The Occasional Informationist

O’Reilly has been known as a publisher of books on information technology for over thirty years: as their website puts it “a chronicler and catalyst of leading-edge development, homing in on the technology trends that really matter and galvanizing their adoption by amplifying the faint signals from the alpha geeks who are creating the future”. Which might suggest that its offerings are only relevant at the hard technology end of the information sciences, away from central concerns of information organisation, access and use.

Not so. Two of their newer books, by J.D. Biersdorfer and by Jeff Siarto, deal respectively with a device – the iPad – and a software system – WordPress blogging – which typify the developments in information technology which have revolutionised the information environment over the past decade. One has arrived rather suddenly, while the other has been long anticipated.

The handheld information device has been predicted for many years in science fiction and futurology speculation, so that we have been waiting rather impatiently for its instantiation. Biersdorfer suggests that the iPad was specifically foreshadowed by Star Trek’s Personal Access Display Device (PADD). Conversely, I am not sure that the idea of the blog has been mentioned very much, if at all, in any speculative writing; the over 150 million blogs so far created seem to have arrived largely unannounced.

Billed as a “brain friendly guide”, Siarto’s guide to WordPress apparently uses “the latest research in cognitive science and learning theory to craft a multi-sensory learning experience”. In practice, this means that it is written in what is for me an irritating overly-conversational style, with a plethora of diagrams, photographs, speech bubbles, and case studies. The index, by contrast is limited, and I found it quite difficult to find specific topics; this is book to be worked through, rather than referred to. Oddly, perhaps, for a book emphasising a friendly approach, it comes with a rather nannyish set of suggestions on how to use it: from being told “Read the There are no dumb questions. That means all of them. They’re no optional sidebars – they’re part of the core content! Don’t skip them”, to being advised to drink lots of water when reading it. People who like this sort of thing will find it the sort of thing they like. While it didn’t appeal to me, the book contains much useful information, and anyone new to WordPress blogging would benefit from working through it. And, yes, despite my concerns at the way WordPress put in an iPad app with minimal announcement, it’s still a very nice system to use.

Much more to my taste, style-wise is Biersdorfer’s guide to the iPad. A quote on the cover suggests that the Missing Manual series, of which this book is a volume, is “simply the most intelligent and usable series of guidebooks”. I would go along with that. Very clearly laid out, and nicely written, without gimmicks or razzamatazz, and with detailed contents pages and indexes, it gets it points across very well. And, for the iPad, these points add to the assertion, though the author does not make it explicitly, that this device can change information access and use in quite fundamental ways. The book illustrates, of course, how the web may be browsed, music, video and photographs organised, email and social media accessed, and the other well-known applications of tablets like iPad; and explains these in a way which would be useful to all but the most informed users. However, arguably the most transformative aspects are elsewhere; in the office software suite, which brings the personal computer to a genuinely mobile format; in the variety of apps, particularly including the mobile, map and location functions, which make the idea of ‘information anywhere’, a clearer reality than formerly; and perhaps most of all in the book reader applications, in which – as the author suggests – we may be seeing the book of the 21st century. This is certainly the clearest explanation which I, as an iPad novice, have seen of these issues.

Both these books, in their different ways, are excellent guides to their subjects. Reflecting on them also shows us something of how information technology and the social context of information seeking and access is changing; and also how limited is the futurology of information.

It’s also interesting, and perhaps ironic, to see how printed books have a value as tools for making good use of e-readers and blogs; and how good books can appear in very different formats.

Coming back to the blog after an enforced lay-off during a busy term, I was more than a little disconcerted to find that someone had hacked into it, and vandalised it; or so it seemed when viewed on an iPad. Of course they hadn’t really. It was just that WordPress had thought it a good idea to impose a new theme for all their blogs when viewed on an iPad. Without letting anyone know in advance, and without providing a clear way of opting out.

I’m sorry if I upset the nice man at Onswipe, who created the app for WordPress on iPad, when I told him that the result looked like something thrown together by a high school student who’d been drinking (although I still think it did).

I’m sorry if WordPress’s Happiness Engineers (yes, they really are called that) had to spend their Saturday rushing to put in a quick and easy opt-out, which thankfully is now in place.

And I’m sorry, if a bit surprised, if WordPress really think that a mention in their newsletter is sufficient advance notice that the appearance of all our blogs is going to be drastically changed, without our agreement. Oddly enough, in these times of information overload, following the newsletter of every system that I use isn’t really feasible. And, given that WordPress have no problem in sending me multiple emails when they want to collect a small amount of money twice a year, would it have been that hard to let everyone know in advance?

Anyway it’s all sorted out now, and we are back to normal. But why didn’t WordPress and Onswipe avoid all this stress by giving notice, or, better, making it opt-in rather than opt-out?

On the merits of the new app and theme itself, opinion – judging by the vigorous debate on Twitter – seems divided. Some users find it ‘great’, ‘cool’, ‘neat’, ‘nice’, ‘beautiful’, ‘magical’, ‘awesome’, ‘amazing’, and ‘good stuff’; they ‘really like it’ and ‘love it’. Others think that it is ‘bad’, ‘godawful’, ‘what a fright’, ”sucky’, ‘stupid’, ‘obnoxious’, ‘crap’, ‘not liking’, ‘annoying’, ‘awful, and there’s no way to turn it off’, ‘totally ruined the way the blog displays’, ‘a mess’, ‘I can’t stand it’, ‘really don’t like it’, ‘really hate it’, ‘all site design is destroyed’, ‘[sites have] lost their visual identity’ and a ‘fundamental usability violation’; some comment ‘I’m about to unsubscribe from blogs I like; it’s that bad’, and ‘sanity at last – have removed onswipe from my blog’, and they recommend ‘do not fix what is not broken’.

So clearly some blog writers love the new display; perhaps those who already have a very visual and magazine-like style to their blog. But others, like me, don’t. And we feel that that our blogs are, well, ours. We determine the style; and if it’s deliberately understated, unflashy, and rather old-fashioned looking, then maybe that’s what we intend, and perhaps what our readers like. We don’t want it altered, for the iPad or any other environment, without our knowledge and agreement, and it would be good if WordPress remembered that.

In a previous post, I wrote about Maurice Line, the eminent British librarian, who died last year. One of Maurice’s specialities was his ability to show up what he regarded as the failings of the profession in a pithy and very quotable style. I reproduce a selection of typical Line-isms below, taken from just two of his later papers, both published in Interlending and Document Supply, 2005, volume 33, issue 2:
• Librarianship as it is practiced: a failure of intellect, imagination and nerve, pages 109-113
• A lifetime’s change in LIS, pages 114-116

On users
Concern with users can lead in public libraries to efforts to satisfy popular demand for light fiction and a general “dumbing down” of stock, including the disposal of older classics. This seems a strange policy at a time when the importance of lifelong learning is constantly thrust on us.

Not only have librarians failed to use their intellect and imagination, but they have failed to put their users before themselves and their stock. How else can one explain catalogues designed for cataloguers, classification schemes designed for who knows what or whom (certainly not users), library systems that are so difficult to use that instead of making them simpler librarians have the impertinence of “educating” people to use them.

On managers
The management of libraries has improved immeasurably [over past decades]. Academic libraries used to headed by scholars manqés – a collection consisting mostly of pseudo-academics, but sprinkled with the odd real academic whom the university did not quite know what to do with. Very few of them thought of themselves as managers: they would probably have felt insulted in anyone had called them that.

This has been an issue close to my heart ever since I worked under a librarian whose main purpose in life seemed to be the frustration of users (as well as the destruction of the morale of staff). She achieved remarkable success in both.

On the profession
We need more questioning of theory and practice, most clear thinking and more radical thinking…. We need a profession where the mediocre are not regarded as outstanding. We need some Martin Luthers, Tom Paines and Charles Darwins.

I simply do not believe that librarianship does not have somewhere among its practitioners enough of the qualities of intellect, imagination, initiative – and humanity – that are needed if we are to help shape our future. Somehow we have to find ways of bringing them out, bringing them together, and using them. We have nothing to lose but our mental laziness, our spiritual dullness, our introspection and our inhibitions.

Librarianship as it is practiced is a failure of humanity as well as of intellect and imagination.

On professional education
How [can we ] explain our so-called professional education, which inculcates knowledge that is either irrelevant or likely to be out of date in three or four years, while failing to recruit or develop the qualities of imagination and analytical ability and the spirit of service that we need so badly?

On cataloguing
AACR2 is one of the most remarkable examples of trying to solve a problem by committee, with predictable results. The committee did not even tackle the right problem – what users surely want is not comprehensive or perfectly accurate bibliographic records, but far better subject access to books, comparable with that provided for scientific journal articles by the large international databases. No data on users’ needs, whether for bibliographic information or subject access, were collected; instead, cataloguers discussed how to change the rules, rather as if hens were to gather together to discuss the design of eggs.

I am however doing the committee an injustice in accusing them of not involving consumers in their discussions, because much of the use made of catalogues is in fact by cataloguers for the purpose of adding to them.

Cataloguers would lose much of their status if it were shown that most cataloguing is a trivial job easily done by clerical staff or that the length of a catalogue entry was not a sign of virility

On problem solving
I would argue that in most cases librarians have failed to anticipate the problems, they have failed to see problems in context, they have failed to identify the problems correctly and precisely, and when they have been confronted with problems they cannot avoid they have failed to react intelligently.

In fact, librarians make the worst of all worlds, because not only do they do little… (and what they do is mostly costly and ineffective) but they have wasted time and money in discussing the wrong problem (it is noteworthy that one of the first reactions of librarians to shortage of money is to spend money on discussing with other librarians how to deal with the shortage of money – but there are few things librarians enjoy more than frequent, extensive and inconclusive discussions).

Why is discussion by groups of librarians, however distinguished, preferred to the collection of relevant facts?

I have seen little or no sign in the literature or elsewhere of a thorough analysis of the needs and issues involved or of any attempt to conceive of alternative approaches. Instead we have the good old tradition of assumed needs and largely preconceived solutions. Again there is a failure to identify the problem, a failure to imagine possible solutions, a failure to collect the information needed to help find the best solution, and a failure to analyse fully what data and proposed solutions are available. If the best solution were by any accident found, I have little doubt that the initiative and courage necessary to implement it would be lacking.

Rather belatedly, we should note the death in September 2010 of Maurice Line. One of the leaders of his generation of British librarians, Line was always a proponent of the value of research in library and information. I am not sure whether he would have liked the terms ‘evidence-based practice’ or ‘reflective practitioner’, but he was certainly a proponent of these philosophies before they were given names.

His first senior post was a librarian of the University of Bath from 1968 to 1971. In this brief period he initiated many research projects: in library automation, which greatly influenced later developments at the British Library; and in cataloguing and bibliographic control, from which developed the UK Office for Library Networking (UKOLN), which is still one of the world’s leading centres for research in the area. He moved on to become director-general of the British Library’s Lending Division and later director-general of its Science, Technology and Industry Directorate. Following in the footsteps of his mentor Donald Urquhart, another doyen of the scientific approach to library management, he emphasised the important of research and evaluation in the planning of services, and was not afraid to brusquely over-ride some of the inherited traditions of librarianship. After leaving the British Library, he was for many years an international consultant, particularly to national libraries, emphasising the same approach of challenging both existing practices and beliefs, and also personal preconceptions.

Academically, he was a visiting professor at the Universities of Sheffield and Loughborough (I can remember his enthusiastic lecturing style from my Masters studies at Sheffield), and was the author of fourteen books and many journal articles. He was editor of Alexandria (a journal of national libraries) and of Interlending and Document Supply. The latter produced a special Festschrift issue in his honour in 2005 (volume 33 issue 2)

Among his most endearing qualities was the ability to deal with serious issues through a rather quirky sense of humour. This is nicely shown in the titles of three of his more influential papers:
• On the construction and care of white elephants: some fundamental questions concerning the catalogue, Library Association Record, 1968, 70(1), 2-5
• How golden is your retriever: thoughts on library classification, Library Association Record, 71(5), 115-116, 1969
• Ignoring the user: how, when and why, in The nationwide provision and use of information, Aslib-IIS-LA Joint Conference, Sheffield September 1980, London: Library Association, pp 80-88

These point up his recurring concerns for constantly reassessing services, including the traditional library functions such as ‘car and class’, so as to provide what the users need; not necessarily what they want.

A full bibliography of his writings, excepting only some very recent items, can found in the 2005 special issue of Interlending and Document Supply, while a selection of his early, and arguably most innovative and well as historically interesting, papers can be found in Lines of thought: the selected papers of Maurice B. Line, a book edited by himself and L.J. Anthony (Bingley, London, 1988).

Two of his own recent papers, from the 2005 Festschrift volume, sum up his views concisely and entertainingly, and remain very much relevant. With what must be one of the more challenging titles ever put before a library audience, “Librarianship as it is practiced: a failure of intellect, imagination and initiative” (pages 109-113) is a slightly modified version of a talk given in 1983, and remarkable prescient in its identification of many issues which are still ‘live’ today. ” A lifetime’s change in LIS” (pages 114-116) gives his views on the man changes in librarianship and information science over fifty years. Never one for supporting artificial barriers between the information disciplines, he here emphasises the need for more radical and innovative ideas from within and without the disciplines. I think that those involved in research or practice in the information disciplines will benefit from reflecting on Maurice Line’s incisive criticisms for many years to come. And I wish I could think of titles for my articles that were half as good as his.

City University London is offering 75 fully-funded studentships for doctoral study, with information science as one of the areas to be supported.

The Centre for Information Science, set in the wider Department of Information Science, is City’s focus for the study of the academic foundations of the information disciplines and professions. Our research and publications, including the work of current, and recently successful, doctoral students, is centred around:

• philosophical foundations of the information sciences
• concepts of information and documentation
• models and concepts of information behaviour
• information in society
• information history
• ontology, classification and taxonomy
• domain analysis (subject-specific information)

We welcome enquiries from anyone potentially interested in doctoral research in these or related areas.

The closing date for applications for studentships is January 31st 2011. Full details may be found at here.

Anyone potentially interested is welcome to contact David Bawden (db@soi.city.ac.uk) or Lyn Robinson (lyn@soi.city.ac.uk) informally.

News of the death of Benoît Mandelbrot should lead us to reflect on his creative work over wide areas of mathematics, his innovative use of computer graphics to convey his results, and his enthusiastic popularisation of his works, through books such as The Fractal Geometry of Nature.

Mandelbrot, whose obituary in the Guardian gives a good indication of the scope of his work, has had an influence on the information sciences in two main ways.

The first is his mathematical extension and refinement of the laws of Bradford, Zipf and Pareto to yield what is generally described as the Zipf-Mandelbrot Law, giving a generalised form for many commonly found bibliometric distributions. This is well described in a 1969 article by Robert Fairthorne, and a 2005 commentary on that article by Ronald Rousseau.

Such laws, as Mandelbrot noted from the first, show the phenomenon of ‘self-similarity’, or invariance to scale. The same properties are exhibited at large or small scales, so that it impossible to tell, without additional information, whether one is examining the distribution on a large or small scale; see for example, a study by Leo Egghe, published in 2005, for a detailed analysis.

This leads to the second major strand of Mandelbrot’s work; the elucidation of the concept of fractal geometry the mathematics applicable to a phenomenon exhibiting the ‘roughness’ characteristic of the natural and social worlds, as opposed to the smoothness of the ‘ideal’ world of mathematics. Many fractals have the property of ‘self-similarity’; if a small portion is enlarged, it seems very similar, perhaps even seemingly identical, to the original, so that there is similarity of properties at any scale.

Apart from the self-similarity of the infometric distributions, the idea of fractal self-similarity has entered the information sciences in various ways, being applied to topics as varied as the structure of the semantic web (by no less an authority than Tim Berners-Lee), and to the concept of relevance.

Whether it can be said as a general principle that ‘information is self-similar’ – repeating its patterns at all levels – is an intriguing and open question. If there is some truth in this, then this might give a clue as to the nature of the inter-relation between the nature of ‘information’ in different domains – the physical, biological, social and technological. This sounds like just the kind of question which interested Mandelbrot, and we may regret that he is no longer with us to help solve it.

This is a version of an editorial written for the Journal of Documentation.

The future of the book has received a good deal of attention, as we move into an increasingly digital information environment. The e-book has become a reality, and the prospect of books being superseded entirely by blogs, wikis and other novel digital formats continues to be touted. The current status of, and future prospects for, the traditional book format have been analysed by authors such as Cope and Phillips (2006), Kovac (2008) and Thompson (2005, 2010).

Sometimes, looking critically at the past can be powerful source of ideas about the future, and ‘book history’ has a well-established literature to support this. An outstanding new resource gives this a greater impetus: Ashgate’s five volume series of critical essays: The history of the book in the West: a library of critical essays, edited by Alexis Weedon (Ashgate, Farnham, 2010)

The extent of this can be seen by an outline of the contents of the volumes:
Volume I 400AD-1455 18 chapters, 515 pages
Volume II 1455-1700 17 chapters, 526 pages
Volume III 1700-1800 25 chapters, 529 pages
Volume IV 1800-1914 21 chapters, 526 pages
Volume V 1914-2000 23 chapters, 611 pages.

The series consists of reprints of selected essays, journal articles and book chapters, chosen from materials published over several decades: in volume I, for example, the dates of the contributions range from 1958 to 2005. The series is therefore inevitably subject to the criticisms that can be ranged against all of its kind: that coverage is selective and partial, and potentially subject to the interests and perspectives of the editors; that material chosen from such a wide time period is liable to be outdated in some respects, and perhaps even self-contradictory; and that there is style or voice for the collection as a whole. While such criticisms are undoubtedly valid, in this case I feel they are entirely outweighed by the advantage of having such a range of scholarship in a single source. And, pace the enthusiasts for the e-book, there is something very satisfying about having the collection as 22cm. of nicely produced browsing material on the bookshelf. Not that I would not like a digital version as well, particularly for ease of lookup since the volumes have only name indexes; an understandable, though regrettable, limitation.

It is also possible to criticise the series on the grounds that it deliberately excludes consideration of the book in other cultures than those of ‘the West’ – essentially Europe and the USA – and also does not deal with the information-bearing objects of pre-history and the ancient world before the series start date of 400AD. Again this would be unjustified quibbling; the editors have done well enough to cover the wealth of material within their agreed boundaries.

The first volume attempts what the editors describe as the “difficult, not to say impossible, task” of choosing a small number of essays to cover the development of the book from throughout the medieval period, from later antiquity to the early developments of printing. They emphasise the development of the of classical world’s codex into the standard form of a book, suggesting that the book as we know it did not appear suddenly with the advent of printing; all the features of the modern book – pagination, illustration, standard type faces. Indexes and so on – were present in the medieval codex. ‘All’ that printing did was to make possible the simultaneous production of multiple copies of identical texts.

Volume two covers the development of the book from the introduction of printing in Europe through the 16th and 17th centuries; the editor describes the selection of the essays here as “a Sisyphean task”. The largest section here deals, not unreasonably, with the impact of print, with others on typography, printing practices, selling and reading.

The next volume, which covers the eighteenth century, takes a refreshingly broad scope, with a section on newspapers and other periodicals, and several chapters on libraries and on reading in different contexts. As the editor points out, this century saw little, if any, advance in printing technology, but rather witnessed such developments as the emergence of the central role of the publisher, the initiation of a copyright system in the modern sense, the beginnings of modern distribution systems, and the growth of periodical literature.

Volume four covers the period 1800-1914, the ‘long nineteenth century’ in the aftermath of the industrial revolution, when, as the editors say “the printed word became ubiquitous [as] the processes of book manufacture and distribution were revolutionized and the market for books grew as education improved and population increased”. This period, which laid the foundation for the systems of information communication which persist to the present day, is covered by contributions categorised into sections on national publishing structures, international trade, publishing practices, distribution and reading. It is perhaps a pity that the development of library systems is represented only by a chapter on reading rooms for African Americans, and that the growth of the scientific monograph and journal literature is barely mentioned.

The fifth and last volume brings the story up to date, or at least to the close of the second millennium, taking a broad-brush approach with contributions on intellectual property, the impact of television, the effects of war and censorship, libraries, bookclubs, and bookstores. There is however almost no mention of the great changes in scientific and technical communication over the period. The final section, dealing with digital books, comprises three items, one a reprinted chapter from Cope and Phillips (2006). The editor points out that, although the scope of the chapter precludes coverage of the significant developments of the early 21st century, their roots lie in earlier developments which are covered: new design and typographical technologies, extension of copyright to new forms, redefinition of a book as both material object and electronic format, etc.

To understand where we going, in the development of the book as much as in any other aspect of information and documentation, we need to know where we have come from. As numerous contributions in this series show us, the seeds of the information future are already present, if we can recognise them. Browsing through these splendid volumes should spark off as many ideas about the future of the book as focusing on futurology.

References
Cope, B. and Phillips, A. (2006), The future of the book in the digital age, Oxford: Chandos

Kovac, M. (2008), Here comes the book, Oxford: Chandos

Thompson, J.B. (2010), Merchants of culture, Cambridge: Polity Press

Thompson, J.B. (2005), Books in a digital age, Cambridge: Polity Press

This is an amended version of an editorial written for Journal of Documentation.

Information history is a new discipline, located at the boundary where history meets the sciences of information. This subject ranges from the narrow history of the information sciences and professions, to the broader historical development of libraries, information services and information management, to the still broader scope of the changing concepts and contexts of information throughout history (Black 2006, Weller 2007). These studies, naturally enough, begin with the origins recorded information, perhaps with a nod to the question as to whether earlier manifestations such as cave paintings can be counted as a form of communicable information.

There is, however, a bigger picture to be considered, as is shown by Fred Spier’s new book Big history and the future of humanity. This is essentially the first textbook of the relatively novel ‘big history’ approach, pioneered by such scholars as David Christian, John Mears and Spiers himself. This, while not ignoring the usual subject-matter of history – the development of human societies and civilisations – sets it into a much wider context: the historical development of the earth and its life, itself set within the wider context of the development of the solar system, the galaxy and the universe itself. This big picture approach to history necessarily involves input from cosmologists, astrophysicists, geologists, biologists, and archaeologists, as much as conventional historians.

The big context is indeed very much bigger. I was struck by an analogy given by Brian Cox in his BBC TV series, Wonders of the Solar System. If the history of the earth, since its formation, is represented by an outstretched arm, then the whole of human history can be erased by a single swipe of a nail file.

It is interesting to speculate whether, as information history may be seen as a branch of conventional history, there may be a ‘big information history’ equivalent of this new discipline. Spier provides us with some links to how this might, in fact, be the case, starting from his general thesis that big history deals, in its essence, with the emergence and decline of complexity in the universe. Complexity, Spier notes, as have others before him, is associated with information. He distinguishes three ‘levels’ of complexity: that of the physical universe, in which “lifeless matter can .. exhibit certain sequences and can thus carry information” (p. 25); the biological world, in which “life organizes itself with the aid of hereditary information stored in DNA molecules” (p. 27); and the world of human culture, which defines explains as “information stored in nerve and brain cells or in human records of different kinds” (p. 27). This has resonances with the ideas of those authors, for example Bates (2006) and Bawden (2007), who have considered the possibility of connections between concepts of information at these three levels, physical, biological and social/cultural.

Another of Spier’s themes is that, when we come to human history, the increasing ability to disseminate information widely and rapidly is one of the major forces influencing the course of ‘recent big history’, leading to ‘informatization’ as one aspect of globalisation. Here we see an overlap between the big history approach, and more conventional information history.

It seems to me that taking a broad view of information history, and placing it within the context of a ‘big information history’, has advantages in encouraging a truly multidisciplinary approach to the study of information.

References

Bates, M.J. (2006), Fundamental forms of information, Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 57(8), 1033-1045

Bawden, D. (2007), Organised complexity, meaning and understanding: an approach to a unified view of information for information science, Aslib Proceedings, 59(4/5), 307-327

Black, A. (2006), Information history, Annual Review of Information Science and Technology, 40, 441-473

Spier, F. (2010), Big history and the future of humanity, Chichester: Wiley/Blackwell

Weller, T. (2007), Information history: its importance, relevance and future, Aslib Proceedings, 59(4/5), 437-448

The 7th CoLIS (Conceptions of Library and Information Science) conference was held at University College London between 21st and 24th June. As Programme Chair, I am bound to be biased, but, after leaving a decent period for reflection, it seems to me that it was a great sucess. Participants have been kind enough to use words like ‘successful’, ‘excellent’,'inspiring’, ‘stimulating’, ‘very fine’ and downright ‘great’.

As I said in my closing remarks, the conference was unusual in my experience in that (1) every speaker turned up, and spoke their intended topic, (2) every poster presenter turned up, with a poster, on the right day, and (3) every session chair ran their session to time. Doesn’t often happen like that.

Accounts of the conference have been given by a number of bloggers, including Charlie Mayor, Sheila Webber and the Information Literacy Research blog.

Over the next couple of months, we will be populating the conference website with copies of papers and posters, and links to published papers; the site will then remain available for the forseeable future.

The next, 8th, CoLIS conference is already being planned, to happen in Copenhagen in August 2013. A website is already operational, and announcements will be made on Twitter using the hashtag #colis2013.

Although I have never had very much to do with newspaper libraries, and other media information services, I still felt a little sad at the news of the demise of the Association of UK Media Librarians. For over 20 years this was the professional body for information specialists in this sector. Now, alas, the double whammy of declining sales of traditional printed news sources together with ubiquitous access to electronic sources by journalists and other media folk have resulted in the closure of so many of the sector’s libraries and information centres that the group is no longer viable. We can complain all we like about the decline of detailed accurate information in the media, the decline of fact-checking, and the growth of ‘churnalism’, as a story is uncritically repackaged and reiterated. It seems that the job role newspaper librarian, in particular, is going the same way as the letterpress printing trades; entirely displaced by new technologies, and surviving only as ‘heritage’ interest. Will there, I wonder, be forms in the future for the reminiscences of those who recall how libraries in this sector used to be, similar to the forums like Metal Type for printers and typesetters.

The only, and rather cynical, comfort I draw from AUKML’s end relates to the library/information courses we run at City University London. For many years we had an elective in ‘media information’, which was quite popular in its day. We ceased running this a while ago, and still get some criticism from applicants and students for doing so. We can now, at least, point to the crisis in this sector’s viability as a justification for out decision.

Not all is doom and gloom however. In a perceptive article in CILIP’s Library and Information Update, Annabel Colley points out that, while physical news and media libraries may have largely disappeared, the skills of the people involved are being used in different ways within the same organisations. Information specialists do not have to work in a department with ‘library’ or ‘information’ on the door; understanding of, and skills in, information management and organisation, and the good use of information technologies, have many outlets in news and media organisations. The same point has been made in an article in Searcher magazine for May 2010 by James Matrazzo and Toby Pearlstein, mainly from the USA. Their article, much more upbeat than the title suggests, gives many examples of the new ways in which library / information specialists are contributing.

Colley then widens her argument, to point out that this situation can be seen in many other sectors, where physical libraries may be outmoded, but information skills are certainly not. She urges CILIP (the main UK library / information professional body) to put emphasis on knowledge and skills rather than job titles, and to see ‘non-traditional’ information roles as central, rather than peripheral.

All of which is music to my ears, as this is exactly the perspective we take for our library / information courses at City University London. Trying to provide detailed practical training for specific professional roles, in a time of such change and uncertainty, is futile, and arguably positively harmful to our students. The best thing we can do is to provide the framework of understanding, knowledge and basic skills to enable our graduates to adapt to whatever environment they find themselves in.

How nice when other people say it for us.

Further reading

A Colley, Taking a skills-based approach to the future, Library and Information Update, June 2010, page 23

J Matarazzo and T Pearlsetein, Survival lessons for libraries: Staying afloat in turbulent waters – news / media libraries hit hard, Searcher, 2010, 18(4), available from http://www.infotoday.com/searcher/may10/Matarazzo_Pearlstein.shtml