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Communicating the library: librarians and faculty in dialogue

Peter Brophy
Centre for Research in Library and Information Management, Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, UK
Abstract
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to consider the challenges facing academic librarians in an increasingly networked environment. Design/methodology/approach Draws on theoretical perspectives and the literature to argue the case for academic librarians to develop their theoretical understanding of communication and pedagogy and the practical implications. Findings Suggests ve distinct areas of opportunity in which librarians can develop their role. Originality/value The paper states that new roles are opening up for academic librarians, roles which build on their traditional skills but challenge them to acquire new ones. Keywords Academic libraries, Communication, Learning Paper type Viewpoint

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Received 3 April 2007 Accepted 4 June 2007

Introduction
Most [eScience data] archives which contain primary research data are domain (i.e. subject) focused. There is a consensus that domain experts are best placed to provide support for the users of the archive data, and moreover are best placed to dene new data products and user services. (Digital Curation Centre, 2005a)

As that quotation makes clear, there is a battleground for inuence in the handling of information and data in the era of huge volumes of networked resources. Academic librarians have always prided themselves on their ability to bring their expertise to bear across the whole range of subject domains taught and researched within their universities. Today, that contribution is being contested. Unless steps are taken to demonstrate that value can be added to teaching and research by the librarians contribution, there is an acute danger of professional marginalisation. This paper attempts to suggest some of the ways in which librarians need to address this concern. Other keynote speakers at this conference have touched on some of the issues. Brian Schotlander, in his keynote address to the conference, emphasised the qualities needed of recruits to the academic library, including the skills and values they bring to their posts. Within his analysis the requirement for excellent communication skills recurred a number of times. He also stressed a need for exibility and for staff who value themselves, operating with self-condence in response to a variety of challenges in a rapidly changing environment.
q Peter Brophy, 2007 This paper was an ALDP 2007 Conference keynote.

Library Management Vol. 28 No. 8/9, 2007 pp. 515-523 Emerald Group Publishing Limited 0143-5124 DOI 10.1108/01435120710837792

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Lorcan Dempsey, in his presentation, drew attention to the need to focus more clearly on moving from collection to supporting research, learning and personal development in a network environment. Although the great debates in librarianship concerning the relative importance of collections versus access have ebbed and owed over the last few decades, I think this is a timely call to action, not least because, as he demonstrated, the library must build its services around user workow. In other words we need to be highly visible, offering extraordinary perceived value (i.e. greater than the value which so many others are suggesting they can offer), within those workows. My own paper is intended to address some of the issues which arise as we start to address that challenge and suggest where some of the emerging new roles are most likely to be found. There are two critical issues that I will address rst: communication and the sharing of meaning; and the theory and process of learning. Shared meanings Communication and sharing meaning rst. It seems self-evident that, unless librarians and their clients are able to communicate wit each other, lasting professional relationships are unlikely to be developed. But within this process of communication the different players adopt differing roles. The librarian is in essence taking the role of a facilitator, helping clients to access relevant information in a timely and effective fashion, but usually does so from a position of partial knowledge rather than full expertise. To quote one of my research students, Mina Sotiriou, a key element of the librarians skill is being able to grasp those deeper tacit understandings from what is in fact made explicit to them by the user (Sotiriou and Gilroy, 2004). What is made explicit, of course, inevitably makes use of language often of a highly specialised kind. Thus communication requires that the librarian and the client share, at a signicant level, the meaning of the language they use. This understanding of the role being played by the librarian is helped by a consideration of Ludwig Wittgensteins later philosophical writings. In his Philosophical Investigations he wrote:
Let us imagine a language . . . The language is meant to serve for communication between a builder A and an assistant B. A is building with building-stones; there are blocks, pillars, slabs and beams. B has to pass the stones, and that in the order in which A needs them. For this purpose they use a language consisting of the words block, pillar, slab, beam. A calls them out; B brings the stone which he has learnt to bring at such-and-such a call. Conceive of this as a complete primitive language.

The question to which Wittgenstein is drawing attention is that in order to elicit meaningful dialogue we have to assure ourselves that we share the meaning of the words we use. This is a comment on the fact that if we are to communicate not only must we master the intricacies of vocabulary, grammar, syntax and the rest, but we must understand the nuances of meaning which arise through long exposure to the use of any language. I begin this paper in this way because it seems to me that one of the most critical problems facing librarians at the present time is the ability to use the language of their customers and clients. It has become critical for a number of reasons, not least because workgroups whether research teams or students are able to communicate with their peers continuously, quickly, easily and without outside intermediaries. They can also access a wide range of information resources without apparently engaging with the library although the library may of course be behind much provision. Be that as

it may, much scientic and other research is communicated informally between people who have an easy familiarity with each others ways of thinking. Librarians need to be part of those dialogues. This brings us back to Wittgenstein, who pointed out that the process by which we operate within a social setting is one he characterised as a language game. Just as a game has to have rules though not all of them may be written down so any social context has its rules, both explicit and implicit. Let us be clear that when Wittgenstein talks of games he is referring, not to arcane and specialised rituals of communication, but to every kind of social interaction. In every social situation we learn the rules partly by being taught them formally and partly by observation. We see how other people act; we experiment with contributions of our own. The issue is not just about terminology but more critically about concepts and interpretation. It takes us beyond data, beyond information, and beyond knowledge towards shared meaning. Working within academic teams is a classic example of language games in action. Gee put it this way: An academic discipline . . . is not primarily content, in the sense of facts and principles. It is rather primarily a lived and historically changing set of distinctive social practices. It is in these practices that content is generated, debated and transformed via certain distinctive ways of thinking, talking, valuing, acting and, often, writing and reading. (Gee, 2003) The serious issue, then, is that without acquiring enough understanding of the rules to play the game, librarians cannot participate in sharing and developing knowledge, and beyond knowledge, meaning which is the purpose of a university. And, if as librarians we are not part of that shared academic enterprise, then we will be increasingly reduced to a technical service department. It is a real battleground. Some would argue that we have already lost the battle, and that only domain experts have the understanding to provide advanced eData services as my opening quotation testied. However, a slightly later report from the Digital Curation Centre (DCC) provides opposing evidence. Using the example of the Wide Field Astronomy Unit (WFAU), it says that they have recently recruited a dedicated science archive curator, who does not have an astronomical background. It is expected that the Unit will continue to require staff from a range of backgrounds, and with a range of skills: the technical requirements of WFAUs science archive curation greatly exceeds that which can be comfortably provided by professional astronomers (DCC, 2005b). They further suggest that astronomers would prefer to teach their specialist language to other experts than try to learn the required skills themselves another example of multidisciplinary teams and an invitation to librarians and others to become involved. Whichever line we take, it is clear that understanding of the subject, knowledge of the domains rules of converse, is seen as critical for those who would handle data. The language of learning So, to operate adequately in university research and learning environments we must understand their languages, play the language games. But we need to broaden the issue. Since universities are seats of learning, it is the language of learning that is most critical to participation. Librarians need to develop a much deeper understanding of how learning happens, of pedagogical theory and practice. That is my second major theme.

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As a starting point, and to justify the emphasis I will place on this topic, I want to argue that, at the most fundamental level, academic libraries are in the business of human learning rather than in the information business. Our resources and skills are dedicated to the sharing of knowledge and understanding and meaning, perhaps even to the development of wisdom (Rowley, 2006), not simply to organising and preserving information artefacts, whether printed or electronic. I cite as my authority no less a gure than Antonio Panizzi, the great 19th century librarian, one of whose many major contributions to the British Museum Library and to librarianship worldwide was his insistence that the whole point of his library was to facilitate learning. He wrote, I want a poor student to have the same means of indulging his learned curiosity, of following his rational pursuits, of consulting the same authorities, of fathoming the most intricate inquiry as the richest man in the kingdoms (Miller, 1967). In a knowledge society traditional conceptions of learning are, if not collapsing, at least in need of revisiting. Most obviously there is limited value in acquiring information during the process of formal learning if the information thus gathered will be rapidly superseded and is, in any case, easily accessible from the world wide web. It is of little use learning that this is how things are if tomorrow things will be different. It is not surprising, therefore, that the information-transmission view of learning is breaking down. A contrast is commonly drawn between objectivist and constructivist pedagogies, and this is a useful distinction. To quote a paper I published some years ago, objectivism views the world as an ordered structure of entities which exists and has meaning quite apart from the observer or participant. Much of science and technology has traditionally been taught on this basis: what needs to be achieved by learning is a closer and closer approach to complete (and thus correct) understanding. (Brophy, 2001). I have noted elsewhere that much library user education has, at least until recently, been taught on this basis. For example, there is a correct way to use a catalogue; a correct way to construct a search; a correct understanding of subject classication, based on Library of Congress or the Dewey Decimal Classication. This last example is curious because it has long been observed that Dewey is a highly imperfect view of the world, hence the never-ending production of new editions and attempts to correct its obvious cultural bias. To nd ourselves trapped into promoting a culturally narrow, deterministic view of the world in an educational setting which has turned its face away from objectivism is, to put it mildly, somewhat ironic. Constructivist pedagogies focus on interpretation and building understanding. To quote Anne Bednar and her colleagues:
Learning is a constructive process in which the learner is building an internal representation of knowledge, a personal interpretation of experience. This representation is constantly open to change, its structure and linkages forming the foundation to which other knowledge structures are appended. Learning is an active process in which meaning is developed on the basis of experience. This view of knowledge does not necessarily deny the existence of the real world . . . but contends that all we know of the world are human interpretations of our experience of the world. . . . learning must be situated in a rich context, reective of real world contexts for this constructive process to occur. (Bednar et al., 1993)

So, on this understanding, learning is an active process in which learners place their interpretations of the learning event into the context of their previous understandings and world views and are enabled both to modify their knowledge

and views and to transfer their understanding to new contexts what Michael Streibel calls situated cognition (Streibel, 1991). This is one of the reasons that information skills development works best when it is embedded the learner is able to respond to the challenge of making the learning t his or her world view making it relevant. Learning must also be active, requiring participation and experimentation which is why research is best viewed as a form of learning. But focus on the individual learner addresses only part of the problem. What both the objectivist and simple constructivist approaches underplay is the fact that human activity is almost always a social process. David Johnson and his colleagues reminded us nearly 20 years ago that learning is a social process that occurs through interpersonal interaction within a cooperative context. Individuals, working together, construct shared understandings and knowledge (Johnson et al., 1991). And this brings us back full circle to Wittgenstein and his emphasis on shared language and shared experience. We do not learn in isolation but within a process of interplay between individuals collaborating or competing. Learning takes place by participation in communities and the undertaking of developed social practices. This suggests that learning needs to be designed in the context of the learners social engagement. Ideas such as communities of practice encapsulate this viewpoint. So where does this lead us? I want to offer you ve areas, with some specic examples, where opportunities beckon for academic librarians willing to enter into signicant collaboration with users and developers: Role 1: Embedding the library in learning I have been impressed by an approach taken at Edge Hill University in the UK. They have set up new domain-focused academic teams, containing faculty, learning and technology support and librarians working together, and including representatives of students, all learning from each other and with shared responsibility for the delivery of learning. An important feature of this work is that it is underpinned by an explicit commitment to social constructivist pedagogy and active learning. Two quotations from this team give the avour: A vision of a multi-professional team of academics, learning technologists and information specialists creating a learning environment and learning experiences with the learner at the centre and Intelligent deployment of technologies must be predicated upon multi-professional dialogue (http://data.bolton.ac.uk/learning/mmitnw/seminars/vle1206jd2.pps) They explicitly identify one of the barriers as professional silos be it librarians, faculty or technologists who want to guard their own turf and do things in their own way. Breaking down the library walls and becoming a real part of an academic integrated team offers an attractive way forward for the academic librarian. They describe these new professionals as pedo-techno-gogs librarians (or others) who are characterised by their possession of pedagogic knowledge while also bringing specic expertise (Roberts et al., 2005). Role 2: Promoting literacies Even if we embed ourselves in multidisciplinary teams, we still need to ask what part we play in the delivery of learning. One area concerns literacy, and libraries have over the last few years taken steps to promote information literacy in particular. Clearly, students and faculty can only succeed if they have the skills and competencies to

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operate effectively in increasingly electronic, increasingly networked environments. However, we now recognise that what people mean by literacy is a shifting sand. Two hundred years ago Philip Stanhope, 4th Lord Chestereld, wrote that The word illiterate, in its common acceptation, means a man who is ignorant of . . . [Greek and Latin] (Chestereld, 1748). Since Greek and Latin were regarded as the languages of civilised converse in the West it is at least arguable that Stanhope was right for his time and for his place. This does suggest that it is wise not to become too prescriptive when we talk of literacy, not least because we live in such fast-moving times. One of the noticeable features of debates on literacies over the last few decades has been the extent to which the subject has been subdivided a plethora of adjectives has been brought into play in order to dene what might reasonably be expected of anyone living in developed societies. A brief trawl through the literature reveals an impressive, or maybe worrying, list. For example, in alphabetical order lest any be thought more signicant than any other, we could list: . adult literacy; . basic literacy; . business literacy; . childrens literacy; . computer literacy; . early literacy; . emotional literacy; . family literacy; . nancial literacy; . functional literacy; . health literacy; . information literacy; . IT literacy; . media literacy; . numerical literacy; . technological literacy; . visual literacy; and . workforce literacy. And the list is by no means exhaustive. In circumstances like these the usual result is that proponents of each formulation compete for supremacy. And so it is with information literacy. Christine Bruce, who is very much the guru of the information literacy movement, is on record as stating that information literacy is described as the overarching literacy essential for twenty-rst century living. (Bruce, 2002) She also claims that information literacy is conceivably the foundation for learning in our contemporary environment of continuous technological change and even that information literacy is generally seen as pivotal to the pursuit of lifelong learning. (Bruce, 2002) While such sentiments may give librarians a warm feeling of being at the centre of things, I am unclear as to the

basis for these claims. The Association of College and Research Libraries in the USA, in its explanation, claims that Information literacy equips (students) with the critical skills necessary to become independent lifelong learners (ACRL, 2003). Really? I cannot believe that any expert in pedagogy, in the theory and practice of learning and teaching, would allow such a claim and especially when librarians go on to assert that they are the experts in the eld. Of course they can contribute, and of course information literacy is important, but exclusivity is simply not a credible strategy. Rather what we call information literacy has to argue for its place alongside many other conceptions of literacy, and this creates a signicant challenge if we want to achieve widespread acceptance of our particular role. Indeed, there remains a danger that by talking of and promoting information literacies we are simply building another silo, a ring-fenced area to which we can claim an ownership which no-one else is very interested in disputing. At the very least, then, we need to ask ourselves whether it is not literacy writ large, rather than a particular and narrower concept, and situated literacies which are tuned to the needs of a particular domain to which we must bring our skills and our contribution, drawing on others as need be (see Barton et al., 2000). Role 3: Publishing the outputs Current efforts to break the publisher stranglehold on scholarly communication offer a huge opportunity for librarians, provided that they can achieve credibility with the authors. Again, it is about the ability to communicate with faculty in their terms and their language. Clifford Lynch dened the institutional repository back in 2003 as a set of services that a university offers to the members of its community for the management and dissemination of digital materials created by the institution and its community members. It is most essentially an organizational commitment to the stewardship of these digital materials, including long-term preservation where appropriate, as well as organization and access or distribution. (Lynch, 2003) Stewardship of resources is, of course, the traditional role of the library but it needs to be secured in the new environment by demonstrating understanding of the authors perspectives and concerns and, yet again, their language. At present most academics seem to regard institutional repositories if they think of them at all as a preservation medium. The huge challenge is to gain acceptance of them as part of the mainstream of scholarly communication. Role 4: Integrated environments There are dangers that the Virtual Learning Environment (VLE), the Virtual Research Environment (VRE), the institutional repository and the rest will turn into independent silos. It is worth bearing in mind that the university mandates use of some of these systems, such as the VLE, so the chance of the library becoming the interface of choice is virtually nil. So we really need a step change in efforts to make library services visible and usable within the users workows and the mandated presentation service. A useful example of this is current work on DSpace integration with Sakai, which is a widely used online collaboration and virtual learning environment. This is the subject of considerable current activity by a number of research teams including the Centre for Applied Research in Educational Technologies (CARET) at Cambridge University (see: http://wiki.dspace.org/static_les/4/42/DSpaceSakaiIntegrationWhitePaperAug2006.

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pdf). I would only comment that it is essential that librarians become more heavily involved in this kind of work. Role 5: Curating the data While repositories are fundamentally about publishing, the preservation function remains critical. However, thinking of preservation as the process at the end of the chain is no longer adequate. Most areas of eScience are dependent on the processing of huge quantities of data and the identication of complex relationships between datasets which emerge during data collection and use in other words curation occupies the whole data life cycle. In addition, where in the past the requirement was for long-term preservation of static objects, the new requirement is for integration of curation into the workow, for example to capture the provenance of a particular dataset (where it came from, how it was collected, how reliable it is and so on) and to handle dynamic content. Astronomy offers one of the best examples of this. Let me quote an example from the UK Data Curation Centre: The investment that the astronomical community is putting into the development of the Virtual Observatory illustrates the strength of the continuing belief that the curation of digital data is important to the future of astronomy. Similarly, the advent of e-Science is a reection of digital data curations importance to science more widely, given that the data avalanche experienced by many scientic disciplines has driven the UK e-Science programme. Researchers across a wide range of domains are . . . nding themselves faced with new and challenging responsibilities for curating digital data. (DCC, 2006) Conclusion There is no doubt that new roles are opening up for academic librarians, roles which build on their traditional skills but challenge them to acquire new ones. However, what will underpin success in adapting to the new networked world will be a willingness and determination to meet users in their own environments, learning their terminologies and their languages, and wholehearted adoption of constructivist notions of how effective learning, and effective research, takes place. In other words librarians need to become much more visible and much more active in the learning and research processes. They need to embrace change.
References Association of College and Research Libraries (2003), Introduction to information literacy, available at: www.ala.org/ala/acrl/acrlissues/acrlinfolit/infolitoverview/introtoinfolit/ introinfolit.htm Barton, D., Hamilton, M. and Ivanic, R. (Eds) (2000), Situated Literacies: Reading and Writing in Context, Routledge, London. Bednar, A., Cunningham, D., Duffy, T. and Perry, J.D. (1993), Theory into practice: how do we link?, in Duffy, T. and Jonassen, D. (Eds), Constructivism and the Technology of Instruction, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Hillsdale, NJ. Brophy, P. (2001), Networked learning, Journal of Documentation, Vol. 57 No. 1, pp. 130-56. Bruce, C.S. (2002), Information literacy as a catalyst for educational change: a background paper, White Paper prepared for UNESCO, the US National Commission on Libraries and Information Science, and the National Forum on Information Literacy, for use at the

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Information Literacy Meeting of Experts, Prague, available at: www.nclis.gov/libinter/ infolitconf&meet/papers/bruce-fullpaper.pdf Chestereld, P.D. (Earl of Stanhope, 1694-1773) (1748), Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman, Letter XXIV, available at: www.gutenberg.org/etext/ 3352 Digital Curation Centre (2005a), Digital curation and preservation: dening the research agenda for the next decade, DCC, Edinburgh, Warwick workshop 7/8 November 2005: Curation Services and Technologies Session Reportavailable at: www.dcc.ac.uk/events/ warwick_2005/Warwick_DA_Report_Nov_2005.pdf Digital Curation Centre (2005b), Digital Curation Centre case studies and interviews, available at: www.dcc.ac.uk/resource/case-studies/wfau/case_study_wfau.pdf Digital Curation Centre (2006), Wide eld astronomy unit, DCC e-news, Vol. 4, p. 3, available at: www.dcc.ac.uk/associates/e-news/issue4/DCC_e-News_March_2006.pdf Gee, J.P. (2003), What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, NY. Johnson, D., Johnson, R. and Smith, K. (1991), Active Learning: Cooperation in the College Classroom, Interaction Book Co., Edina, MN. Lynch, C.A. (2003), Institutional repositories: essential infrastructure for scholarship in the digital age, ARL Bimonthly Report, Vol. 226, pp. 1-7, available at: www.arl.org/resources/ pubs/br/br226/br226ir.shtml Miller, E. (1967), Prince of Librarians: The Life and Times of Antonio Panizzi of the British Museum, Deutsch, London. Roberts, S., Schoeld, M. and Wilson, R. (2005), New academic teams, in Levy, P. and Roberts, S. (Eds), Developing the New Learning Environment: The Changing Role of the Academic Librarian, Facet Publishing, London, pp. 111-32. Rowley, J. (2006), Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?, Journal of Documentation, Vol. 62 No. 2, pp. 251-70. Sotiriou, M. and Gilroy, P. (2004), Social epistemology, meaning and the academic library, unpublished paper, Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester. Streibel, M.J. (1991), Instructional plans and situated learning: the challenge of Suchmans theory of situated action for instructional designers and instructional systems, in Anglin, G. (Ed.), Instructional Technology: Past, Present, and Future, Libraries Unlimited, Englewood, CO. Further reading Wittgenstein, L. (1953), Philosophical investigations, available at: http://users.rcn.com/ rathbone/lw1-10c.htm Corresponding author Peter Brophy can be contacted at: p.brophy@mmu.ac.uk

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