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Future Directions in Digital Information

Predictions, Practice, Participation

  • 1st Edition - October 24, 2020
  • Latest edition
  • Editors: David Baker, Lucy Ellis
  • Language: English

The last decade has seen significant global changes that have impacted the library, information, and learning services and sciences. There is now a mood to find pragmatic in… Read more

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Description

The last decade has seen significant global changes that have impacted the library, information, and learning services and sciences. There is now a mood to find pragmatic information solutions to pressing global challenges. Future Directions in Digital Information presents the latest ideas and approaches to digital information from across the globe, portraying a sense of transition from old to new. This title is a comprehensive, international take on key themes, advances, and trends in digital information, including the impact of developing technologies. The latest volume in the ‘Chandos Digital Information Review Series’, this book will help practitioners and thinkers looking to keep pace with, and excel among, the digital choices and pathways on offer, to develop new systems and models, and gain information on trends in the educational and industry contexts that make up the information sphere. A group of international contributors has been assembled to give their view on how information professionals and scientists are creating the future along five distinct themes: Strategy and Design; Who are the Users?; Where Formal meets Informal; Applications and Delivery; and finally, New Paradigms. The multinational perspectives contained in this volume acquaint readers with problems, approaches, and achievements in digital information from around the world, with equity of information access emerging as a key challenge.

Key features

  • Presents a global perspective on how information science and services are changing and how they can best adapt
  • Gives insight into how managers can make the best decisions about the future provision of their information services
  • Engages key practical issues faced by information professionals such as how best to collect and deploy user data in libraries
  • Presents digital literacy as a global theme, stressing the need to foster literacy in a broad range of contexts
  • Interrogates how ready information professionals are for emergent technological and social change across the globe

Readership

Those involved in strategy and blue skies thinking, e.g. directors of libraries and information services, academics and researchers in information science

Table of contents

1. Future directions in digital information: Scenarios and themes

Part One – Strategy and Design

2. Current research information systems and institutional repositories: From data ingestion to convergence and merger

3. Effective strategies for information literacy education: Combatting 'fake news' and empowering critical thinking

4. Designing library-based research data management services from bottom-up

Part Two – Who are the users?

5. The power of accessible knowledge: Universities, suppliers, and transparency in the information age

6. Who is the online public library user?

7. Digital culture: The dynamics of incorporation

8. Information behaviour in an online university

Part Three – Where formal meets informal

9. Mobile technology and educational games in HE

10. The evolving role of library collections in the broader information ecosystem

11. Social media as a professional development tool for academic librarians 

Part Four – Applications and delivery

12. Closing the digital skills gap: Working with business to address local labour market policy

13a. 'It’s all online!' Creating digital study resources for orchestral musicians

13b. Library acquisition, delivery, and discovery for a creative university

13c. Digital transformation trends in education

14. Transforming reference work into teaching: From a librarian to an information literacy-oriented university professor

Part Five – New Paradigms

15. Envisioning Education 4.0—A scenario planning approach to predicting the future

16. Data-driven modelling of public library infrastructure and usage in the United Kingdom

17. How can the specific skills of the librarian in a digital context be used in the future?

18. The user as a data source: The advance of surveillance capitalism

19. Future directions: Emergent process; constant invention; sum total

Appendix: Delphi questions

Review quotes

"What are some of the future directions for digital information, based on current practices, policies, and partnerships? This book provides some reasonable assumptions and details from thirty-four library leaders from around the world…..The multinational approach to this book is its primary advan tage, since it allows glimpses into the wider viewpoints and challenges of libraries and information organizations around the world on these topics. I highly recommend this book for librarians involved in digital activities and planning in higher education."—Journal of Electronic Resources Librarianship

"This is a valuable compilation that conveys a diversity of approaches to meet organisational goals, make advances for user groups and help with optimising quality digital information resources, along with introducing concepts such as surveillance capitalism. As a snapshot in time, the book contains some valuable accounts and references to a period during which many of us have rapidly shifted our practice and participation with a focus on digital content."—Journal of the Australian Library and Information Association

Product details

  • Edition: 1
  • Latest edition
  • Published: October 24, 2020
  • Language: English

About the editors

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David Baker

David Baker has published widely in the field of Library and Information Studies, with 19 monographs and over 100 articles to his credit. He has spoken worldwide at numerous conferences and led workshops and seminars. His other key professional interest and expertise has been in the field of human resources, where he has also been active in major national projects. He has held senior positions at several institutions, including as Principal and Chief Executive of Plymouth Marjon University, and Emeritus Professor of Strategic Information Management. He has also been Deputy Chair of the Joint Information Systems Committee (Jisc). Until recently he was a member of the Board of Governors of the Universities of Northampton and South Wales. He is Chair of the Board of the Institute of Contemporary Music Performance. He is a leader in the field of library and information science.
Affiliations and expertise
Independent Consultant, Mytholmroyd, UK

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Lucy Ellis

Dr Lucy Ellis is Senior Associate of David Baker Consulting and Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Exeter, UK. She is currently working as a consultant with a number of HE and FE institutions to transform their governance, research and scholarly activity. Along with David Baker she is Editor-in-Chief of the Elsevier Major Reference Work Encyclopedia of Libraries, Librarianship and Information Science (Elseiver, 2025) and Series Editor for two Elsevier book series dealing with information structures in HE titled Digital Information Reviews and Advances in Information. Her background is as a lecturer, research scientist and project development consultant
Affiliations and expertise
Independent Consultant, UK

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