals to respond to various changes and challenges. Selecting an information environment,
 * Identify at least one technical or socio-cultural change for information professionals in their domains of work
 * Discuss some of the significant challenges faced by information professionals owing to the above identified change(s)?
 * Describe the new skills and competencies required to effectively meet the challenges

Jody: Information environment: the Academic Library. Change: Most of our clientele now goes to Google first for their information needs, bypassing the library and what it has to offer. Challenges: Academic librarians must find new ways to justify their existence, and to be relevant to the user needs. Skills and Competencies: outreach. Embedding themselves into academia, into the research process at the classroom level. Learning new technologies and teaching users how to use them, as well as how to find and identify quality material. We need more technical training, to provide information via the internet/web in ways our users can access and will use; we need to find ways to push pertinent information out to our users at the point of need.

Meghan: environment: public libraries

change: web 2.0 – technical because it's new technology, a new way of using the internet. socio-cultural because it's changed the way people interact online, and made online interaction an extension of RL interaction – the old days of usenets stereotype online interaction as antisocial or as a surrogate for RL; with web 2.0 and social networking, it's an extension of RL interaction and it's something people (especially young people) do as a group.

challenges: surface include rowdy groups in computer labs (see online as group activity above), software issues (latest downloads, viruses, protection software for computers such as deepfreeze), bandwidth demand (from things like youtube and gaming). deeper include challenges from community (often as a reaction to crowding and group computer use) – especially challenges re: validity of online/computer use (requests for adult-only, or work-only computers), safety (online world can be hidden world), copyright, expectation of privacy (and younger generation lacking this expectation because of internet social world, leaving fewer champions in future?). Also problem of digital divide and US low bandwidth saturation – can't transfer everything to 2.0 and leave traditionals/wrong side of divide folks behind.

skills: computer skills, decision-making/evaluative (what's going to last, what's a waste of time), creativity (how to use the new technology in a way that's useful for the library), IL/BI skills (how to make IL relevant and how to teach others to use tools), policy and people skills (handling complaints and privacy/IF issues)

Maryke: environment: academic libraries

change: electronic communications technologies provide much greater opportunities for collaborative work. Examples show up in almost all areas of library work - cooperative cataloging systems such as OCLC, consortial reference organization using such software as Questionpoint, collaborative information seeking as a new research behavior, collaborative creation by committees using wikis or students using other online applications, etc. Research transactions (which are really collaborative information seeking) can even take place in new environments such as a chat space, or a virtual world.

Challenges:
 * Keeping up with the skills and equipment needed to support all of these activities. Issues here involve higher education's continuing struggle with shrinking budgets, and the perception that academic libraries already get a large enough share of the pie - so they have to do more with less. A good example is the tremendous investment universities are making in facilities and equipment for information commons, which are based on supporting collaborative work.
 * The new systems also put tremendous strain on staff to evaluate new trends, decide which will be useful and/or popular, and educate themselves accordingly (AKA "soft costs").
 * Finally, especially in the areas of instruction and reference it is a challenge for librarians to decide where and how they should make themselves available. Even virtually, you can only be in so many places at once - so choices have to be made now between the reference desk, phone, email, IM, web page, Blackboard, wiki, Second Life...

Skills needed:
 * advocacy to protect our budgets, explain the importance of technologies that will be news to most administrators, and gain the support that we will need to continue to position ourselves as current and relevant.
 * management skills to get the most out of the facilities and technology and human resources that we already have.
 * education and training to keep our workforce prepared, interested, and flexible.
 * environmental scanning is important - we need to know as much about the needs and behaviors of our users as possible, so that we can put our resources to best use.