IS554: Public Library Management & Services 11 April, 2006 Bharat Mehra School of Information Sciences Meanings, Professional Identity, and the Future.

IS554: Public Library Management & Services 11 April, 2006 Bharat Mehra School of Information Sciences Meanings, Professional Identity, and the Future

Agenda Guest Speaker: KC Williams, Systems Director, Sevier County Public Library Meanings, Philosophy of Learning Readings: Professional Identity

IS 554 Final Project Introduction to Guest Speaker ONLINE Project Management Portfolio (comprised of lesson plans) Framework for Library Automation to Digitize Culture-Specific Materials in Small Library Settings URL: http://www.sis.utk.edu/~bmehra/IS554/PMPtemplate.html

IS 554 Final Project Introduction to Guest Speaker Framework for Library Automation to Digitize Culture-Specific Materials in Small Library Settings Library Governance Marketplace Dynamics/Advertising Personnel Management Finance Management Policy Development Collection Development Library Products/Customer Services Intellectual Property Rights and Copyright Technological Infrastructure Technical Services and Bibliographic Description Procedures User Involvement/Evaluation and Assessment TOPIC STATEMENT AMERICAN LIBRARY CASE-STUDY UNDERSTANDING THE COMMUNITY/CULTURE: QUESTIONS FOR THE READER

A Case Study Sevier County Public Library System 2003-2006

Sevier County Demographics Population of 75,000 Includes Cities of Gatlinburg, Pigeon Forge, Sevierville, and Town of Pittman Center 14,000 students enrolled in public school system Walters State Community College Branch Has no on site library No large industry, all small business Tourist based economy Growing Hispanic population Two city libraries (Pigeon Forge & Anna Porter in Gatlinburg are not part of the county library system)

System Scenario March 2003

System Facilities Four buildings total square footage approximately 16,000 square feet State per capita figures (excluding other libraries square footage) show main library should be a minimum of 33,000 square feet Main Library built in 1968 no renovations except carpeting which is a safety hazard 5888 sf Genealogy Annex is a leased space 2500 sf Seymour Branch is a leased space 3600 sf Kodak Branch is a 2 year old manufactured building 3600 sf

Budget and Funding System considered a charity by the county System pays its own bills System does not receive first disbursement from county until September of each year 2002-03 Annual Budget - $518,909 no money for purchasing collection materials (rely on donations and LSTA funds ~ $12,000 per year) $30,000 salary deficit for 2002-03 that has not been addressed as of March 2003 (New director has to request these funds from county and receive them by June 1 st or close the system for a month)

Staffing 16 Employees 4 work 32 hours 1 works 22 hours All others work 40 hours System is open 206 hours per week Branch employees work alone at least one day a week all day and several hours each day

Management Only MLIS staff is newly hired director All other staff are non-professional No job diversification all staff do the same job Director schedules staff, pays bills and does all materials purchasing, runs main library Front Desk Staff has no training on computer use or on libraries beyond shelving books One cataloger who is a semi-trained non-professional, but cataloging is being done in all branches with many errors Staff are not treated consistently (negative atmosphere, poor customer service, lots of back biting)

Building Expansion Seymour branch leases a 3600 sf building with a lease that runs out July 1, 2003 County allocated 250,000 to build a new branch Land was purchased for $60,000 Building has to be at least 3600 sf No architectural plans have been drawn as of March 2003 Library Board has been attempting to build a new main library for six years County Commission has given them $1,000,000 from a bond A location cannot seem to be agreed upon

Community Relationship Library Board of Trustees and County Commission are hostile towards each other due to past events Three separate friends groups with territorial issues Library System has a poor public image and limited use by patrons

What would you do if you were the new director of this system?

Needs Analysis more space more funding more staff and/or less hours diversified staff positions with individual job descriptions and management hierarchy staff training (skills and attitude) 501(c)3 foundation for building program fundraising Credibility with Commission and community

Meanings, Philosophy of Learning Meanings and Learning Philosophy of learning: How does learning take place? Inquiry mode of learning Theory and practice Reflective practitioner and action Experiential learning Situated learning Case-study analysis

Meanings and Learning How do make sense of our experiences in ways that is useful to us and others? Sense-Making theory suggests that individuals are constantly seeking to make sense of their world in order to achieve their life goals and that in so doing, they are led to engage in constant dialogic relationship with potential sense-making resources (Dervin, 1999). What does the term dialogic mean? Dialogic implies the enactment of a continual dialogue or ongoing engagement The actors in a dialogic relationship inform and are continuously informed by each other Mutual interaction between multiple objects Dialogic application to language Ideas contained and communicated through language are dynamic, relational, and engaged in a process of endless re-descriptions of the world

Philosophy of Learning: How Does Learning Take Place? Learning is a complex mechanism where individuals go through a dynamic process in learning about a particular subject or becoming informed (Dervin, 1983, 1999; Krikelas, 1983) Learning is based on context, realities, and situational dynamics (Schamber et al., 1990) Learning is dependent on personal meanings that people make in given contexts (Hollnagel and Woods, 1983; Dervin, 1982; Bates, 1989; Ingwersen, 1996) Learning is an active personal process that involves fitting information in with what one already knows and extending this knowledge to create new perspectives (Wilson, 1977) Cognitive processes involve the recognition of prior experience and education: such constructs that individuals carry in their brains owing to past experiences as knowledge structures (Ingwersen, 1992) and cognitive models that change according to new conceptualizations and experiences (Meadow, 1983)

Philosophy of Learning: How Does Learning Take Place? Learning involves the classic triad of thoughts, actions, and feelings central to any constructive process (Kuhlthau, 2004, p. 6) The basic epistemological assumptions underlying constructivist learning are (Gagnon and Collay, 2001): knowledge is constructed as an active process that learners are personally engaged in learners construct knowledge and make their own symbolic representations of action knowledge construction is a social process for learners who share meaning-making with others learners theoretically construct knowledge to explain things they dont fully understand Piagets developmental theory of child learning recognizes that people build cognitive models to understand and respond to the physical environment and their intelligence is shaped by prior experience and on-going interaction of internal mental structures with the outside world (1990)

Philosophy of Learning: How Does Learning Take Place? Deweys five phases of reflective thinking (suggestion, intellectualization, guiding idea (hypothesis), reasoning, and testing by action) (1933) argues that the whole person (in terms of their thoughts, feelings, and actions) is involved in the on-going process of learning Deweys view of the function of education in terms of allowing the individual to cope with change: A society which is mobilewith change occurring anywhere must see that its members are educated for personal initiative and adaptability. Otherwise they will be overwhelmed by the changes in which they are caught and whose significance of connections they do not perceive (p. 88) Kellys Personal Construct Theory extends Piaget and Deweys philosophical ideas to provide a psychological perspective to the process of learning in terms of five phases (1963): confusion and doubt, mounting confusion and possible threat, tentative hypothesis, testing and assessing, and reconstructing Bruners integrated perspective focuses on schema that Bruner defines as that integrated, organized representation of past behavior and experience which guides individuals in reconstructing previously encountered material which enables people to go beyond evidence, to fill in gaps, to extrapolate (1973, p. 5). Bruners interpretive task also incorporates feelings, thoughts, and actions and includes the following phases (Bruner, 1986): perception, selection, inference, prediction, and action.

Inquiry Mode of Learning Constructivism, problem-solving approach, project-based learning: Inquiry as a learner-centered process All learning begins with the learner. What people know and what they want to learn are not just constraints on what can be taught; they are the very foundation for learning Dewey's description of the four primary interests of the child are still appropriate starting points: the child's instinctive desire to find things out in conversation, the propensity children have to communicate in construction, their delight in making things in their gifts of artistic expression.

Inquiry Mode of Learning "For students, this method of learning ends the listen-to-learn paradigm of the classroom and gives them a real and authentic goal challenges to overcome. For the teacher, inquiry-based education ends their paradigm of talking to teach and recasts them in the role of a colleague and mentor engaged in the same quest as the other learners around." (http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Cyberia/DVE/FusionDVE/html/ inquiry_based_education.html)http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Cyberia/DVE/FusionDVE/html/ inquiry_based_education.html "Inquiry is an approach to learning that involves a process of exploring the natural or material world, that leads to asking questions and making discoveries in the search for new understandings." (http://www.exploratorium.edu/IFI/resources/inquirydesc.html) (http://www.exploratorium.edu/IFI/resources/inquirydesc.html Inquiry education is where structure meets fluidity, where we can create opportunities for students to be engaged in active learning based on their own questions.

Theory and Practice Pragmatism is a philosophical tradition which questions the traditional separations of theory and practice. Rather than asking what is true, it asks what is productive for further inquiry and to help the individual in new situations (Dewey, 1938) You cannot replicate theory in practice and practice in theory; what you can do is build connections between the two to understand experiences better and to make them better Reflective practice is a way of understanding what Schon (1987) calls knowing-in-action (how theories are developed), reflecting-in-action (the on-going dialogue between reflection and practice in our lives), and professional practice (how professional-client relationships are developed)

Experiential Learning Experiential education (or "learning by doing") is the process of actively engaging students in an authentic experience that will have benefits and consequences.experience Students make discoveries and experiment with knowledge themselves instead of hearing or reading about the experiences of others Students also reflect on their experiences, thus developing new skills, new attitudes, and new theories or ways of thinking (Kraft & Sakofs, 1988)skillsattitudestheoriesthinking

Situated Learning Situated learning is education that takes place in a setting functionally identical to that where the learning will be applied (Lave & Wenger, 1991: "just in time learningeducation Lave & Wenger place the acquisition of knowledge in the context of social relationships in a Community of Practice. It is not so much that learners acquire structures or models to understand the world, but that they participate in frameworks that have a social structureCommunity of Practice

Situated Learning An approach to learning of technology use that assumes the technology is not set a priori, but comes into being through use. Situated learning is a "new framework for understanding innovation and change. This framework has several key ingredients: It emphasizes contrastive analysis and seeks to explore differences in use. It assumes that the object of study is neither the innovation alone nor its effects, but rather, the realization of the innovation--the innovation-in-use. Finally, it produces hypotheses supported by detailed analyses of actual practices. These hypotheses make possible informed plans for use and change of innovations" (Bruce & Rubin, 1993, p. 215).

Case-Study Analysis (http://college.hmco.com/business/resources/casestudies/students/overview.htm) A case study presents a detailed account of one particular setting and describes how it is and analyzes why it is the way that it is First, cases provide experiences of learning that people probably have not had the opportunity to experience firsthand. In a relatively short period of time, cases provide the chance to appreciate and analyze the problems faced in many different situations and to understand how people tried to respond in those situations Cases illustrate what you have learned. The meaning and implication of this information are made clearer when they are applied to case studies. The theory and concepts help reveal what is going on in the situations studied and allow students to evaluate the solutions that specify how they situations adopted to deal with their problems Consequently, when you analyze cases, you will be like a detective who, with a set of conceptual tools, probes what happened and what or who was responsible and then marshals the evidence that provides the solution. Cases provide the thrill of testing problem-solving abilities in the real world. It is important to remember, after all, that no one knows what the right answer is. All that we can do is to make the best guess.

Case-Study Analysis Management is an uncertain game, and using cases to see how theory can be put into practice is one way of improving your skills of diagnostic investigation Case studies provide you with the opportunity to participate in class and to gain experience in presenting your ideas to others Instructors also may assign an individual, but more commonly a group, to analyze the case before the whole class. The individual or group probably will be responsible for a thirty- to forty-minute presentation of the case to the class. If you work in groups to analyze case studies, you also will learn about the group process involved in working as a team. When people work in groups, it is often difficult to schedule time and allocate responsibility for the case analysis.

From Case-Study to Telling Your Own Story Your own story can have value as a case-study for someone else Document in detail what you do that gives value and provides recognition of your own experiences Communicating, reflecting and making sense in the process Do a SWOT analysis for your own experiences in specific situations and analyze/prioritize what was achieved and why Do your own profile For example, the police officer who was also a librarian: he learnt and shared the need to be proactive, achieve small victories, provide clear organizing scheme, need to be creative, patient and persistent Relationship between the specifics and the general Still have to retain confidentiality and removing personally identifying information if need be Think on your feet Identify one thing from your experiences at SIS that will be helpful in a PL setting. Be specific

OPL Readings pp. 1-9; 127-154 Issues and Perspectives 21 new Nordic research papers on PL issues from a seminar held at the Royal School of LIS in Copenhagen on 10-11 December, 2001 LIS education, research, and practice (AL, PL, LIS Schools) long-standing tradition of cooperation: Do you perceive the same in the United States? What are issues that are the same and/or different in terms of planning and management? In terms of the three themes? Cooperation implies: Joint meetings and conferences Meetings for heads and managers of libraries to develop joint research and development projects Funds for research available through national library bodies and governmental agencies as well as internal academic and public library institutions Student research and practicum Institutionalization of LIS research Some topics: IR, info. Seeking, IS paradigms, informetrics, knowledge organization, domain analysis, intellectual substance of LIS PL research in soft fields: social and cultural contexts, collection development, media and information resources

Content and Contextual Determinants 12 articles by Danish authors, 3 Norwegian contributors, 2 Swedish authors, 1 Finnish scholar Determine areas and topics that have received high and no attention; which areas of attention are changing Topics of Interest Digital public libraries: Internet issues, virtual reference, digital community information services, Closer links between traditional library functions and learning resources and processes PL Management: Change, leadership styles, development of leadership tools enabling PLs to represent value and outcomes in socioeconomic terms Challenges related to multicultural PL issues: Integrate ethnic minorities in PL contexts PL history (tradition) and change: Innovative theoretical approaches PL Identity: theory-practice interface

Methodological Perspectives Classic positivist perspective is losing ground; research designs seem to be more rigorous and reflect greater maturity and sophistication Greater interest in mainstream (universal) theoretical perspectives adapted from social science and humanities contexts Hermeneutic approaches, social constructivist perspectives, discourse analysis (Foucault and Bourdieus sociological theory of culture, Wengers learning theory) Increased focus on qualitative studies and interpretative approaches Interdisciplinary analytical perspectives and theoretical constructs (anthropology, art history, cultural studies, philosophy, history and sociology, economics) Challenge information paradigm: Significance, role, and meaning of PL in everyday life

Missing Gaps Dearth of macro-level studies of PL development and cross- country studies of PLs Few scenarios and projects that examine the role, identity, and tasks of PL in the knowledge society, dream society, postmodernist society (contemporary context) Lack of projects exploring library finance themes and issues in information economics and PLs role in life-long learning Challenges for PLs and development of ICTs: access, maintenance of freedom of information in the face of dominating telecom monopolies, media conglomerates and data transmission companies, re-signing of Patriot Act like laws PL practitioners viewpoint: Theory vs. practice debate

Research concerns of PL community members and LIS faculty are the same: Do you agree? Role and function of Danish PL county libraries of concern in the face of establishing regional resource centers: Is the debate relevant in the United States? Development of national digital infrastructures for libraries (web-based access to national union catalogs) issues of concern Marked collective focus on products and services, new systems and facilities. Does this leave less room for the user in PL environment? How does the library staff respond to various new challenges and changes? Blurred demarcation line between professionals and semi professionals, PL librarians and professionals from other disciplines Is there a joint Nordic understanding in the PL field? Does Nordic PL have a distinct profile of identity? Can you relate this statement about PLs in the United States? Are there any threads of common grounds in the context of US PLs?

Future Directions of PL Research Meetings between LIS educators, PL practitioners, and researchers PLs as consumers of research produced in LIS academic settings Research spread amongst the academic community and the PL community gets left out Tap into media communication via oral media, publication outlets (journals, professional magazines, newsletters, books, reports, web presentations and mailing lists) Center to bridge gap between LIS research and practice, Series of lectures Positive climate for research in Nordic LIS academy on PLs, Negative aspects is that Nordic PLs are fragmented and parochial in dissemination of results in other countries. Is this applicable to PLs in the United States?

The Public Library as a Social Field (NF: Jochumen & Rasmussen, pp. 285-306) The modern PL represents a great variety of services, but yet the local library looks very much the same as it always has, just as for most people the PL is associated first and foremost with borrowing books

The Public Library as a Social Field (NF: Jochumen & Rasmussen, pp. 285-306) PLs as a social field (Bourdieu): microcosms with particular codes of practice, values and interests PLs built on ideas about democracy, public enlightenment, cultural welfare development, and social emancipation PLs are political instruments to further various political goals within cultural, educational and information policy

The Public Library as a Social Field (NF: Jochumen & Rasmussen, pp. 285-306) Public perceptions of PLs cultural institutions (like museums and cultural centers) places of information and knowledge (like public schools and booksellers) public offices (like technical admin.) social meeting places (like village halls, clubs) Essence as a physical place

The Public Library as a Social Field (NF: Jochumen & Rasmussen, pp. 285-306) PL as a field create a doxa (fields ideological foundation accepted by central players) case logic: specific way of relating to the activities within common educations common work ethic: aversion to political interference

The Public Library as a Social Field (NF: Jochumen & Rasmussen, pp. 285-306) From library spinster to knowledge specialist Decentralization Politicians demand of PLs as image- creating cultural policy while public considers PLs as nonexclusive cultural institutions which have something to offer to every section of society PLs have low level of autonomy owing to low volume of capital where the structure for apportioning financial means has brought PLs into increased competition with other local institutions:

The Heritage of Public Librarianship (NF: Buckland, pp. 329-335) PL is seen as fragmented and in need of a more coherent sense of context and a more unified understanding What kind of work do we do? Heritage (present effect today of the past) to address Ideas, Complex Problems How are we do to our work? Organization of information Information in society and information policy Technology Management Looking forward: Why does it matter? It matters what people know

IS554: Public Library Management & Services 11 April, 2006 Bharat Mehra School of Information Sciences Meanings, Professional Identity, and the Future.

Documents

county library system

library automation

county system

site library

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hours system

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square feet main library