Creating School Libraries of the Future for The Students of Today
ICS Students & Libraries
description
Transcript of ICS Students & Libraries
ICS Students & Libraries
Bill TomlinsonAssociate Professor
Department of InformaticsDonald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences
ALAJune 25, 2012Anaheim, CA
Disclaimer
• I am not a librarian, nor do I do research involving libraries.
• Some/all of the topics of this talk may already be completely obvious to you. If so, I apologize, and you have my permission to doze off.
Outline
• Value of Libraries• Changing Times• What Students Want• Potential Projects• Collapse Informatics
Value of Libraries:To Students
• Locus of information access• Course reserves• Place to study• Etc.
Value of Libraries:To Society
• David Rosenthal, Stanford University Libraries– Distributed knowledge preservation system– No single point of failure– The danger of Google Books
Changing Times:21st Century Skills
• Digital literacy• From scarcity to abundance: search is of
growing importance
Changing Times:Evaluating Information
• Judge Carter example
Changing Times:Research Requirements
• NSF data management plans• Libraries hosting datasets
Changing Times:Sources of Information
• Undergraduates: Wikipedia• Graduate students: Wikipedia, Google Scholar• Faculty: Wikipedia, Google Scholar, ACM
Digital Library, etc.
Changing Times:Quality of Wikipedia
• As good as Britannica (Nature, 2005), and far more comprehensive (3.9M vs. 65K)
What Students Want
• 62 students in undergraduate “Social Analysis of Computerization” course.
• 50 minutes of discussion/questionnaires.• Note: I have questionnaires with me if you’d
like to look at them.
What Students Want:A Sampling
• More knowledge about real world – how to get internships• Remote (and ongoing) access• Knowledge of how to communicate across disciplines• Make everything searchable• Things get outdated fast – stay current• Centralize class information• Concierge Librarian – help organize one’s own resources• Support Wikipedia • More collaborative data – crowdsourcing• More reasons to go to the physical building – like a coffee shop without coffee
(only 3-4/62 work in library on regular basis)• Combine career center and library• Be as awesome as Stackoverflow• Integration with mobile tech• Reference management (Zotero/Mendeley)
Potential Projects
• Extend Wikipedia and Google Scholar for students– Draw attention to recent changes to Wikipedia• Natalie Jeremijenko’s How Stuff Is Made assignment –
ever bolder font – Augment Google Scholar – if it’s the place they’re
going to look, make sure it’s as good as it can be.
Large-Scale Projects
• Work broadly with other universities and/or encourage open source projects to do the work.
Project Aaugh!
• Six Silberman• Fix the problem of someone you know having
a library book you want.
Potential Assignment
• Each student finds a piece of information (journal paper, dataset, etc.) that is not accessible via Google Scholar.
• Students write descriptions of easiest way to find their pieces of information.
• Students exchange descriptions, and track each others’ findings.
(Part of) My Research: Collapse Informatics
• Build sociotechnical systems in the abundant present for use in a future of scarcity.
• Maintain quality of life in declining standard of living.
Peak Information
• Peak oil -> Peak computing -> Peak information
• What will libraries and universities be like in a condition of diminishing information access?
• Google is neat, but it’s only been around since 1998. Libraries have been around since 2600BC. I know which ones I trust to keep information available. :)
Short Story
• Future Librarians– Keepers of PDFs– Transcribers of e-books– Selectors of most relevant information of our time
• Like many science fiction authors, I have a setting, but no plot yet. :)
Conclusion
• Embrace and improve the new technologies current generations use, but don’t lose the books!
Thank You!