LIASA Conference 2005
Having been to the annual LIASA conferences for a few years, I have a developed a few traditions. One is to make my way to the exhibitors to find out about new products, get catalogues, pamphlets, flyers and posters, and sometimes CDs. These I distribute to my colleagues who may be interested, back home. This is a tradition I managed to maintain his year between sessions and blogging.
Talking about blogging, this I hope will become a tradition that the Western Cape members attending the LIASA conferences will continue. You can view the blog at westerncapeliasa.blogspot.com. Another tradition is the Western Cape LIASA Conference photo. This year the Western Cape conference photo was truly memorable. The picture was taken on the occasion of the Western Cape being awarded the first Presidential Nielson Bookdata Branch Award. The criteria included membership and renewals as well as activities held.
Before I get to the other traditions of the Conference itself, such as the invited guests, let me tell you about another tradition I would rather not keep, being a city person myself. My accommodation, despite my best intentions, has always involved animals, both the domestic and the wild variety. In Port Elizabeth, it was just being splashed wet by the playful dolphins. In Rustenburg, my little chalet was raided by a gang of Baboons, who ate all my food. Luckily they did not get to my chocolate in the fridge. In Polokwane, very eager little doggies wanted to jump on me every time I opened the door. This year I again had very enthusiastic doggies, a 15 cm insect on the shower curtain and hippos to contend with. My colleague, whom I shared with, also thought it may be an interesting experience to sleep with cabin door wide open. I was enormously grateful that the grey haired monkey’s in the area had not been active during that night.
The pre-conference workshops are good value for money and are hard skills orientated. If you are attending conference to see immediate and direct return on your, money, then you have to attend the workshops. However, if you wanted to judge the quality of the conference then you have to look at the quality of the papers. Reflecting on the papers of the invited speakers, Mr Matos, Cuban National Librarian, and Ms Putri Saniah, President of the Malaysian Librarians Association, were valuable and inspiring because of the successes they have in their countries despite the economic challenges their countries faced during the 1990’s. Dr James O Daniel, President of the Nigerian Association spoke more generally of Africa and argued that libraries are part of the solution to Africa’s challenges, most notably, poverty. Jane Sharka, spoke about school libraries and studies conducted that shows that ‘Libraries matter’ in improving academic achievement of learners. Checkout the study that produced the evidence for what we all know to be true at www.islma.org/resources.htm. Then there was our very own Prof. Archie Dick who spoke passionately about the public library services in South Africa and argued that Libraries for the people, does not mean taking it away from other people. Statistics from the Census 2001 report shows that there are 1800 public libraries for 44 billion people, put another way, there is only one library per 25 000 people. Astonishing then that public libraries are being closed. I wonder whether the solution for us in South Africa is to move the public library system from the provincial and municipal goverance to the National Library, following the examples of Cuba and Malaysia.
This conference was indeed hectic with many sessions being held on the same day and it was difficult to choose. I will report on the Higher Education Libraries Interest Group on the Western Cape HELIG blog at http://www.wchelig.blogspot.com/, a further two papers are important to mention however. The report of Reggie Raju on the investigation of statutory status of LIASA produced several options for LIASA to take. The full report is available from the LIASA website at http://www.liasa.org.za/. Finally, Ray Lonsdale, from the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, who captured everyone’s attention and imagination with his paper on the role of the Internet in supporting literacy and its place in school and public libraries. Not only has the Net been used by publisher and authors, there are also web sites that support writing literacy, where the authors of stories are the children themselves.
Some people believe that we should come to conferences only if there direct, tangible and immediate benefits to the home institution. I believe it is important for practising librarians to not only attend but also to contribute to the building of the profession and professionals in SA. One way that we can contribute is to present papers ourselves that reflect on our practice in whatever sector of LIS it may be. Higher Education Librarians in particular have much to contribute, and have a wealth of experience and expertise to share with South Africa LIS professionals. This is how we give more than we receive. I challenge all South African Librarians to grasp the opportunity to contribute to the profession globally, and share with professionals from all parts of the world at the IFLA conference in 2007.
17 January 2006
Monday, January 23, 2006
Finnish Librarians at UWC, Joint LIASA/UWC event on 9 November 2005
Finland has a long history with the LIS in South Africa, going back to the Apartheid years when the South African political exiles were offered classes by the Finnish Library Association. When these exiles returned, the liaison with UWC Dept. of LIS began. This relationship continued to this day, according to Prof George Fredericks, Acting Dean for the Faculty of Arts.
This continued liaison resulted in a seminar on Wednesday, 9th of November 2005 at the Centre for Humanities Research, at UWC. Prof George Fredericks welcomed the Finnish delegation and the 30 attendees. The morning was divided into two sessions. First, the Finnish perspective on Information-seeking behaviour and the second, a round table discussion on Knowledge Management Curriculum.
Now if you’re like me, and did not particularly like User studies when you were studying, then ended up in user services, and found that you love being there, then Mariam Ginman’s presentation of several theories on information seeking behaviour from a Finnish perspective based on research, would have captured your imagination. I shall try to give you a taste.
Mariam Ginman presented information seeking behaviour in terms of three current paradigms of human behaviour: cognitive, social and socio-cognitive paradigm. Theories of information behaviour span the whole life cycle of information, from production, to its storage, retrieval and use. However, the focus of the current theories is on the constructive and active user coping with professional and everyday life. Information behaviour is the term now broadly used for how people need, seek and use information.
The cognitive view is based on theories in cognitive psychology. The theories evolved in the mid 70s and theorists such as Belkin and Kuhlthau viewed the information seeking process as context independent. Jannica Heinström studies of 2002 found three distinct groups of personality-related search behaviours. She found that “the neurotic, easily distracted and lazy Fast surfers have difficulties formulating searches and then interpreting what they find. Deep divers are identified by their willingness to consider viewpoints and to link ideas. Broad scanners are strategic thinkers, conscientious and have clear goals.
The social view emerged during the 90s and consider context as a carrier of meaning, in other words information seeking is context dependant. These theories focus on meaning and values associated with social, sociocultural and sociolinguistic aspects on information behaviour. The studies are based on theories from the social sciences. Elfreda Chatman work was presented in some details. Chatman developed the small world theory based on studies she conducted on the information seeking behaviour and life characteristics of poor people. Chatman and Maija-Leena Huotari combined the small world theory with social network theory to explain organizational behaviour.
The socio-cognitive view considers information seeking behaviour as too complex a phenomenon to be approached from only one view. The work of Anthony Giddens and Vygotsky has influenced this view. Studies focus on how cognition interacts with the sociocultural environment. Dervin’s theories evolving from the mid 80s, consider information seeking as a way of making sense of the world in order to cope with everyday life. This model is called the situation-gap-use, where we face a situation in which our internal sense runs out. A knowledge gap is created which has to be bridged by new information. When we use the information we bridge the gap created.
Mariam Ginman concluded her session with the suggestion that information behaviour is part of the communicative process. For the presentation of Mariam Ginman, Director of Research at Abo Akademie University, Finland, see http://www.liasa.org.za/branches/WCape_Seminar_Nov2005_Ginman.ppt
The second session was a roundtable discussion on Knowledge Management curriculum. Miaja-Leena Huotari, from the Oulu University, Finland, chaired the discussion by several invited guests, representing the library, information systems and technology sector in higher education in the Western Cape. They considered several questions; amongst these were: What is knowledge management? What is the difference between knowledge management and business intelligence? What is the role of culture in knowledge management? Is a librarian a knowledge manager? What does the ideal knowledge management programme look like? As you can imagine there were lots of discussion and healthy debate reflecting really the worldview of the different disciplines represented.
20 January 2005
This continued liaison resulted in a seminar on Wednesday, 9th of November 2005 at the Centre for Humanities Research, at UWC. Prof George Fredericks welcomed the Finnish delegation and the 30 attendees. The morning was divided into two sessions. First, the Finnish perspective on Information-seeking behaviour and the second, a round table discussion on Knowledge Management Curriculum.
Now if you’re like me, and did not particularly like User studies when you were studying, then ended up in user services, and found that you love being there, then Mariam Ginman’s presentation of several theories on information seeking behaviour from a Finnish perspective based on research, would have captured your imagination. I shall try to give you a taste.
Mariam Ginman presented information seeking behaviour in terms of three current paradigms of human behaviour: cognitive, social and socio-cognitive paradigm. Theories of information behaviour span the whole life cycle of information, from production, to its storage, retrieval and use. However, the focus of the current theories is on the constructive and active user coping with professional and everyday life. Information behaviour is the term now broadly used for how people need, seek and use information.
The cognitive view is based on theories in cognitive psychology. The theories evolved in the mid 70s and theorists such as Belkin and Kuhlthau viewed the information seeking process as context independent. Jannica Heinström studies of 2002 found three distinct groups of personality-related search behaviours. She found that “the neurotic, easily distracted and lazy Fast surfers have difficulties formulating searches and then interpreting what they find. Deep divers are identified by their willingness to consider viewpoints and to link ideas. Broad scanners are strategic thinkers, conscientious and have clear goals.
The social view emerged during the 90s and consider context as a carrier of meaning, in other words information seeking is context dependant. These theories focus on meaning and values associated with social, sociocultural and sociolinguistic aspects on information behaviour. The studies are based on theories from the social sciences. Elfreda Chatman work was presented in some details. Chatman developed the small world theory based on studies she conducted on the information seeking behaviour and life characteristics of poor people. Chatman and Maija-Leena Huotari combined the small world theory with social network theory to explain organizational behaviour.
The socio-cognitive view considers information seeking behaviour as too complex a phenomenon to be approached from only one view. The work of Anthony Giddens and Vygotsky has influenced this view. Studies focus on how cognition interacts with the sociocultural environment. Dervin’s theories evolving from the mid 80s, consider information seeking as a way of making sense of the world in order to cope with everyday life. This model is called the situation-gap-use, where we face a situation in which our internal sense runs out. A knowledge gap is created which has to be bridged by new information. When we use the information we bridge the gap created.
Mariam Ginman concluded her session with the suggestion that information behaviour is part of the communicative process. For the presentation of Mariam Ginman, Director of Research at Abo Akademie University, Finland, see http://www.liasa.org.za/branches/WCape_Seminar_Nov2005_Ginman.ppt
The second session was a roundtable discussion on Knowledge Management curriculum. Miaja-Leena Huotari, from the Oulu University, Finland, chaired the discussion by several invited guests, representing the library, information systems and technology sector in higher education in the Western Cape. They considered several questions; amongst these were: What is knowledge management? What is the difference between knowledge management and business intelligence? What is the role of culture in knowledge management? Is a librarian a knowledge manager? What does the ideal knowledge management programme look like? As you can imagine there were lots of discussion and healthy debate reflecting really the worldview of the different disciplines represented.20 January 2005
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