1st Entry - Discuss the role of libraries and librarians in managing digital information.

Competencies and skills of a librarian in the management of digital libraries

The competency of a digital librarian is represented by different sets of skills, attitudes and values that enable a digital librarian to work as digital information professional or digital knowledge worker and digital knowledge communicator . One is the ability to manage the digital libraries and digital knowledge in terms of digital knowledge management. The following are the skills and competencies required for a digital librarian in the management of digital information systems and digital libraries:

1. Internet knowledge

2. Multimedia, digital technology, digital media processing

3. Digital information system, online, optical information

There are additional skills that the librarian should develop. One is the ability to think in terms of knowledge networks:

(1) Internal networks: personal networks; project teams, competence groups, GroupWare; internal digital knowledge resource; intranets.

(2) External networks: external knowledge resources; external personal networks; customers, suppliers, partners; extranets.

Role of libraries in managing digital library

Generation of digital libraries requires the librarians to be essentially a type of specialist librarian who has to manage and organize the digital library, handle the specialized tasks of massive digitization, storage, access, digital knowledge mining, digital reference services, electronic information services, search co-ordination, and manage the archive and its access. Librarian acts as guardian of the information superhighway/the universal digital library or the global digital library and acts as a symbiotic human-machine guru.

Digital libraries are electronic libraries in which large numbers of geographically distributed users can access the contents of large and diverse repositories of electronic objects.A digital library is understood to have the information stored predominantly in an electronic or digital medium. The digital information collection may include digital books, digital scanned images, graphics, textual and numeric data, digitized films, audio-video clips, etc. A digital library is expected to provide access to the digital information collections.

A digital library may be considered to be any of these:

(1) Machine-readable data files;

(2) Components of the emerging National Information Infrastructure;

(3) Various online databases and CD-ROM information products;

(4) Computer information storage devices on which information resides;

(5) Computerized networked library systems.

The characteristics of digital libraries are the storage of information in digital form, direct usage of communication networks for accessing, obtaining information, and copying by either downloading or online/offline printing from a master file.

Role of librarian in managing digital information

A librarian, a type of specialist information professional who manages and organizes the digital library, combines the functionality for information, digital reference services, electronic information services, representation of information, extraction, and distribution of information, and retrieval. The ultimate goal of librarian is to facilitate access to information to the end users.

What will be the role of a librarian in the future? It seems to fit in with the notion that the library will disappear as an institution. The Internet will become a significant force in the information world. A different view of the future might be one where a “digital library'' is more like a “knowledge warehouse'', where a complex system of professionals whose expertise supports access to information acts as an intermediary to a variety of digital and other sources .Librarian is no more simply a custodian of reading material, but she/he is the collector and evaluator of information. Librarian need to possess knowledge in the field of computer, networking, information analysis, Internet surfing techniques, digital sources, various web sites and organization of data embedded in them. They can update the knowledge themselves by self-learning, creative learning team approach etc. Thus librarians are being given various new names such as encoder, knowledge manager, Information scientist, resource manager etc. and so on and so forth the name is transforming day by day with the advent of technology.

Librarians are required to :

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Librarian’s role:

1. Guardian of information superhighway

2. Guardian of the global digital library/ the universal digital library

3. Digital librarian acts as symbiotic human-machine guru

4. Navigation, browsing and filtering

5. Multimedia searches and indexing

6. Knowledge and data mining

7. Search and retrieval co-ordination

8. Librarian's interface functions and roles in the management of digital library

9. Digital information accesses

Digital library access tool

There are various tools available to use in digital information systems and they facilitate in accessing, searching, browsing, navigating, retrieving, indexing, storing, organizing and dissemination of digitized information. The list given below is the digital information sources:

· Online public access catalogues (OPACs):

· Wide Area Information Services, Web browsers, discussion groups.

· Digital networks/networking: BLAISE, MEDLINE, NICNET, DELNET AGRIS, INIS, all sorts of networks.

· Hypertext/Hypermedia.

· Multimedia networking protocols.

· Electronic publishing tools.Electronically fax/commercial vendors.

Telephone/TV

Purpose of digital library

Present library is facing many problems that is – allocation of budget, lack of staff especially skilled staff, non availability of documents, no. of copies, library security in open access system, limited library hours, life of print materials etc. With advancement of technology, the libraries are moving towards digital resources, which are found to be less expensive and more helpful for easy access. These are helpful especially to distant learners who have limited time to access the libraries from outside by dial up access by the commonly available electronic mode of access to resources mainly through CD-ROMs, OPACs and Internet etc. If the future libraries are to survive, they have to be switched over to electronic mode because the information is fast changing and mostly resources are born digitally. Components of a digital information system may include:

(1) Personal library system for the users;

(2) Organizational library system for serving groups of individuals;

(3) New users as well as existing local or distant database users;

(4) Database servers to handle remote requests; and

(5) A variety of system functions to coordinate, manage the entry and retrieval of digital information.

What is Digital Library?

Computer based information system for acquiring, storing, organizing, searching, distributing and displaying digital materials for end user access. Digital libraries are electronic libraries in which number of geographically distributed users can access the contents of large and diverse repositories of electronic objects. In an era of digital information, electronic technology, the tremendous growth of WWW's, digital libraries offer a huge range of multimedia information, everything from movies, speeches, images and photos to sounds, text and beyond. The amounts of online, CD-ROMs and other digital sources of information are exploding and infrastructure for accessing material improves almost daily. In building the next generation of digital libraries, multimedia and artificial intelligence will play several important roles. The multimedia nature of digital libraries requires librarians for the locating of relevant information efficiently and cost effectively and disseminating it in a wide variety of formats of digital information system. The advent of digital libraries presents a plethora of challenges and opportunities to the librarian. In the digital library context, the role of the librarian is primarily to manage the organization of such collections: digital librarianship. Clearly, the complexity of the digital library infrastructure determines the human involvement

What is Digitization?

Digitization is an electronic process of converging information from a print format to a digital format. It involves the scanning of the print material into digital. Digitization is done not only for preservation or archival purposes but also, rather more, on account of the other advantages and uses of the same. A digitized work can easily be transmitted to members of a library through the Net. Transmission of images and text through the Net is a communication to the public and requires the permission of the copyright owner, if the work is in the copyright regime.

Learning outcome:

From this topic, I have gain knowledge on role of libraries and librarians in managing digital information. Librarian acts as guardian of the information superhighway/the universal digital library or the global digital library and acts as a symbiotic human-machine guru. Digital library is now implemented in most librarians, thru this lesson, I will able to implement/ suggest this to my organization.

A Guide In Creating Portfolio

YOUR LEARNING E-PORTFOLIO (Contribution to Grade 20%)

The guidelines presented are intended to provide a foundation for the experiential learning process, with an emphasis on learning outcomes and competencies that the students will document in their course e-portfolio. An e-portfolio is a compilation of information presented by a learner to equate experiential learning to a specific course for a specified number of semester hours. The e-portfolio is reviewed by an evaluator (or course lecturer) who determines whether there is sufficient explanation and documentation to assess learning and award credit as requested

As part of the course requirement, students are to come up with an e-portfolio with weekly entries reflecting what they have read or done. The portfolio is a purposeful collection of student’s work that exhibits the student's efforts, progress, and achievements in one or more areas of the course curriculum. It should represent a collection of students' best work or best efforts, student-selected samples of work experiences related to outcomes being assessed, and documents according growth and development toward mastering the learning outcomes. This e-portfolio would include notes taken during the lectures/discussions/lab activities/observations made on the use of technologies for library and information management, as well as from relevant materials.

Components of your e-portfolio:
Your e-portfolio must have a table of contents, description of the course, an autobiography, a resume, a significant learning outline, a narrative, a bibliography, and documentation. The portfolio will contribute 20% towards your final grade for the course.

Course Description: It includes the course number and title, centre location, semester credits, catalogue information from which the course number and title were obtained, course description, course objectives, course proforma (if available) and other relevant information about the course.

Autobiography: The autobiography is a complete picture of the learner – who you are, what you have done, what you know, and what you want to accomplish. Prepare an autobiographical essay based on your life and work experiences using your resume as a guide. The autobiography introduces you to the evaluator and helps him or her understand the context of your learning for the particular course you are taking. More importantly, it is intended to help you reflect on how experiences from different times in your life may have come together for a common goal. The essay should be two to four pages in length and summarize the significant learning experiences in your life, define your personal, educational, and career goals, and describe how the learning and goals are related.

Resume: Provide an updated resume to include education and work experiences.

Significant Learning Outline: The Significant Learning Outline is a component to reflect on your learning experiences as they directly relate to this portfolio. A Significant Learning Outline addressing learning competencies of the course and this must be included in the course e-portfolio you submit.

• Develop a chronological outline of your applicable learning experiences. The categories listed may include lectures, employment, presentation, class participation (in the form of answers, volunteer work), recreation, and travel. You may also develop your own category. For each category, list what you have done, describe the activities) and explain what you learned using action verbs (i.e., differentiate, compare, contrast, list, calculate, solve, construct, organize, etc.). These lists of competencies will be used to evaluate your competencies for the course.

Narrative Reflection: From the information and supporting documentation on your Significant Learning Outline, you will develop short essays to relate the learning from your experiences to the concepts summarized in the course description selected. This essay, or "narrative", is a detailed explanation of your activities and the resulting competencies achieved, and it may be based on the questions that the lecturer has given or any other components that the student might like to reflect upon.
• Use the course objectives to guide your discussion of your accomplishment. If these are not available, consult an appropriate text for the course. Use the chapter topics or learning outcomes to structure your narrative.
• In a chronological order, explain where, why, and what experiences were involved and how the learning relates to your degree plan. Explain how this learning is applicable outside the specific job or context in which it was learned.
• For a topic that includes a substantial amount of theory, demonstrate that you have the appropriate balance of theory and application.
• The narrative will incorporate terminology appropriate to the course and examples of applications of the concepts as demonstrated through your accomplishments. Consider the narrative as an “open book” take-home test. Make sure it is clear, concise and free of errors in sentence structure, grammar, or spelling. It needs to demonstrate university-level writing and critical thinking. The narrative may be six to ten pages in length, depending on the topic.

Bibliography: The bibliography indicates reading done on the portfolio subject. Cite sources when you make reference to theorists, laws, and statistical data in the portfolio. References must be cited in Harvard style.

Documentation: • The last section of the outline is documentation, or evidence, to verify both the experience and the learning. This "evidence" can take several forms. For example, a photo of your class presentation document your attendance at the activity but it may not necessarily indicate how well you performed - or if you learned anything at all. To document learning, you may need a sample of your work, your slide presentation, a copy of the notes you took in class, an e-mail from your lecturer giving feedback about your work etc.

As you collect documentation, make clear to the evaluator how the documentation relates to your learning. You may need to add an explanation to the documentation or, if the correlation is not clear, you may need to ask yourself if it is relevant and whether it should be included at all. Extraneous or inappropriate documentation may indicate to the evaluator that you lack understanding of how your experiences relate to your learning.