The Search Principle blog

Since my post earlier about Ubuntu, I’ve had a few questions about what it is. Ubuntu is often translated as “I am because you are” or, “I am a person because of you”, and is a concept uniquely African in origin. I am using the word to refer to both the Ubuntu project, and the philosophy.

Further, how does Ubuntu affect us as librarians? Ubuntu suggests that our individual contributions at work are only meaningful because of other people. In education, this translates into open source software that is both empowering and people-centred, shorn of proprietary restrictions. It could be argued that the notion of Ubuntu software, which is created by many for no reward or remuneration, finds a natural home in meeting the needs of local libraries and communities – a product arising from unique circumstances.

Ubuntu (the software), in fact, is influenced by the unique digital context in which it is developed. This suggests both the project and he eventual ‘product’ are related to larger social concepts, even social movements. Educational scholar Shirley Walters (2005) suggests that social movements are heavily influenced by context and are a by-product of time and place. This is also true of Ubuntu. In order to “…understand the workings of particular social movements, you therefore have to locate them quite particularly” (Walters, 2005:55).

Ubuntu software can easily be uploaded over the web by anyone, anywhere. It is a form of digital humanity. It reflects a global community as well as the specific communities that use it. It incorporates ideas in an electronic realm, but transcends that by getting workers together to meet face to face occasionally to work out problems. I know of librarians who have been asked to participate in the development of Ubuntu far outside their local libraries. This larger sense of community and shared humanity is what uniquely defines Ubuntu.

The Ubuntu project is funded by South Africa’s Shuttleworth Foundation to “[unlock] the creative and intellectual potential in people” (Shuttleworth, 2007). Mark Shuttleworth, founder and project champion, is an entrepreneur who works with teachers to improve the quality and reach of education in South Africa: “we strive to improve the capacity of local groups to use information and computer technologies (ICT)” (Shuttleworth, 2007: 1). Shuttleworth believes that technology is a powerful instrument of learning and democratization.

His Foundation promotes the ideals of “open source, open standards and open information access”. The goal is to develop computer operating systems to help teachers provide access to computer resources in underprivileged areas. Ubuntu helps educators with limited technical knowledge to design computer labs and online environments for learners and aims to centralize the management of computers for collaborative learning in classrooms.

The depth of ‘ubuntu’ resides in African philosophy and the shared beliefs of African culture. The notion of neoliberalism (and the idea that every person is for him or herself) is contrary to Ubuntu. Its complementary worldview is expressed through giving and altruism, and by promoting a shared sense of social responsibility in an era of competition and globalization.

I am posting in its entirety an e-mail sent by a colleague who takes up my “tenure” quote from the University Affairs article on the New Librarians. Enjoy, Dean

************************

“From my first days on the job as an academic librarian a dozen years ago, I’ve heard the word “collegial” expressed routinely in tones of high respect. If you’re collegial, you’ve got it made. It’s an important word in academia, especially for librarians in tenure track positions.

I’ve been on a sabbatical in 2007, and incredibly productive. I have spoken at conferences, written papers and helped my students pursue their work and scholarly activities. I also picked up blogging again, and added Open Medicine blog in April. I’ve also enjoyed the experience of studying in depth educational theories and writing academic papers again.

But, throughout my year away, I have been chagrined to learn that the kind of caring, people-centred leadership that we had at UBC (and, by extension, libraries) is not as important as it once was when I started at the University. This is sad. It’s also bizarre. At the moment, the emphasis is on “fiduciary responsibility”. This is code for cutting budgets – and moving into the digital era with all that that entails – even though print materials will continue to be the lynchpin of academic libraries for many years to come.

Time to resist, my librarian friends. The digital era has now introduced the notion that closing physical libraries is fiduciary responsibility. What about our intellectual and stewardship responsibilities? How will universities meet those, I ask you, when libraries are slated to close?

“A person with ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good, for he or she has a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished…”
– “No Future Without Forgiveness”, Archbishop Desmond Tutu (2000)

Read more about Ubuntu here. Is your organization caring and people-centred? Dean

Readers, have you noticed lately that very recent blog posts are starting to appear at the top of Google search results? What the heck are they doing with the Google search algorithms? The problem with this is that blog content is moving up near news content as authoritative, current information – I’m not sure that this is a good development.

The whole Web 2.0 phenomenon is a conundrum to many librarians, and has begun to be for me too. This has come after a lot of critical reflection during my sabbatical. In some of their recent posts, Michelle Kraft and David Rothman have pointed out that there are very few hospital librarians who blog or care to blog. Do you know very many top names in medical librarianship (with the exception of T. Scott) that blog? Furthermore, with the exception of Mark Rabnett in Winnipeg, I know of very few new hospital librarian bloggers. We’ve had maybe a handful of new medical librarian bloggers in the last calendar year.

Blogging is more popular than ever, but the practice of blogging is not very well-described in the literature. Has there been a single authoritative article published in our field on this topic?

It could be that many librarian bloggers are tired of blogging – and blogged right out. Some have abandoned the practice of daily blogging almost completely. Perhaps it didn’t make sense to them to engage in all the chit-chat, or perhaps they didn’t get the point or the hang of it in the first place. Other bloggers are not engaged enough in critical reflection of their blogging (and this includes some of my former students, btw). Blogging loses its purity and purpose when we focus on remix and pointing readers to existing content elsewhere; for heaven’s sake, make some observations of the content you point to! (Allan is an exception.)

Another symptom of blog malaise is that most librarian blog posts these days don’t have descriptive titles. Why is that? Don’t librarian bloggers get the fact that the words they use in the titles of posts are linked to search/ find-ability? While I’m at it, I want to crab a bit about the fact that too many bloggers blog about the same topics all the time.

Same old, same old. Think outside the box for a change.

Blogging should be an extension of our critical-reflective practices. For an overview of this topic, see this systematic review recently published by the HILJ:

Maria Grant. “The role of reflection in the library and information sector: a systematic review”. Health Information & Libraries Journal 24(3):155-66, 2007 Sep.

It has been one year since the launch of the Citizendium (http://www.citizendium.org/), a wiki or online reference source that aims to create “the world’s most trusted knowledge base.” The innovative non-profit project combines free-wheeling, open wiki collaboration with real names and guidance by expert editors.

Since October 2006, more than 2,100 people have joined as authors and editors and 3,300 articles are under development. The project has tripled its article count since its public launch last March. Also, the rate at which it creates new articles has tripled in the last ten months and doubled in the last one hundred days.

“We’ve grown nicely, and are now clearly accelerating,” said the project’s founder and Editor-in-Chief, Dr. Larry Sanger, who is also co-founder of Wikipedia. In a progress report (http://www.citizendium.org/oneyearandthriving.html), Sanger used the occasion to “debunk myths” about the project, discuss significant progress and announce several new initiatives for the expert-guided online project.

He also makes some bold predictions. Read the press release here:

http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/CZ:Citizendium_Press_Releases/Oct302007

Here it is, in ten minutes, a gem of a mini-lecture by the virtual reality expert, Dr. Randy Pausch. Essential viewing. Tell your friends. And your loved ones. – Dean

A science librarian I know ends all of his e-mails with something that makes me chuckle every time I see it:

“No….I am not on Facebook“.

Cynicism aside, the truth is that Facebook is an important outreach space for academic librarians who want to communicate with users on their terms, to engage them in chat and be social with them. Facebook is “the” platform at the moment for creative reference librarians.

Facebook’s 1.6% sale for $250 million dollars is a win-win for twenty-something CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who decided last year to pass on Yahoo’s one billion dollar Facebook bid. This means Facebook is valued at about $15 billion dollars, wow. Zuckerberg – now armed with so much cash – can put his ideas for Facebook expansion into action and prepare for an initial public offering sometime in 2009.

While 23 year old Zuckerberg says he won’t go public for at least two years, Facebook will be an advertising mecca in the interim by increasing its audience of nearly 50 million active users who connect daily to friends through microblogging, photo-sharing and other social activities.

Microsoft’s acquisition of such a small part of Facebook is a symbolic win over rival Google. After all, Google has outpaced the operating system giant throughout 2007, in profits and mindshare of web searchers. Microsoft’s social networking site, Live Spaces, has attracted about nine million users, and its Academic Live Search tool (now embedded in the name of this blog) is all but forgotten in academic circles.

Microsoft knew it needed this win. From here, watch for more convergence of social software and search tools in sites like Facebook and MySpace.

The question is: will libraries follow suit?

On October 22nd, several hundred medical journals worldwide [see Open medicine story] will simultaneously publish articles about global health.

As a way to humanize global health issues, Dr. Victor Castilla who authors Web 2.0 and medicine, writes below for UBC Google scholar blog about his observations of children in his hometown, and his work in family medicine.

“I grew up in Grocio Prado, a small, poor, rural town in Peru. A place where children can play and walk on streets late at night, but where they have no shoes, and where sanitation is poor. Open canals carry contaminated water to the harvest fields and children can swim in those canals with no awareness that the water will make them sick.

This patient wanted to follow an ADA diet, but she could not, because the food that she ate every day was given from charity. Something that she could not select or refuse because it was the only thing she has to survive. This experience showed me how essential prevention is and how important it is to have good communication with our patients to avoid big problems in the future. I realized that care of patients extends beyond the office door.”

Being in the moment…. Sometimes, that’s what blogging is about.

For the past ten months, I’ve been more in the moment with blogging as time out of my day has been spent responding to things, changes in search environments and my own insights into learning. Biblio-blogging (blogging by librarians) can sometimes be about specific things in our work, such as information dissemination, outreach and learning but it can also be about finding a place for reflection, and taking a minute to step back from it all. I’ve come to really appreciate the luxury.

Search – and how it affects medicine, physicians and their decision-making – is a fascinating area to think and blog about; I’ll likely never tire of it. I am already working on my next concept piece for the British Medical Journal about changes in the information landscape of 2007. Its publication will mark a return to my work as a hospital librarian, and medical librarian, something that I value more now.

Will I continue to blog about teaching and learning? About educational technologies? Adult learning theories as they apply to my work in information literacy? Yes, but with renewed vigour and interest in my work with physicians and health workers at Vancouver Hospital. I’ll return there in early January 2008.

In the interim, notice that I’ll be blogging too at Open Medicine about other medical topics. Visit me there sometime, if you have a moment.

My sabbatical year has not been exclusively about scholarly activities. It’s also been about exploring new ideas, career directions and areas of expertise. I have learned a lot by re-examining my work, and my positionality at the UBC Library, and academia. However, I think I’m heading back to the hospital, and my work as a biomedical librarian. Here’s why:

Ten (10) Reasons Why I’m Returning to Hospital Librarianship
1. I enjoy physicians, nurses and pharmacists (and other hospital staff)

2. Patients and clinical care (because it matters)

3. The UBC Biomedical Branch Staff – Carol, Darko, Kim, Yuko (and a team of SLAIS students)

4. Medical information from circulation, reference services and document delivery (because they make a huge difference to patient care and medical research)

5. Vancouver hospital’s new Diamond Centre (because we earned it, after years in the dungeon in Heather Pavilion)

6. Medical students (who are really great, smart and our future carers)

7. Health librarians (because we, as a group of professionals, band/stick together)

8. Open Medicine journal (which I am really enjoying, and want to continue)

9. Hospital library spaces (always busy, fun, evolving)

10. Finally, because I’ve earned it.

Enough said. See you soon, Dean