Education of Info Professionals – Andrew Dillon, PhD

May 23, 2018

Do professional associations matter anymore?

As part of my taking a fresh look at career options, I have been asking myself if it really matters what professional associations I belong to now. We are told repeatedly as young academics that membership of the right associations matters, helping you find a community, offering a conference venue or related publication venue, and so forth, which might be partly true but only partly.

As renewals have come up for a few, I’ve decided to let my membership lapse. I take a look at what the association claims as benefits for membership and then ask myself if I either receive or avail of said benefits, and if so, are they worth the price of admission? These days I am beginning to think the answers are negative.

Sure, as a former president of ASIST, I have a tie to the organization that is difficult to sever, and I know the challenges of even sustaining never mind growing membership. But over the last 15 years I maintained membership of more than half a dozen associations, at a cost of well over $1000 a year and I now question just how much value there is in this.

Not to pick on any one society but I’ve let my ALISE and SLA memberships elapse. The stated benefits of these organizations are not great: a mix of some I barely use (e.g. access to a limited scholarly journal, possibility of being considered for an award (as if!) or membership of a SIG) and those I’d never use (membership lists?). Yes, a discount on attendance at conferences, usually the equivalent of membership dues, offers a wash but if I don’t attend the conference there’s not much going for this either.

SLA claims to offer a bit more than most, to keep members ‘ahead of the learning curve’ and advance career options, but I can’t say i experienced too much of this, but then maybe that’s just me. When I told them upon receiving my reminders to renew that I found the cost-benefit ratio to be too small they just politely told me ‘thank you’ and that was it. Fair enough, what association has time to deal with such members when there’s committee meetings, resolutions to draft, learning curves to keep ahead of, and awards to hand out.

The real point though is just what can associations offer in this age? Yes, they’ll cling on as long as they are running financially viable conferences which they can price to encourage membership but this is hardly the purpose is it? Rather than hide behind cliched mission statements, repetitive presidential editorials about ‘excitement at developments in the field,’ associations need to renew their purposes and deliver value beyond the old formulaic benefits. In the information space, one might really think a group that pushes harder for greater educational quality might gain some traction. What a pity those claiming to do so seem to be distracted, shuffling task forces and committees in mundane attempts at survival.

February 8, 2018

Viewed from within: how to cliche your way to relevance

I’m beginning to cringe at the constant push of designer-liness and experience-y hokum in multiple venues. While I am delighted our graduates are getting jobs with their education in HCI&D, the words of our speciality are being popularized into meaninglessness by those wishing to jump on the bandwagon.

A couple of years back I baulked first at everyone trying to be all “disruptive” and “entrepreneurial”. These terms became cliches as every university or business stuck the labels on and attempted to polish the same old crap they were pushing. I actually sat in university leadership meetings where people used these terms as if they somehow justified another committee delivering the same tired recommendations to adopt the technology of the day. (Side note, most digital ‘innovation’ in education has pathetically ignored the existing research base while claiming ‘this time’ it would really have impact). Perish the sane folks who raised questions, I mean who wants to be labelled a resister or laggard when you can give the appearance of being hip and contemporary? Not many university administrators, apparently.

So here we are a few years on, still being urged to innovate, and now we are told the best way to do this is to adopt design thinking. Yeah, right….it’s allegedly a new form of ‘thinking’. Of course, those most urging it either have no experience in the domain in which they now urge change, or like some recently converted believers, have replaced rational thought with zeal. Hey, if industry wants designers, call yourself one and go for it. You can dismiss existing knowledge and methods with a waive of your felt marker-carrying hand….Oh dear…I blame Steve Jobs.

How long before we have undergrad courses on ‘design thinking for pharmacists’?

June 27, 2017

Another ALA down

Chicago in June is a pretty good location for a conference, even if the basic quality of food in the downtown area belies the other impression of the city as a truly impressive cultural center. ALA in town means thousands of people hauling bags of free books and pens around the streets, less like plundering hordes than old sherpas, but that’s what some folks go for surely, all the goodies they can grab. Someone should ask the airlines if the weight of personal luggage shifts up significantly on return flights this week – in the age of big data, this should be easily established.

Yes, there were guest speakers…very expensive ones, typically designed to deliver reinforcing rather than challenging speeches, and the usual too many sessions to be easily navigated (my strategy of avoidance is the best source of cognitive comfort in such circumstances). What does bother me most is the real purpose of this gathering and the enormous expense involved. Over 20,000 attendees across all days adds up to significant revenue for some, and those attendees I spoke with seemed happy, as I am sure were the hotels and bars in Chicago given the crowds but as I reflect on the last few conferences I’ve attended, and this most recent ALA in particular, I do wonder what purpose is served by such gatherings?

I know people will argue that meeting is vital to the functioning of the association and that yes, it can be fun to meet up with folks, but who pays for this and who profits? Moreover, what is the point of endless council meetings which seem to spend an inordinate amount of time passing motions, often not particularly related to or informed by the practices of librarianship? When I ask practitioners, I am usually politely chided that academics either do not understand or ‘should’ attend to show support. But what is it that we are supposed to be supporting? ALA always makes grand statements of intent, mission, vision, advocacy etc but what does it really achieve? And I’m not just picking on ALA, though it is a big, fat, easy target. I could say the same of most association meetings. At scholarly conferences we argue that we are sharing research, but to be honest, some venues are not even good at serving this function. But why ALA? We are facing a near crisis of fake news, loss of faith in rationality and the commercialization of access to information, but it’s hard to see much urgency in the response of professional organizations. Oh nevermind, an sure Hilary will make us all feel a bit better about it.

May 3, 2017

Journalism taking a stand on accreditation

Sound familiar at all?

“As we near the 2020s, we expect far better than a 1990s-era accreditation organization that resists change — especially as education and careers in our field evolve rapidly,” said Brad Hamm, Medill’s dean, in a message to alumni. “All fields benefit from a world-class review process, and unfortunately the gap between what it could, and should, be is huge.”

No, it’s not the ALA COA under discussion here — this is how one dean of a well regarded journalism program referred to the accrediting process in his discipline. The full article can be found here.

Seems like most professional fields, at least the fast moving ones like information and journalism, have common responses to the constraints of accreditors. What should be about quality assurance has become a vehicle for compliance and control by the conservatives. The suggestion of risk-adjusted accreditation would be welcomed by me, and fit with my general argument for a a process that spent more time improving the weak or under-resourced programs rather than mechanically demanding every program follow the same review schedule, but even this is insufficient. Until such time as real estimates of program quality are defined, and then applied fairly and uniformly, the process cannot have real value. Accreditors can hide all they want behind claims of protecting student interests but it’s a sham – and it’s a shame.

March 29, 2017

New book on Info Design

I’ve put a couple of new chapters together in the past year on the nature of design knowledge in information. The latest has just been published in an impressively large volume edited by colleagues at the University of Reading in the UK for Gower, entitled Information Design: research and practice Find out more here

January 27, 2017

Farewell to ALISE

Spent last week in Atlanta at the ALISE conference, my 16th consecutive one, I believe, and my last. We seem to have come a long way in some regards, and made little real progress in others, but that’s probably true of most annual gatherings. First impressions, it was a little light in attendance, there seemed to be fewer job interviews occurring, and perhaps a little less going on than some other conferences. Of course, I have no data to back that up but so it seemed to me and a few others I spoke with during the week.

I’m never a fan of poster sessions, and it’s not helped when a large convention room is broken up with posters at either end but tables and chairs in between. Hotels really need to better understand the logistics of human flow as it seemed designed to discourage people from visiting some areas and it can’t have been too helpful for those allocated space at the far end of the room. The organizers of the conference seemed to sense that too as they made far better use of the space for the final evening’s event. Of course, hotel arrangements for ALISE are never ideal, they are forced to take what they can get once ALA flexes its sizable muscles on bookings in the area.

Highlights were few (on the program side at least) but the Deans and Directors meet was unusually lively. A series of motions relating to accreditation revealed a stronger sense of disquiet and a shared desire for more control over the rather bloated accreditation process among the schools. How times have changed. Rather than have complaints dismissed by the majority as the whining of a few uppity schools, now there seems to be widespread recognition that the system is flawed, expensive and fails to deliver on its aims, which (lest we forget) is supposed to be about ensuring quality educational programs. Not everyone feels quite the same, and some seemed to wanted to grandstand on procedural points of order, but on the whole, I was heartened to see that in 15 years, the tide has finally turned and schools are showing some backbone and initiative in seeking a better process. Long may this continue as I see more than a little resistance looming among the traditional stakeholders who won’t give up power easily and will no doubt find ways of blocking change.

I am not sure what the future is for ALISE. I find the program to be limited but the need for a hiring conference and space for programs to get together to share concerns and take collective action justify some role. Given the news from Allen Renear’s analysis that enrollment in ALA-accredited programs dropped 30% in the 5 years up to 2014, one wonders how long before another round of program closures looms. The schools doing well seem to be succeeding on the back of new degree programs which most are not putting up for accreditation by ALA, with good reason, but that trend was sadly not discussed widely at the conference. All to say, I do think there is some grounds for arguing that ALISE split from ALA’s schedule and partner more with ASIST, allowing the latter’s program, which is usually far stronger, to benefit from ALISE’s job-market function. By holding some kind of joint conference in Fall, with six-month’s of separation between them and the similarly populated iConference, there would be better balance and functionality to the circuit for schools. Yes, I know, we recommended that a few years ago and the motion to move was rejected by a small margin but this idea is worth revisiting, if only to reduce costs and give the collective membership of the two groups a chance to gather more productively.

Ah but you say….the ALISE conf is for LIS programs, the iConf is for information programs and ASIST sits in the middle. There’s a lot that can be dissected there but the simple fact that practically any program can now call itself an iSchool, and the fact that many LIS programs have done precisely that, indicates to me that the once-meaningful lines drawn between the camps are blurred. I’d much rather see concerns with information education broadly embrace the L part than have the L part try to claim ownership of the information field, and to that end, a larger ASIST conference with an early component concentrating on education, led by what is now ALISE, has some attractions.

But that’s all another set of concerns for other people. To paraphrase the bard, I came to praise ALISE, not to bury it (no matter what other rumors you may have heard).

December 20, 2016

Job skills for 2017?

It’s that time of year, I know, when companies and various pundits vie for your attention with predictions about the coming year. Here’s an unsurprising cluster from Computer world:

Am slightly more impressed with (but only slightly) with Network World’s suggestion that “the employment of tech and computer occupations is expected to grow 12% by 2024″, more than all other sectors, and that within this, we will need more VR Engineers and Cognitive Computing experts. That’s virtual reality and AI-type skills coming to the fore. No, you didn’t hear it here first, and no doubt you’ll be hearing it again for a while. Don’t panic, there’s likely a new set of skills predicted for 2020, but they all amount to pretty much the same thing — be smart with technology and your understanding of humans. Sound familiar?

February 24, 2016

The Big Ideas of Information Science?

As part of our ongoing review of curriculum here (are you listening COA?), we’ve decided to create a ‘big ideas’ course that we believe should be required of all information students. This raises the very interesting problem of identifying just what are those big ideas? If you do what normal folks do when first asked this question, you reach for google. A quick glance (or even a longer scan) of the results might disappoint you, though there are examples for science in general and for computer science but nothing for information science.

A few years back now I gave a keynote at CoLIS (still one of my favorite conferences) that addressed this topic. In it I mentioned three big questions for the field that came up from an earlier discussion with our faculty:

What is the essential nature of information that might relate diverse endeavors (communicating, maintaining biological life, learning and finding) where the term is employed meaningfully?
How do we move from an information provision model (storage, retrieval, management etc.) to one where we identify and shape the manner in which information nourishes a culture, an organization or an individual?
How might we positively influence the cyberinfrastructure as the majority of the world joins us online?

Now questions are not the same as ideas but it would seem to me that if we had big ideas then we’d be answering big questions of this kind. Are we asking big questions now? And what are those big ideas of information that give us a distinctive field? Am interested in your thoughts. Feel free to share.

August 13, 2015

PPR talks now online

I greatly enjoyed this year’s Patient Privacy Rights Summit in DC. I usually do not get to attend the same conferences as physicians, policymakers, lawyers etc but this annual summit brings them all together, along with varied invited speakers, to discuss the emerging health information infrastructure. The organizers asked me to provide a closing address and while we had some technical set up difficulties, you can find it here. We need more people to speak up and agitate for our rights in the coming information world, and health is one area where we can all recognize the importance of privacy.

while here, check out the opening address from Deanna Fei, who provide an account of being on the wrong end of health privacy concerns that might shock you.

May 5, 2015

Seeing accreditation from other sides

I remember when studying perception in undergrad psychology that the term ‘cue aware’ started to fall into our vocabulary to reflect the experience we have of increased experience of phenomena once we knew of their existence. I feel this way about accreditation. Every book or article I find myself reading now seems to have some example of accreditation within. Up first, a couple of articles in the latest issue of Law Library Journal, where James Milles, professor at SUNY Buffalo states in his title that ‘law libraries are doomed’ This is followed by a rejoinder by Kenneth Hirsh, professor at Cincinnati, suggesting it might not be quite that bad. In both, there is much discussion of law school accreditation and how it basically does little to protect the old library function that some argue is central to the great law school experience. Perhaps most telling from some perspectives, the new standards on ABA accreditation no longer require that a law library director have both a law and LIS degree, this now being softened to ‘should’ with numerous cases cited of where even this urging is ignored.

The general arguments about law education are familiar to folks who follow LIS literature — the disconnect between the faculty and the profession, the diminishing demand for the degree, the costs of education, the shifts in research and reading behavior in an online world. So is it reassuring or worrying that law schools are sharing the same pain?

Hot on the heels of this I land on a report from the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions which tackles higher education accreditation head-on. In it, the major criticisms of current accreditation models are stated (familiarly to those of us who read this type of stuff) — it doesn’t reflect quality, it stifles innovation, it’s costly, burdensome and bureaucratic etc. Their recommendations are of the kind some of us have suggested e.g., refocus on quality not compliance, allow more flexibility in review processes, etc. It’s not rocket science, but one imagines we’d never have got a rocket into space if accreditation had been applied to those engineers and scientists.