Search results

This chapter presents a case study research over three years into the operation of a distance education program using Web 2.0 tools to create an online collaborative project environment for trainee teacher librarians. Charles Sturt University in inland Australia specialises in distance education. The entire School of Information Studies operates on this basis. To achieve high standards and truly global learning, use is currently being made of Web 2.0 technologies — particularly wikis and blogs as part of this program. One particular subject requires collaborative construction of a Blog or PowerPoint via wiki negotiation by teams of geographically separated students worldwide. This is a very practical exercise in distance communication and collaboration and one that is very relevant to students in the course, most of whom will become the only staff of widely separated library establishments. One intention in using technology to build ‘communities’ and encourage collaboration across traditional boundaries is to grow confidence among future teacher librarians in the use and power of technology as a means of developing their own learning communities — to better prepare them for the workplace. Built on a student portal developed over many years, the new technology is currently used by several hundred students from many different nations and cultures who meet as small workgroups on their wikis in order to negotiate and construct a team project. Based on this three-year case study, it does appear that collaborative projects can be moderately successful over distance, and that they can play a useful part in the pre-training of educational practitioners — teacher librarians in this case. There is strong evidence that this process works very well in terms of encouraging positive attitudes towards distance collaboration and interactive web technologies. It also appears to encourage a feeling of ‘global’ community reaching beyond traditional library boundaries.

Modern information provision is making increasingly unique demands on existing providers. At Lilydale Adventist Academy, a small and conservative secondary college near Melbourne, we have had to confront a limited budget, greatly increased demand and even greater expectation with a system that offers flexibility and the greatest degree of automation. The system is a fully integrated one accessing all forms of current and expected media with a minimum of teacher‐librarian intervention. Student workstations have access to all materials and to all available programs at the same workstations. Cost effective set‐ups allow reasonable control and some degree of cost recovery as regards consumables. Throughout this exercise students have been actively encouraged to provide input both as regards their needs as well as actually performing some of the establishment work. The whole exercise has been a serious effort to establish a system which reflects expressed needs as well as implementing some degree of future capacity. In its attempt to meet such a wide variety of needs it is not unlike that mythical beast slain by Ulysses. His Hydra with its many heads is very much like the technology installed at Lilydale to cater for the many needs.

In recent times there have been occasions when information providers have voiced concerns regarding their permanency. Modem technology appears to be threatening their existence. ‘Why employ an expensive information professional when I can simply connect my employees directly to the Internet and they can get the facts for themselves?’ And there are places where this is happening. However, I would suggest, on the basis of some considerable research, that this development is limited and likely to be of short duration. As soon as the first time and motion studies are carried out on this situation, it will be realised that it is very wasteful to allow specialists in a particular field to search for data they need via the Internet, when Internet specialists could do it faster and more reliably. By its very nature the Internet is vast, somewhat confusing to the less experienced and often very, very distracting.

‘It [a Sinclair ZX81] was about as small as a computer could be without being a pocket calculator. But, if you bought enough wobbly additional bits, including a tiny little printer which printed on rolls of aluminiumised paper, and you plugged it into the TV, and you worked very slowly, and prayed a lot, and copied everything out on a real typewriter afterwards, you could word‐process. If you didn't mind working only in capital letters …

Preedip Balaji B holds a masters degree in library and information science from Bishop Heber College, Bharathidasan University, Trichy in 2007. He worked as information professional in different positions at Indian School of Business and IKP Knowledge Park, Hyderabad in Andhra Pradesh, South India. Having received his Junior Research Fellow award in 2009 from the University Grants Commission, New Delhi, currently, he is pursuing doctoral studies at Documentation Research and Training Centre, Indian Statistical Institute, Bangalore. His research interests are in natural language processing, faceted analysis and classification. He has to his credit 10 national and international publications, published in journals, workshop manual and conference proceedings.