Choose one of the resources above and write a 400 words analysis that addresses the following issues: What is the potential for the future of an organisation you are familiar with? What impact might the future have on us as information professionals?

What we can forecast about future is “change”. Everything is changing rapidly. Al-Ali et al. (2017) articulate that “the rate of change in modern times is greater than ever” (p.724). All organisations should recognise their own situation and potentials in this changing world, so that they could implement proper management. Christopher Cox (2020) mentions some key points in terms of “collections, services, spaces and operations”, that an academic library needs to consider as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. Based on his predictions, I would like to present some of my insights.

• Collections

Cox (2020) highlights that everything is turning electronic. That means, the method of collection management should also be changed accordingly. For example, librarians need to arrange their budget wisely because the subscriptions for digital resources are expensive. They have to consider those physical books which do not have a e-version. What they can do to digitise those materials and make them accessible without offending the copyright rules? There are much more for them to think and deal with in the e-environment.

• Services

When there are more and more digital resources, the academic librarians are also required to change their service mode accordingly. It can be seen from Cox’s blog (2020), that academic librarians will do more interacting and teaching activities than ever before. They need to educate their patrons with information literacy skills, especially in finding the resources with searching techniques. Thus, academic librarians will not only manage the collections, but also provide direct support to their patrons.

• Spaces

When talking about the library spaces, Cox (2020) discusses the usage of the physical site. However, due the Covid-19 influences, users are using more online facilities rather than the physical library. They explore social platforms to watch news and discuss with their friends in social network sites, such as Facebooks and WeChat. Thus, can the academic library also move their “location” to an online space? The librarians should also think of using social media applications to communicate with their users and between themselves.

• Operation

I totally agree with Cox’s (2020) idea of the “librarian activism”. There are many social platforms which provide forums and fellowships that librarians could attend and share their opinions and experiences. Even though we may be isolated by the quarantine rules, we are not alone. Social media is functioned as a significant communicating tool for now and the future.

Information professionals must always have an attitude of accepting “change”, and keep studying and developing their professional skills. As many of the communicating activities are moving online, academic librarians are also expected to involve actively in the online networks with external users and internal workmates.

References:

Cox, C. (2020, June 5). Changed, changed utterly. Inside Higher Ed. https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2020/06/05/academic-libraries-will- change-significant-ways-result-pandemic-opinion

Al-Ali, A. A., Singh, S. K., Al-Nahyan, M., & Amrik, S. S. (2017). Change management through leadership: the mediating role of organizational culture. International Journal of Organisational Analysis, 25(4), 723-739. DOI: 10.1108/IJOA-01-2017-1117

Watch the video and identify five (5) examples of ‘shifts’ or trends that can have an impact on how individuals behave as a digital citizens. Then outline (in around 400 words) how you believe these behaviours can impact on the need for, and development of, information policy in organisations to address these behaviours. You may wish to explore these from either a user/customer perspective or employee/employer perspective, or a combination of both, and you may wish to consider this task within the specific context of your own library and/or organisation, or you can address this task in general terms.

YouTube URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbcMPGyPr8k

This is a very interesting and inspiring video. It shows how the entire world is changing with the fast innovation of various technologies. There are many “shifts” and trends towards a digital world, but I would like to mention five of them here.

-The mobile phone contains much more functions than ever before.

-People express their opinions and share their moments on the social network sites (SNSs) more frequently than before.

-Virtual meeting are more and more popular in both work environment and private life.

-People use cloud database to save data as it can reduce the risk of computer breakdown. However, they have to tackle with the security issues of the online environment.

-As it is mentioned in this video, some new jobs that are even not existed ten years ago, are popular in the current information society, such as data scientist, big data architect, transformation manager et al. That means, people are learning new things fast to adapt the evolving technologies.

It can be seen that people have changed many of their behaviours to adapt the digital world. I would like to hight the privacy and ethical issues here. When people take the benefit of the convenient side, they also have to sacrifice their privacy to some extent. The internet browsers, such as Google, collect a lot of information from all our searching activities. In addition, the more information we share on a public blog, the more private data will be collected by other entities.

Although many information professionals, such as librarians, would like to protect their patrons, they still unintentionally contribute to the “surveillance capitalism” from the third-party tracking cookies (Marino, 2021, p. 129). If it is hard to avoid, the information professionals should consider how to build up their information policies to reduce the hazard.

The information policies should address to the internal employees and the external users. For internal employees, it needs to include explicit guidelines about the responsibilities of different departments, including the frequency of updating the security set up, the responsible person who should monitor the ethical issues etc. There are many existing templates that a policy constructor could explore and learn from. For example, professionals could search “information policy of academic libraries” to collect ideas.

For external users, the policies should not only address their obligations, but also inform them with the security alerts. It is important to notify them what information the institution will collect, and how it will be used and protected. Patrons could consider both of the benefits and the risks before they start to use. Therefore, it is important to include a comprehensive policy to instruct the online activities.

Reference:

Marino, B. (2021). Privacy concerns and the prevalence of third-party tracking cookies on ARL library homepages. Reference Services Review, 49(2), 115-131. https://doi.org/10.1108/RSR-03-2021-0009

Esteves, J. (2021, January 17). Did you know 2021 [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbcMPGyPr8k