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Seminar dan Pelatihan Kemelekaan Informasi:Keberlangsungannya dari Sekolah ke Perguruan Tinggi

Universitas Pelita Harapan10-12 Desember 2007

The Academic Libraryin the 21st Century

Dr. Diljit SinghUniversity of Malaya

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

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Outline of Presentation

• The information era

• The university – yesterday, today, and tomorrow

• The academic library in the 21st century

• The academic librarian in the 21st century information era

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The Information Era

• A shift from

Agricultural Industrial Informational

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The Information Era

• Information in various forms

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The Information Era

• Information comes in many forms

PaperBooks

Newspapers

Magazines

Journals

Office document

ctc.

FilmPhotographs

TV productions

X-rays

etc

OpticalCDs

DVDs

MagneticHard disks

Servers

ElectronicE-mails

SMS

Web sites

Blogs

etc.

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The Information Era

We live in an

Information Era

A period where information is very important in our lives,

and recorded information is easily accessible

through computers and networks and through recorded information

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The Information Era

• Work involves information

• Information involved in the process and the product– Acquisition– Organization– Utilization

• Productivity and competitiveness depends on how well they can access, generate, process, and apply information efficiently

• ICT has a major influence

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The Information Era

• Affects many types of work• Farming (in the past):

– plant harvest sell

• Farming (today): – what is the best type of seed to plant? when to use

fertilizer? when to harvest? what is the weather forecast? what is the current world market price?...???

• Standard jobs – Doctor, lawyer, accountant, engineer, teacher, …

• Non-standard jobs– Technology-based, self-employed, work at home, part-

time, outsourced

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The UniversityYesterday, Today, and Tomorrow

• Information era has implications on learningYesterday Today Tomorrow(Agricultural) (Industrial) (Informational)

Tied to family and community

Separate from families, placed in factory type environment

Learn anywhere, anytime, any method

Skills determined by surrounding world needs

Experts create knowledge Dynamic knowledge – individualized meaning based on multiple sources of information

Skills delivered by the experienced

Teachers deliver knowledge Educators facilitate information processing

Assessment by supervised practice

Assessment unrelated to real world performance

Assessment based on ability to apply information to real world

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The UniversityYesterday, Today, and Tomorrow

• Many changes in education, from school to university

• The ‘business’ of a university is information – Creation (through research)– Organization (through library, teaching-learning, …)– Dissemination (through teaching, publications, etc.)

• Changes in ‘what’ is done at a university, and ‘how’ it is done

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The UniversityYesterday, Today, and Tomorrow

• Changes in universities– from teaching to research– from general to specialized graduates– from initial higher education to continuing education providers– from traditional lecturing to new ways of learning, delivery,

assessment, funding, …

• The need for adaptation to the information age

• Adapting– Policies and procedure– Infrastructure– Human resources– Curriculum– Resources, including library

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The Academic Library in the 21st Century

• An academic library is part of a college or university, and supports the teaching-learning and research needs of its staff and students

• The role of the academic library has not changed

• What changed is how it plays the role– from print to electronic– from collection to access– from routine tasks to innovation– from stand-alone to collaboration– from “you come to the library” to “the library comes to you”

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The Academic Library in the 21st Century

Yesterday Today Tomorrow ??

Types of materials

Print publications e-books, e-journals, online databases

Information in multimedia format

Location of materials

Resources in the library

Resources in and outside the library

Resources anywhere in the world

Acquisition Resources purchased

Resources purchased, donated, exchanged

Commercial, personal, and open access

Organization Resources cataloged and indexed

Metadata, controlled vocabulary

Social classification, folksonomy

Instruction Library orientation User instruction, information literacy

Personalized knowledge management program

Librarian ‘Stand alone’ Team member Equal partner in learning

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The Academic Library in the 21st Century

• The library of the 21st century will be: – An integrated information system– With information

• available in many formats – print, electronic, graphic, audio, video, etc.

• available from many parts of the world

• available anytime anywhere to users

• easy access, for those know how to find it and who have the means

• organized in a user-centered way

• instruction on how to find information readily available

– Space in the library will be multi-purpose– With adequate funds

– May not be known as ‘library’

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The Academic Library in the 21st Century

• To achieve that vision, the academic library must become a learning organization i.e., continually learning new KSA's (knowledge, skills, abilities or attitudes) and applying them to improve their products or services

• The way forward for academic libraries– Libraries must be the means, not the end– Libraries must face the realities of technology– Libraries must look at opportunities, not the problems

– Libraries must change– Change must be led by the librarians

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The Academic Librarian in the 21st Century

• A librarian is a trained professional with knowledge and skills of the organization and management of information, and services to people with information needs

• Wherever information has to be located, gathered, processed, organized or used, the librarian has a role there

• Traditional role of librarian – acquisition, cataloging, circulation, …– ‘this is the information we have; take it or leave it’

• Today’s role of librarian – help users obtain the information they need– makes use of library skills, technology skills, human skills, management skills

(e.g. marketing) – ‘what information you need, I’ll try to help you find it’

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The Academic Librarian in the 21st Century

• We have a role in helping our users succeed in the information age

• Information age– Many information sources– Increased reliance on information – Greater use of ICT to access, process and store information– Governments spending large sums of money on the

development ICT infrastructure (the ‘cars’ and the ‘highways’)

• Need to develop among people the ability to use this information effectively (the ‘drivers’ and ‘the driving skills’); need to develop also the intellectual capacity to use the information wisely ( ‘the thinking driver’)

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The Information Age: Need for Information Literacy

• Education in the information age needs acquisition of knowledge AND an understanding of: – how to recognize a need for information – the information resources available – how to find information – how to evaluate the results – how to work with results – how to communicate the findings – how to use the information ethically and responsibly

• The librarian has a role in developing information literacy

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To Summarize

• We live in an information era in the 21st century, where information is important

• Education, from school to university, must change based on the needs of the information era

• The academic library of today is very different from the library of yesterday

• Academic librarians in the 21st century must have library, technological, managerial, human, and informational skills, be information literate, and develop information literacy among users

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In short,

be prepared to change !

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diljit@um.edu.my