Information Management

An Analyst Visit To My Academic Library

“… Working with college and university clients to find ways to improve the learning, teaching and research experience on their campuses is the best part of my job. Wrapping innovation in economy and bringing about individually applied solutions based on best practices in higher education never gets dull. And knowing that the “next big thing” may one day come from the research completed at one of these institutions makes every technology decision potentially huge. Gartner can help and I like that…”

Marti Harris, Gartner.com

The information session has started off with a short introduction with our Visiting Analyst, Marti Harris, on Monday, 28th 2008. Marti Harris is one of Gartner.com distinctive analysts who share the insights and update on technology impact in the education industry. Her research interest is in higher-education technology strategies including administrative and academic systems, learning technologies, distributed learning, e-learning and library systems. Prior to joining Gartner.com, she was also a professional librarian and was director of a university library. That afternoon, she shared with us, NTU Librarians, the team from Centre for Educational Development and faculty members on Social Networking and Virtual Communities for Higher Education.

What has Marti Harris shares with us on Social Networking and Virtual Communities for Higher Education?

• Presence in Social Networks and Online Communities

• Presence technology is being extended to other application and environments

• Vendors are adding social software to their portfolio and participating themselves in virtual communities and environments presence is being extended to:

• • Virtual worlds
  • Consumer social-networking sites
  • Consumer gaming
  • Presence-enabled Web sites (sales/support)
  • Non-profit communities

• The statistical numbers of participants in each social sites, such as Facebook, SecondLife, YouTube.

• • Examples of Social Networks and Online Communities:
  • Such as Facebook, SecondLife, Google, Friendster, Ustream.tv, Slideshare, Amazon, Delicious, Netvouz, MySpace, Wordpress, EduBlogger, etc.

• The impact of these tools

• • The statistical numbers of particHow social tools can help a universities, in terms of crisis management.

• SecondLife & Universities
• • Should academic (librarians) has a profile in SecondLife (or Facebook)
  • Building a university presents in SecondLife
  • Private land and Public land in SecondLife
  • Why youngsters are not attracting to SecondLife (according research statistic).
  • Why the elders (age 50 and above) attracted to SecondLife (according research statistic).
  • SecondLife is not as challenging as other 3D environment (for example counterstrike)

• Should Universities Build Their Own Social Sites Or Embrace

• • Phenomena of site crawling (using the concept of Pub Crawling)
  • Common dilemma shares by librarians on building application in social site (Facebook)

• Are we able to get the slide presentation?

• • Yes, we are (only for NTU community, please email me)
  • I am sorry, that I am not able to share the original presentation to the Internet Community.
  • But, I took some photos from that information sessions. You can click here: Visit by Marti Harris (Gartner.com)
  • Please note the photos can also be found on my Facebook. I have integrated it with the help of Aaron Harp’s Fotobook software (via Facebook). (Thanks, Aaron!)

• I want to read more this, where can I find?

• • Gartner.com (Under Education)
  • Chronicles of Higher Education
  • • Professors on YouTube, Take 2
    • Facebook and Other Social-Networking Sites Raise Questions for Administrators

What do we learnt?

Google Generation is not only about information literacy. If we were to take a reverse engineering approach, and understanding the pattern of this society (including cognitive), using or from the perspective of librarians, using such tool as a channel to collaborate, a channel for promotion and sharing, it would bring to a different level of approaches.

Anyway, they are free tools for us to use and quite under-friendly. We just need to understand how and forward we are using it for. And this will bring us to a difference level of professionalism towards present & dissemination for information. In short, I would address this a service concierge model. Taking this model from the hospitality industry to deploy into the library environment and leveraging this idea out using the platform of Web 2.0 would be an interesting platform for us to play with as a librarian (or an information butler). In a recent conference, VALA 2008, held in Melbourne, Australia, in a presentation paper, Prof. Schubert shares an interesting model call info-concierge with the Australian Librarians .One of the example, that he cited and illustrated on BookJetty.com, where libraries such as NTU, NUS and NLB have integrated the connectivity for users discovered contents. On top, library can evolved into a network of true collaborators, physical exhibition rendered into virtual exhibitions, and to meet users’ changing expectations and consumer lifestyles, which lead to a collaborative reference network.

To be fair, I also have managed to interview the creator of BookJetty.com to get his point of view as a developer. The good news, librarians and the book lovers community can excepted to receive more function in the new coming new launch of BookJetty.com, where the theme collaboration will be emphasized. That means, we, librarians can make friends with the community.

A ponder of a trainee librarian

In conclusion, from the short information session, the followed VALA trip as well meeting the creator of BookJetty, life as a librarian is not bad after all, since a year ago. Frankly, I didn’t know that we can be also called as an information butler, that providing a concierge services to all our distinguish guests.

“A model that libraries should adopt and leverage further into distinctive service level dimension that align strategically between operation and technologies. Eventually, morph into an entity that provide a strategic leadership in services and resources for the academic community as well the knowledge based community.”

That would be our dream.

A business library’s dream in the near future for a Business Trainee Librarian who plays, works, and ponders about his library developmens in the new era.

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