New paradigm, new educational requirements?

Australian viewpoints on education for digital libraries

Katherine Howard

Background to the study

Survey Research methodology using an online questionnaire Use of both open and closed questions

Practitioners and Educators Useful for identifying the level of

discrepancy or concurrence between research and practice

Research Questions(1)

What are the skills and knowledge required of today‟s information professional to work in a digital library (DL) environment, in the opinion of both Library and Information Science (LIS) educators and practitioners in Australia?

Research Questions(2)

What elements should be included in an LIS programme in Australia in order to facilitate the development of skills and knowledge to work in the digital library environment?

Research Questions(3)

Is there a need for a dedicated digital library programme to be introduced in Australia? Why/Why not?

Digital Library Education

Is there a need for a dedicated digital library programme in Australia? Why/why not?

Preferred delivery options for such a programme

Preferred models of digital library education

Potential curricula inclusions

Is there a need for a dedicated digital library programme in Australia? Why/why not?

05

101520253035404550

Practitioners Educators

Yes

No

Inconclusive

Delivery Options

A separate (optional) „stream‟, but still within general LIS programmes

A specialist (perhaps postgraduate) qualification

Part of the „core‟ modules in all LIS programmes (ie: not specialist)

Other – please specify

Delivery Options

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

Practitioners Educators

Separate stream

Specialist

Part of core

Other

Delivery Models

Technology as a tool for the building of DLs and the courses‟ focus on technological infrastructure and processes

DLs as environments concerned with the social and cultural contexts that DLs reside in

Delivery Models (cont.)

The DL as composed of objects with the main focus on the management of the life-cycle of documents and artefacts in the digital environment

A combined model that includes different perspectives on the subject (Tammaro, 2007)

No dedicated model required

Delivery models

0

20

40

60

80

Practitioners Educators

Technology asa tool

Social/culturalcontext

Life-cyclemodel

Combinedmodel

No dedicatedmodel

Curricula for Digital Library Education

Choices on questionnaire derived from:

International Masters in Digital Library Learning, joint Erasmus Mundus Master Programme

Masters in Digital Library and Information Services, University of Borås, Sweden

The Digital Library Curriculum Project, Chapel Hill/Virginia Tech collaboration

Curricula for Digital Library Education – „Highly Suitable‟

0

20

40

60

80

100

Practitioners Educators

Digitalrepositories

Legal issues

Metadata

User studies

Digital objects

Curricula for Digital Library Education – „Suitable‟

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

Practitioners Educators

DL origins &history

DL architecture

Web design &maintenance

Informationarchitecture

Informationretrieval

Technology of DLs

Curricula for Digital Library Education – „Less Suitable‟

0

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

Practitioners Educators

DL origins & history

Information literacy

Social issues

DL management

Technology of DLs

Limitations

Practitioners from academic libraries only

Curricula inclusions had a tertiary education focus – no attempt to include Continuing Professional Development (CPD) material

Limitations (cont.)

Use of an online questionnaire as a data collection tool

The study was a broad overview - it did not investigate the many and varied jobs that contain „digital‟ in their title

Implications for further research

In depth interviews and/or focus groups for deeper, richer qualitative data

Focus on practitioners who have digital roles

Replicate this study in other sectors of the library profession (e.g. Special, Corporate or Government Libraries)

Extend the study to the „Digital Cultural Heritage‟ sector

Sustainability of LIS Education

“Fundamental re-thinking of LIS education” (Spink and Cool, 1999)

Myburgh‟s (2003) notion of “disjointed incrementalism”

Thank you for your attention

Questions? Comments?

References

Myburgh, S. (2003). Education directions for NIPs (New Information Professionals). Paper presented at the 11th

Information Online Exhibition and Conference, Sydney, 21-23 January. Retrieved March 24, 2009 fromhttp://conferences.alia.org.au/online2003/papers/myburgh.html

Spink, A. and Cool, C. (1999). Education for digital libraries. D-Lib Magazine 5 (5) doi:10.1045/may99-spink

Tammaro, A. M. (2007). A curriculum for digital librarians: a reflection on the European debate. New Library World 108(5/6), 229-246. doi: 10.1108/03074800710748795

References (cont)

Hallam, G. (2007). Education for library and information service. In Stuart Ferguson, (Ed.), Libraries in the twenty-first century: Charting new directions in information services, chapter 18, 311-336. Centre for Information Studies, Charles Sturt University. Retrieved March 14, 2009 from http://eprints.qut.edu.au/11674/1/11674.pdf

Harvey, R. and Higgins, S. (2003). Defining fundamentals and meeting expectations: Trends in LIS education in Australia. Education for Information, 21(2/3), 149-157. Retrieved February 22 from http://web.ebscohost.com.ezlibproxy.unisa.edu.au/ehost/pdf?vid=2&hid=115&sid=3e224b1a-09a5-4b17-9ebf-81aa276340db%40sessionmgr2