IS554: Public Library Management & Services 11 April, 2006
Bharat Mehra School of Information Sciences Meanings, Professional
Identity, and the Future
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Agenda Guest Speaker: KC Williams, Systems Director, Sevier
County Public Library Meanings, Philosophy of Learning Readings:
Professional Identity
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IS 554 Final Project Introduction to Guest Speaker ONLINE
Project Management Portfolio (comprised of lesson plans) Framework
for Library Automation to Digitize Culture-Specific Materials in
Small Library Settings URL:
http://www.sis.utk.edu/~bmehra/IS554/PMPtemplate.html
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IS 554 Final Project Introduction to Guest Speaker Framework
for Library Automation to Digitize Culture-Specific Materials in
Small Library Settings Library Governance Marketplace
Dynamics/Advertising Personnel Management Finance Management Policy
Development Collection Development Library Products/Customer
Services Intellectual Property Rights and Copyright Technological
Infrastructure Technical Services and Bibliographic Description
Procedures User Involvement/Evaluation and Assessment TOPIC
STATEMENT AMERICAN LIBRARY CASE-STUDY UNDERSTANDING THE
COMMUNITY/CULTURE: QUESTIONS FOR THE READER
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A Case Study Sevier County Public Library System 2003-2006
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Sevier County Demographics Population of 75,000 Includes Cities
of Gatlinburg, Pigeon Forge, Sevierville, and Town of Pittman
Center 14,000 students enrolled in public school system Walters
State Community College Branch Has no on site library No large
industry, all small business Tourist based economy Growing Hispanic
population Two city libraries (Pigeon Forge & Anna Porter in
Gatlinburg are not part of the county library system)
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System Scenario March 2003
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System Facilities Four buildings total square footage
approximately 16,000 square feet State per capita figures
(excluding other libraries square footage) show main library should
be a minimum of 33,000 square feet Main Library built in 1968 no
renovations except carpeting which is a safety hazard 5888 sf
Genealogy Annex is a leased space 2500 sf Seymour Branch is a
leased space 3600 sf Kodak Branch is a 2 year old manufactured
building 3600 sf
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Budget and Funding System considered a charity by the county
System pays its own bills System does not receive first
disbursement from county until September of each year 2002-03
Annual Budget - $518,909 no money for purchasing collection
materials (rely on donations and LSTA funds ~ $12,000 per year)
$30,000 salary deficit for 2002-03 that has not been addressed as
of March 2003 (New director has to request these funds from county
and receive them by June 1 st or close the system for a month)
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Staffing 16 Employees 4 work 32 hours 1 works 22 hours All
others work 40 hours System is open 206 hours per week Branch
employees work alone at least one day a week all day and several
hours each day
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Management Only MLIS staff is newly hired director All other
staff are non-professional No job diversification all staff do the
same job Director schedules staff, pays bills and does all
materials purchasing, runs main library Front Desk Staff has no
training on computer use or on libraries beyond shelving books One
cataloger who is a semi-trained non-professional, but cataloging is
being done in all branches with many errors Staff are not treated
consistently (negative atmosphere, poor customer service, lots of
back biting)
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Building Expansion Seymour branch leases a 3600 sf building
with a lease that runs out July 1, 2003 County allocated 250,000 to
build a new branch Land was purchased for $60,000 Building has to
be at least 3600 sf No architectural plans have been drawn as of
March 2003 Library Board has been attempting to build a new main
library for six years County Commission has given them $1,000,000
from a bond A location cannot seem to be agreed upon
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Community Relationship Library Board of Trustees and County
Commission are hostile towards each other due to past events Three
separate friends groups with territorial issues Library System has
a poor public image and limited use by patrons
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What would you do if you were the new director of this
system?
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Needs Analysis more space more funding more staff and/or less
hours diversified staff positions with individual job descriptions
and management hierarchy staff training (skills and attitude)
501(c)3 foundation for building program fundraising Credibility
with Commission and community
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Meanings, Philosophy of Learning Meanings and Learning
Philosophy of learning: How does learning take place? Inquiry mode
of learning Theory and practice Reflective practitioner and action
Experiential learning Situated learning Case-study analysis
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Meanings and Learning How do make sense of our experiences in
ways that is useful to us and others? Sense-Making theory suggests
that individuals are constantly seeking to make sense of their
world in order to achieve their life goals and that in so doing,
they are led to engage in constant dialogic relationship with
potential sense-making resources (Dervin, 1999). What does the term
dialogic mean? Dialogic implies the enactment of a continual
dialogue or ongoing engagement The actors in a dialogic
relationship inform and are continuously informed by each other
Mutual interaction between multiple objects Dialogic application to
language Ideas contained and communicated through language are
dynamic, relational, and engaged in a process of endless
re-descriptions of the world
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Philosophy of Learning: How Does Learning Take Place? Learning
is a complex mechanism where individuals go through a dynamic
process in learning about a particular subject or becoming informed
(Dervin, 1983, 1999; Krikelas, 1983) Learning is based on context,
realities, and situational dynamics (Schamber et al., 1990)
Learning is dependent on personal meanings that people make in
given contexts (Hollnagel and Woods, 1983; Dervin, 1982; Bates,
1989; Ingwersen, 1996) Learning is an active personal process that
involves fitting information in with what one already knows and
extending this knowledge to create new perspectives (Wilson, 1977)
Cognitive processes involve the recognition of prior experience and
education: such constructs that individuals carry in their brains
owing to past experiences as knowledge structures (Ingwersen, 1992)
and cognitive models that change according to new
conceptualizations and experiences (Meadow, 1983)
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Philosophy of Learning: How Does Learning Take Place? Learning
involves the classic triad of thoughts, actions, and feelings
central to any constructive process (Kuhlthau, 2004, p. 6) The
basic epistemological assumptions underlying constructivist
learning are (Gagnon and Collay, 2001): knowledge is constructed as
an active process that learners are personally engaged in learners
construct knowledge and make their own symbolic representations of
action knowledge construction is a social process for learners who
share meaning-making with others learners theoretically construct
knowledge to explain things they dont fully understand Piagets
developmental theory of child learning recognizes that people build
cognitive models to understand and respond to the physical
environment and their intelligence is shaped by prior experience
and on-going interaction of internal mental structures with the
outside world (1990)
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Philosophy of Learning: How Does Learning Take Place? Deweys
five phases of reflective thinking (suggestion,
intellectualization, guiding idea (hypothesis), reasoning, and
testing by action) (1933) argues that the whole person (in terms of
their thoughts, feelings, and actions) is involved in the on-going
process of learning Deweys view of the function of education in
terms of allowing the individual to cope with change: A society
which is mobilewith change occurring anywhere must see that its
members are educated for personal initiative and adaptability.
Otherwise they will be overwhelmed by the changes in which they are
caught and whose significance of connections they do not perceive
(p. 88) Kellys Personal Construct Theory extends Piaget and Deweys
philosophical ideas to provide a psychological perspective to the
process of learning in terms of five phases (1963): confusion and
doubt, mounting confusion and possible threat, tentative
hypothesis, testing and assessing, and reconstructing Bruners
integrated perspective focuses on schema that Bruner defines as
that integrated, organized representation of past behavior and
experience which guides individuals in reconstructing previously
encountered material which enables people to go beyond evidence, to
fill in gaps, to extrapolate (1973, p. 5). Bruners interpretive
task also incorporates feelings, thoughts, and actions and includes
the following phases (Bruner, 1986): perception, selection,
inference, prediction, and action.
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Inquiry Mode of Learning Constructivism, problem-solving
approach, project-based learning: Inquiry as a learner-centered
process All learning begins with the learner. What people know and
what they want to learn are not just constraints on what can be
taught; they are the very foundation for learning Dewey's
description of the four primary interests of the child are still
appropriate starting points: the child's instinctive desire to find
things out in conversation, the propensity children have to
communicate in construction, their delight in making things in
their gifts of artistic expression.
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Inquiry Mode of Learning "For students, this method of learning
ends the listen-to-learn paradigm of the classroom and gives them a
real and authentic goal challenges to overcome. For the teacher,
inquiry-based education ends their paradigm of talking to teach and
recasts them in the role of a colleague and mentor engaged in the
same quest as the other learners around."
(http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Cyberia/DVE/FusionDVE/html/
inquiry_based_education.html)http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Cyberia/DVE/FusionDVE/html/
inquiry_based_education.html "Inquiry is an approach to learning
that involves a process of exploring the natural or material world,
that leads to asking questions and making discoveries in the search
for new understandings."
(http://www.exploratorium.edu/IFI/resources/inquirydesc.html)
(http://www.exploratorium.edu/IFI/resources/inquirydesc.html
Inquiry education is where structure meets fluidity, where we can
create opportunities for students to be engaged in active learning
based on their own questions.
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Theory and Practice Pragmatism is a philosophical tradition
which questions the traditional separations of theory and practice.
Rather than asking what is true, it asks what is productive for
further inquiry and to help the individual in new situations
(Dewey, 1938) You cannot replicate theory in practice and practice
in theory; what you can do is build connections between the two to
understand experiences better and to make them better Reflective
practice is a way of understanding what Schon (1987) calls
knowing-in-action (how theories are developed),
reflecting-in-action (the on-going dialogue between reflection and
practice in our lives), and professional practice (how
professional-client relationships are developed)
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Experiential Learning Experiential education (or "learning by
doing") is the process of actively engaging students in an
authentic experience that will have benefits and
consequences.experience Students make discoveries and experiment
with knowledge themselves instead of hearing or reading about the
experiences of others Students also reflect on their experiences,
thus developing new skills, new attitudes, and new theories or ways
of thinking (Kraft & Sakofs,
1988)skillsattitudestheoriesthinking
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Situated Learning Situated learning is education that takes
place in a setting functionally identical to that where the
learning will be applied (Lave & Wenger, 1991: "just in time
learningeducation Lave & Wenger place the acquisition of
knowledge in the context of social relationships in a Community of
Practice. It is not so much that learners acquire structures or
models to understand the world, but that they participate in
frameworks that have a social structureCommunity of Practice
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Situated Learning An approach to learning of technology use
that assumes the technology is not set a priori, but comes into
being through use. Situated learning is a "new framework for
understanding innovation and change. This framework has several key
ingredients: It emphasizes contrastive analysis and seeks to
explore differences in use. It assumes that the object of study is
neither the innovation alone nor its effects, but rather, the
realization of the innovation--the innovation-in-use. Finally, it
produces hypotheses supported by detailed analyses of actual
practices. These hypotheses make possible informed plans for use
and change of innovations" (Bruce & Rubin, 1993, p. 215).
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Case-Study Analysis
(http://college.hmco.com/business/resources/casestudies/students/overview.htm)
A case study presents a detailed account of one particular setting
and describes how it is and analyzes why it is the way that it is
First, cases provide experiences of learning that people probably
have not had the opportunity to experience firsthand. In a
relatively short period of time, cases provide the chance to
appreciate and analyze the problems faced in many different
situations and to understand how people tried to respond in those
situations Cases illustrate what you have learned. The meaning and
implication of this information are made clearer when they are
applied to case studies. The theory and concepts help reveal what
is going on in the situations studied and allow students to
evaluate the solutions that specify how they situations adopted to
deal with their problems Consequently, when you analyze cases, you
will be like a detective who, with a set of conceptual tools,
probes what happened and what or who was responsible and then
marshals the evidence that provides the solution. Cases provide the
thrill of testing problem-solving abilities in the real world. It
is important to remember, after all, that no one knows what the
right answer is. All that we can do is to make the best guess.
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Case-Study Analysis Management is an uncertain game, and using
cases to see how theory can be put into practice is one way of
improving your skills of diagnostic investigation Case studies
provide you with the opportunity to participate in class and to
gain experience in presenting your ideas to others Instructors also
may assign an individual, but more commonly a group, to analyze the
case before the whole class. The individual or group probably will
be responsible for a thirty- to forty-minute presentation of the
case to the class. If you work in groups to analyze case studies,
you also will learn about the group process involved in working as
a team. When people work in groups, it is often difficult to
schedule time and allocate responsibility for the case
analysis.
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From Case-Study to Telling Your Own Story Your own story can
have value as a case-study for someone else Document in detail what
you do that gives value and provides recognition of your own
experiences Communicating, reflecting and making sense in the
process Do a SWOT analysis for your own experiences in specific
situations and analyze/prioritize what was achieved and why Do your
own profile For example, the police officer who was also a
librarian: he learnt and shared the need to be proactive, achieve
small victories, provide clear organizing scheme, need to be
creative, patient and persistent Relationship between the specifics
and the general Still have to retain confidentiality and removing
personally identifying information if need be Think on your feet
Identify one thing from your experiences at SIS that will be
helpful in a PL setting. Be specific
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OPL Readings pp. 1-9; 127-154 Issues and Perspectives 21 new
Nordic research papers on PL issues from a seminar held at the
Royal School of LIS in Copenhagen on 10-11 December, 2001 LIS
education, research, and practice (AL, PL, LIS Schools)
long-standing tradition of cooperation: Do you perceive the same in
the United States? What are issues that are the same and/or
different in terms of planning and management? In terms of the
three themes? Cooperation implies: Joint meetings and conferences
Meetings for heads and managers of libraries to develop joint
research and development projects Funds for research available
through national library bodies and governmental agencies as well
as internal academic and public library institutions Student
research and practicum Institutionalization of LIS research Some
topics: IR, info. Seeking, IS paradigms, informetrics, knowledge
organization, domain analysis, intellectual substance of LIS PL
research in soft fields: social and cultural contexts, collection
development, media and information resources
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Content and Contextual Determinants 12 articles by Danish
authors, 3 Norwegian contributors, 2 Swedish authors, 1 Finnish
scholar Determine areas and topics that have received high and no
attention; which areas of attention are changing Topics of Interest
Digital public libraries: Internet issues, virtual reference,
digital community information services, Closer links between
traditional library functions and learning resources and processes
PL Management: Change, leadership styles, development of leadership
tools enabling PLs to represent value and outcomes in socioeconomic
terms Challenges related to multicultural PL issues: Integrate
ethnic minorities in PL contexts PL history (tradition) and change:
Innovative theoretical approaches PL Identity: theory-practice
interface
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Methodological Perspectives Classic positivist perspective is
losing ground; research designs seem to be more rigorous and
reflect greater maturity and sophistication Greater interest in
mainstream (universal) theoretical perspectives adapted from social
science and humanities contexts Hermeneutic approaches, social
constructivist perspectives, discourse analysis (Foucault and
Bourdieus sociological theory of culture, Wengers learning theory)
Increased focus on qualitative studies and interpretative
approaches Interdisciplinary analytical perspectives and
theoretical constructs (anthropology, art history, cultural
studies, philosophy, history and sociology, economics) Challenge
information paradigm: Significance, role, and meaning of PL in
everyday life
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Missing Gaps Dearth of macro-level studies of PL development
and cross- country studies of PLs Few scenarios and projects that
examine the role, identity, and tasks of PL in the knowledge
society, dream society, postmodernist society (contemporary
context) Lack of projects exploring library finance themes and
issues in information economics and PLs role in life-long learning
Challenges for PLs and development of ICTs: access, maintenance of
freedom of information in the face of dominating telecom
monopolies, media conglomerates and data transmission companies,
re-signing of Patriot Act like laws PL practitioners viewpoint:
Theory vs. practice debate
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Research concerns of PL community members and LIS faculty are
the same: Do you agree? Role and function of Danish PL county
libraries of concern in the face of establishing regional resource
centers: Is the debate relevant in the United States? Development
of national digital infrastructures for libraries (web-based access
to national union catalogs) issues of concern Marked collective
focus on products and services, new systems and facilities. Does
this leave less room for the user in PL environment? How does the
library staff respond to various new challenges and changes?
Blurred demarcation line between professionals and semi
professionals, PL librarians and professionals from other
disciplines Is there a joint Nordic understanding in the PL field?
Does Nordic PL have a distinct profile of identity? Can you relate
this statement about PLs in the United States? Are there any
threads of common grounds in the context of US PLs?
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Future Directions of PL Research Meetings between LIS
educators, PL practitioners, and researchers PLs as consumers of
research produced in LIS academic settings Research spread amongst
the academic community and the PL community gets left out Tap into
media communication via oral media, publication outlets (journals,
professional magazines, newsletters, books, reports, web
presentations and mailing lists) Center to bridge gap between LIS
research and practice, Series of lectures Positive climate for
research in Nordic LIS academy on PLs, Negative aspects is that
Nordic PLs are fragmented and parochial in dissemination of results
in other countries. Is this applicable to PLs in the United
States?
Slide 36
The Public Library as a Social Field (NF: Jochumen &
Rasmussen, pp. 285-306) The modern PL represents a great variety of
services, but yet the local library looks very much the same as it
always has, just as for most people the PL is associated first and
foremost with borrowing books
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The Public Library as a Social Field (NF: Jochumen &
Rasmussen, pp. 285-306) PLs as a social field (Bourdieu):
microcosms with particular codes of practice, values and interests
PLs built on ideas about democracy, public enlightenment, cultural
welfare development, and social emancipation PLs are political
instruments to further various political goals within cultural,
educational and information policy
Slide 38
The Public Library as a Social Field (NF: Jochumen &
Rasmussen, pp. 285-306) Public perceptions of PLs cultural
institutions (like museums and cultural centers) places of
information and knowledge (like public schools and booksellers)
public offices (like technical admin.) social meeting places (like
village halls, clubs) Essence as a physical place
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The Public Library as a Social Field (NF: Jochumen &
Rasmussen, pp. 285-306) PL as a field create a doxa (fields
ideological foundation accepted by central players) case logic:
specific way of relating to the activities within common educations
common work ethic: aversion to political interference
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The Public Library as a Social Field (NF: Jochumen &
Rasmussen, pp. 285-306) From library spinster to knowledge
specialist Decentralization Politicians demand of PLs as image-
creating cultural policy while public considers PLs as nonexclusive
cultural institutions which have something to offer to every
section of society PLs have low level of autonomy owing to low
volume of capital where the structure for apportioning financial
means has brought PLs into increased competition with other local
institutions:
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The Heritage of Public Librarianship (NF: Buckland, pp.
329-335) PL is seen as fragmented and in need of a more coherent
sense of context and a more unified understanding What kind of work
do we do? Heritage (present effect today of the past) to address
Ideas, Complex Problems How are we do to our work? Organization of
information Information in society and information policy
Technology Management Looking forward: Why does it matter? It
matters what people know