2014 IFLA

Last week I went to IFLA for the satellite meeting on information ethics, and the offsite summit on library education. It was a great trip – particularly at the satellite meeting, I met researchers and practitioners from all over the world and had engaging discussions with them about ethical issues in libraries. My own presentation at the meeting was about the ethical dilemmas reference librarians encounter at work. Reference librarians are at the forefront of libraries’ public service. It is imperative for them to maintain the highest possible standards of diligence and ethical conduct under time restraints that often require compromise. In my teaching of reference and information services, ethics is a critical topic. However, I haven’t been able to find any good readings on this topic, so I decided to conduct a survey study to explore how reference librarians handle ethical dilemmas at work, write a paper about it, and then use it for my reference class. The findings were very illuminating – I shared them in a 20-min presentation, and then a 40-min discussion ensued among the audience. This format of presentation was quite unique – it’s more like a seminar, and the presentation is to set the tone for an in-depth discussion on the topic, which actually worked quite well for me and gave me a lot to think about. One of the researchers I met there suggested that everybody studying ethics should study philosophy first, and he himself is currently getting a master’s degree in philosophy – how amazing!

The summit on library education was organized by the IFLA Section on Education and Training. We had a good turnout, and I was one of the eight presenters in the Ignite session about the future of LIS education. It was a little stressful to do an Ignite presentation for the first time. In my five minutes, I told a futuristic story of how a 23-year old girl named Alice, interested in digital knowledge management in the farming industry, receives her education in LIS in 2050. It went actually pretty well – thanks to the power of storytelling! The summit gathered LIS educators from different countries. It’s eye-opening to hear them talk about what LIS education is like in the middle east, Africa, south America, east Asia and other regions. I also met two people from North Korea – they were both wearing pins of Kim Jong Il and Kim Jong Un. I tried to talk to them but they basically ignored me. I wonder how libraries work and how LIS education is provided in North Korea. Hmm…..

Well, as always, IFLA was a great conference to attend, despite sitting next to a 10-month old sick baby for 9 hours and getting vomited on twice on my way home. Oh well. The fall semester starts today, and I’d better get ready for the hecticness.

Doing an Ignite presentation

I will be going to IFLA in August and attending the summit organized by the Section on Education and Training (SET). The theme of the summit is “Library and information education and training: Confluence of past and present toward a strong future”, and at the summit a series of Ignite presentations will be given. I’m one of the presenters, and my Ignite presentation will focus on my vision of LIS education in 2015, which I talked about in one previous post.

Using the Ignite talk format, speakers present a topic using 20 slides that advance automatically every 15 seconds. According to Wikipedia, “Ignite is the name for a particular type of event that is held throughout the world—organized by volunteers—at which participants speak about their ideas and personal or professional passions according to a specific format. The event holds the motto, “Enlighten us, but make it quick!” Anyone can throw an Ignite event. The presentations are meant to “ignite” the audience on a subject, whereby awareness, thought, and action are generated on the subjects presented.” As I was preparing for my presentation, I found this Ignite talk about successfully giving an Ignite talk, which really helped an Ignite newbie like me better understand the process.

One of the things that make me feel a bit nervous about the Ignite format is the fact that the slides are auto-advanced. This means presenters will have to time the presentation really well in order not to go off the slide. This is different from all the other presentations I have done before, for which I have full control of the advancement of slides. Looks like for the Ignite presentation, I will need to create a script and practice it several times to create a seamless match between my talk and the slides.

Though a bit nervous, I do look forward to it. I think this could be an interesting format our PhD students may use to share their research with us during the residencies. If one can “ignite” the audience on the topic of his/her thesis research in a five-min talk, he/she is either a grand master of public speaking, or is truly onto something groundbreaking.

2013 IFLA

Last week I went to Singapore to attend an IFLA satellite meeting, titled “Global Collaboration among Information Professionals”, where I presented my paper about iSchool faculty’s interdisciplinary engagement in teaching and research. It was a great meeting hosted by Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. Thirteen papers were presented at the meeting, and I was particularly interested in the ones about a particular LIS school’s effort in collaboration:

1. Shigeo Sugimoto (dean of the LIS school in University of Tsukuba, Japan) gave a talk about CiSAP, which stands for the Consortium of iSchools in Asia-Pacific. CiSAP is like a regional iSchool caucus, except that their schools don’t necessarily meet the iSchool criteria. There is no membership fee, and any LIS school in the Asia-Pacific region can join if they have five or more full time equivalent academic staff members. CiSAP was formed in 2008, and they host an annual meeting every year.

2. Rae-Anne Montague from Illinois at Urbana-Champaign gave a talk about their schools’s recent efforts to advance international collaborations in teaching, research and service. She also highlighted the lessons learned in establishing and cultivating fruitful international collaborations.

3. Wooseob Jeong (interim dean at UW Milwaukee) gave a talk about their school’s international collaborations, such as the 1+1, 2+2 degree programs, summer internship programs, study abroad programs, and other active student recruitment efforts. He also talked about the challenges based on their experience with international collaboration.

4. Caroline Haythornthwaite (dean at British Columbia) gave a talk that outlined the aims and experiences at their school in joining the iSchool caucus.

5. Tom Denison from Monash University gave a talk about how they developed the masters of Information and Knolwedge Management degree at their school, and how it is informing further community engagement, collaboration, and innovation in curriculum development and delivery.

6. Gayner Erye from Aberystwyth University in UK gave a talk about the development of “Pathways to Information Leadership”, which is a professional development program to appeal to information managers in all sectors globally, by combining coverage of traditional library areas of expertise with courses covering subjects such as information governance, information strategy, risk management and information law and ethics. This program is completely online.

Among them, #4, #5 and #6 were most insightful – they gave me much to think about regarding the direction of the LIS field and the kind of education we should provide for future information professionals. As the number of jobs in the traditional library setting is decreasing, we need to seriously broaden our purview of what it means/takes to be an information professional in this day and age. I think we have to go through some sort of transformation to redefine the roles of LIS schools in preparing talents to meet the evolving needs of the society. Much is to be done, and it would be great if we could have more meetings like the IFLA satellite meeting in the future to exchange ideas and have a discussion about this important topic.