Continuity, Culture, Competition – the Future of Library and Information Studies Education? Proceedings of the 4th British Nordic Conference on Library and Information Studies, 21‐23 March 2001, Dublin, Ireland

Citation

Bakewell, K.G.B. (2003), "Continuity, Culture, Competition – the Future of Library and Information Studies Education? Proceedings of the 4th British Nordic Conference on Library and Information Studies, 21‐23 March 2001, Dublin, Ireland", New Library World, Vol. 104 No. 1/2, pp. 69-71. https://doi.org/10.1108/03074800310458322

Approximately 80 teachers, researchers, students and practitioners participated in this conference, which was concerned with education and research for heritage information management; networks‐partnerships‐consortia‐mergers; learning and empowerment; taxonomies and typologies; and the economics of information. The 28 contributions are presented under the following headings: “Library and Information Studies: Curriculum Issues” (three parts); “Library and information studies curriculum in the wider context”; “Library and Information Studies Curriculum Delivery –Beyond 2000”; “Networks‐Partnerships – Consortia‐Mergers” (two parts); “Education and Research in Heritage Information Management”; and “The Economics of Information, 2000‐2002”. The papers are preceded by Peter Enser’s keynote address, in which he considers the three keywords in the title, together with co‐operation and convergence, and followed by Mary A. Burke’s critical review of the conference.

Change and the impact of technology are, of course, major themes of the papers. Tom Wilson presents a model for the curriculum, based on four “foundation fields”: information content, information systems, people, organisations. He argues this model can help to cope with change and, perhaps, to consider logical associations that do not yet exist but may influence developments in years to come.

In “Information and library studies on a virtual campus”, Rita Marcella and Graeme Baxter provide a critical overview of an online distance learning course offered by the School of Information and Media, at Aberdeen’s Robert Gordon University, while Hugh Preston and Monica Allmand, in “Discovering the information professional: organisational culture in a digital world”, consider the impact of technological change on the use of information sources by managers at the International Service for National Agricultural Research, in The Hague, The Netherlands.

With Stephanie McIvor, Linda Ashcroft continues her substantial research into the development of electronic journals. They conclude that the whole process of electronic journal management requires effective management of change, but that academic libraries should not market electronic journals (or electronic resources) specifically. Rather, they should be integrated into an overall marketing strategy.

Crystal Fulton reviews the trend towards teleworking, working regularly from home using telecommunications technology, based on the experiences of 20 teleworkers and 20 “at‐office” information workers. She discusses the role which library and information professionals can play in teleworkers’ interaction with information. Changing work patterns and opportunities are also the theme of “New information management opportunities in a changing world”, by Charlotte Breen, Ailish Farragher, Mairead McQuaid, Michelle Callanan and Mary A. Burke. They consider that the stereotypical view of “the librarian is impeding the entry of LIS graduates into the knowledge management sector and that graduates with LIS skills need to market themselves more effectively in the IT workplace”. I am surprised that this still needs to be said, as it was certainly happening at Liverpool before I retired ten years ago.

A number of contributions are concerned with the information society. Alistair S. Duff calls for more attention to studies of the information society in LIS degree programmes with information professionals taking a greater role in the debate covering such matters as racial prejudice, rampant commercialism, social inequality, poverty, human rights violations, intellectual property rights, access to information goods and services and media regulation. I was surprised not to find the names of Bob Usherwood and my former colleague, Ray Astbury, in the list of key authors named by respondents to the survey of LIS schools in the UK and Ireland or in the references. Barbara Hull stresses the importance of librarians understanding social groups and needs. Echoing Maurice Line, she points to the need for friendliness and approachability of library staff in the struggle to overcome social barriers to libraries.

The value placed on libraries by some young people is seen in Maj Klasson’s account of reactions to a fire started deliberately by a pyromaniac, which destroyed buildings and 150,000 books at Linkoping Library, Sweden, in 1996. The young people realised the importance of libraries as tools of culture and democracy and saw the loss as the death of a living person.

There is an important contribution by Justin Arundale, whose untimely death was recently report in the Journal of the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP). He discusses the importance of teaching such legal matters as contracts, copyright, freedom of information, human rights and aspects of computer use within the LIS curriculum.

The desirability of co‐operation between different groups of professionals is brought out by Elena Maceviciute, in her account of information management in Baltic, Nordic and British LIS schools; while Maija‐Leena Huotari and Marjo Rita Valtonen review the convergence of libraries, archives and museums in Finland, due partly to the opportunities provided by digital technology. Graham Matthews and Stella Thebridge discuss training requirements for archivists, librarians and museums staff involved in preserving the national heritage. While accepting that each domain in the cultural heritage is distinct and will naturally wish to retain its autonomy and independence, they also urge the need for considering further cooperation and collaboration.

Catherine Hare and Julie McLeod describe successful cooperation between the six universities of the north‐east of England in developing a lifelong learning project. An evaluation of the Advanced Diploma in Lifelong Learning (Records Management course by eight BBC staff graduates and their colleagues, was overwhelmingly positive. Leif Kajberg discusses formal and informal links between LIS schools in Europe via such schemes as the European Union’s SOCRATES programme and the Scandinavian NORDPLUS scheme. He suggests that more needs to be done if the proposals of the Joint Declaration of the European Ministers of Education the Bologna Declaration of 1999) are to be met. “Fiery souls are wanted”, he concludes.

I was particularly pleased to read “Adding value to learning through cultural change: the Northumbrian experience”, by Margaret Watson and Linda Banwell, because, like me, they believe that research should be interpreted as being part of practice and that all LIS academic staff should be involved in research. In their final paragraph they state that the successful relationship between teaching, research and practice has enabled staff and students to feel excited by, and prepared for, the challenges that the twenty‐first century has in store for the information professional.

In contrast, some of the research described is too limited to be of real practical value. Michael Middleton’s survey of skills expectations of graduates from library courses at Queensland Institute of Technology, Brisbane, Australia, identifies 189 skills grouped into nine categories, but there were only 113 responses from 750 graduates. Damien McManus and Brendan Loughridge describe a very small pilot interview‐based survey aimed at discovering reasons for the poor impact made by knowledge management on university libraries in the UK. There were only seven respondents – five in universities plus an information strategies co‐ordinator at a major public funding body in higher education and the head of information services at a multinational law firm.

Other research presented too early includes Birgitta Olander’s survey of the Swedish workforce’s potential for success, the results of which have not yet been analysed; Olof Sundin’s initial findings on professional nurses’ information seeking and use, with only two of the quoted interviewees mentioning the Internet or Medline; and the preliminary findings of a research project aimed at identifying the information assets of organisations and their impact on organisational effectiveness, by Charles Oppenheim, Joan Stenson and Richard M.S. Wilson, which contains nothing very new. We all know that information is wide‐ranging, long lasting, can be shared and that information flows within an organisation can have a significant impact on communication channels.

Mary A. Burke’s conference review concludes with three recommendations for future British‐Nordic conferences: they should be expanded to full European level, perhaps through the auspices of EUCLID; their scope should be broadened to include more research papers in order to portray the state‐of‐the‐art of LIS research in Europe and to encourage discussion on research methodology; and they should cater for different levels within LIS education – PhD students, young academics and policy makers.

As with all conference papers, there is a variation in quality here, but there is a great deal of useful material which can have a considerable influence on library and information studies education in the twenty‐first century. What a pity there is no index to enable it to be retrieved more easily!