Ruth Rikowski's 11th News Update

Eleventh News Update

RUTH RIKOWSKI
News Update No.11

This News Update consists of a variety of news items and profiles. The profiles are on Dr. M.Paul Pandian and Dr Jia Liu. I commissioned Dr Pandian and Dr Liu to write books for Chandos Publishing, and they are also contributing articles to the special issue on ‘Digital Libraries’ that I am editing with Isaac Hunter Dunlap, for Policy Futures in Education. There is also a piece by Dr. Helen Raduntz, highlighting the significant influence that Dr. Glenn Rikowski has had on her work and thinking.


1. REPORT ON SAVE AND BURN
I went to see the film ‘Save and Burn’, at the Barbican on Thursday 3rd May (covered in my last News Update, No. 10), and very much enjoyed it. I also had a chance to meet up and talk to the Director, Julian Samuel, himself, who flew out from Canada, specifically for the showing. He also kindly gave me a DVD of the film. The film very much focused on the value of the library, particularly in regard to its place in society, and where we are going with the concept of the ‘library’ in the future. Within this, it emphasised how the library helps us to ‘get in touch with ourselves’. Also, how the library can be both an agent for social control, and a liberating agent (yet another one of the contradictions in capitalism). I particularly enjoyed listening to the thoughts and comments of Alistair Black, Professor of Library History, Leeds Metropolitan University and Erling Bergan, Editor, Librarians Union of Norway, Olso.

The showing formed part of the London Palestine Film Festival 2007, and the film was shown on the very last night of the festival. The film included accounts of the destruction of libraries and cultural infrastructure in Palestine and Iraq in recent years, by Israel and US-led occupying forces.
Julian Samuel’s website – see:
http://www.juliansamuel.net/02.html

2. STEVE FESENMAIER
Steve Fesenmaier, who has reviewed ‘Save and Burn’ (see my News Update No. 10) kindly put me back in contact with Julian Samuel about 10 days ago. Since then, he has been informing me about a lot of the work that he himself does. Below, is the URL to his blog:

Steve Fesenmaier’s blog
http://www.thegazz.com/gblogs/wvfilm/




3. WRITE-UP ABOUT MY GLOBALISATION TALK IN LONDON CILIP NEWSLETTER BY IAN GARDNER
There is a very nice and informative write-up by Ian Gardner, about a globalisation talk that I gave at a London CILIP meeting on 13th February 2007, in this months London CILIP Newsletter (May, Issue 11), p. 3 (hard copy). Ian Gardner said that: “The meeting quickly developed into a spirited discussion, supported by a number of comprehensive handouts and illuminating quotes from Ruth’s published work.” And he ended by saying that: “Overall, the meeting was a thoroughly interesting discussion over whether the role of the WTO, in seeking to make services and intellectual property tradeable commodities, is damaging the interests of people, especially in the developing world.”

Further information about my CILIP talk is available at:
http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=events&sub=Globalisation
(towards bottom of page)

The London CILIP Newsletter is edited by Monica Blake and John Lake. For further information contact Monica Blake at info@blakeinformation.com.



4. ALEXANDER RIKOWSKI HAS GOT A PLACE AT KING’S COLLEGE, UNIVERSITY OF LONDON, TO STUDY PHILOSOPHY, FOR 2007-2010
We had some fantastic news this week. Alexander Rikowski, our eldest son, has a place at King’s College, University of London, to study for a degree in Philosophy. King’s has an RAE rating of 5*A, along with Cambridge and LSE. Given that he achieved this after having completely rejected formal academic education, this is quite some mean achievement, I think, and I hope you agree! Also, many thanks to Birkbeck College, University of London for helping to inspire and enthuse him about education. So, for all those that have rejected formal education and have few if any formal academic qualifications, there really is hope. Just hang on in there, and do not be fooled by the propaganda, that there is only one way to succeed – i.e. gain good A’ Level grades and gain a degree by taking out a huge loan etc. There are other avenues that can be explored.

Alexander is very keen on Logic, and Wittgenstein, in particular - he thinks clarity and clear thinking, talking and writing is extremely important.

I imparted the good news to Professor Michael Peters, who then told me that he is currently writing a book about Wittgenstein with some others, which will be published by Paradigm later this year. It is entitled ‘Saying and Showing: Wittgenstein as a pedagogical philosopher’. Alexander plans to read and review this book. Alexander is also planning to read Michael Peters and James Marshall book, ‘Wittgenstein: Philosophy, Postmodernism, Pedagogy’ (Critical Studies in Education and Culture), Greenwood Press, 1999



5. MARXIST INFLUENCES IN EDUCATION: HELEN RADUNTZ REFLECTS ON THE WORK, THINKING AND INFLUENCE OF GLENN RIKOWSKI
In the Focus on Dr. Helen Raduntz in News Update No. 8 Helen made mention of Dr. Glenn Rikowski’s role as external examiner of her unpublished doctoral thesis ‘A contemporary Marxian critique of trends in education and teachers' work in an era of major structural change’, but this was only part of his involvement in Helen’s academic development, she says.

Helen’s doctoral research involved three distinct but dialectically related aspects; an explanation of a Hegelian-Marxian critique developed specifically for the thesis; an examination, based on Marx’s still relevant critique of capital, of the dynamics of capitalism which forms the backdrop to trends in contemporary education, and an analysis of education and teachers’ work from this standpoint. It was to prove a huge undertaking and there were few academics in the mid 1990s with a Marxist background within the Australian tertiary education scene on whom she could depend for support across these three disciplines.

It was therefore a huge relief for Helen when a colleague drew her attention to two then recently published articles in the British Journal of Sociology of Education (BJSE) by Glenn Rikowski Left alone: end time for Marxist Educational Theory? (1996, Vol. 17, No. 4, pp. 415-451) and Scorched Earth: prelude to Rebuilding Marxist Educational Theory (1997, Vol. 18, No. 4, pp. 551-574). The articles were just what she was looking for and she made immediate contact with Glenn. Thus began a relationship which has lasted now for ten years over which period Glenn has been a constant email mentor and companion, she says, in the development of her understanding of Marx’s critical method and his theories as set out in ‘Capital’.

It requires some intellectual effort to regard the Marxian critique not as a fixed set of methodological principles to be applied to an object of research — that is relatively easy but not particularly fruitful in overcoming one’s assumptions and entrenched ways of thinking. Rather it is a method which is formed by and draws its logic from the content or issues under investigation. This kind of research methodology is something of a revolution in the field of research generally and a reversal of mainstream scientific research practices.

Therefore, Helen emphasizes, having someone like Glenn with whom to bounce ideas back and forth and to be able to draw on his reservoir of knowledge and experience on matters of Marxist theory without reserve has been for her one of the most fortuitous and invaluable highlights of her academic career. It is an association for which she will always be grateful and which she hopes will continue for many years to come.

That relationship has now extended to Ruth Rikowski who has been influential in persuading her to accept the challenge of developing a Marxian critique for examining the issue of intellectual property and the work of information professionals (to be published by Chandos). Helen says it is an undertaking which will prove to be a measure of how well she has mastered the techniques of the Marxian critical method.


6. FOCUS ON JIA LIU
Dr. Jia Liu (who likes to be known as ‘Jessica’) is currently a Visiting Scholar of the University of Toronto, Canada. From October 2002 until November 2004, she had been a Research Fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt (AvH) Foundation, Germany. Before she came to Germany for the third time, she had been an Associate Professor of the Peking University, China. So far, she has had more than 40 academic publications. With the 1st resumed fellowship of the AvH Foundation, she implemented a research project about the digital reference service which leads to one of her forthcoming books The Evaluation of Worldwide Digital Reference Services in Libraries, to be published by Chandos. http://www.chandospublishing.com/catalogue/record_detail.php?recordID=152
This book originates from an international cooperative research project. In the middle of March 2005, Professor Ingeborg Simon of the Faculty of Information and Communication, the University of Media (Hochschule der Medien, HdM), Stuttgart, Germany, visited Dr Jia Liu, then Associate Professor of the Department of Information Management, Peking University (PKU), Beijing, China. In the spring, the season when most flowers blossom on the beautiful PKU campus, Professor Simon suggested a cooperative student research project between the two institutions. Dr. Liu agreed with her and, together they set the fundamental tone of the project according to the agreement. One month later, the new research project came into reality. The project was entitled ‘Evaluation of Worldwide Digital Reference Services in Libraries’. It started on 1 April 2005 and ended on 15 June in the same year. Two student groups (one from HdM and one from PKU) implemented the project while the two teachers acted as the mentors on corresponding sides.

By reporting the results of the project mentioned above, the author aims to provide the reader with an understanding of e-mail reference services in libraries worldwide in her Chandos book. On the other hand, the book compares the results created by the two groups and furthermore explores the reasons for resulting in the differences. Finally, some proposals and perspective of the digital reference service are put forward. The content of the book is international and the creation of the book is also an international journey. Although it is prepared on the basis of the project, the book is far beyond a report of the project.

Dr Jia Liu is also a contributor to the forthcoming ‘Digital Libraries’ issue for Policy Futures in Education, and in her article, she considers how the digital library is integrating with the digital reference service. She explores this further through a series of case studies. The author emphasises the advantage of ‘systematic integration’, and ‘symbiotic interest’, thereby serving the user in a more efficient way.

On June 1, 2007, Jia Liu will leave for Wuerzburg, Germany to do some further research about the digital reference service with the 2nd resumed fellowship of the AvH Foundation. Dr. Liu has a solid belief in the sentence “all things living are in search of a better world” which was said by Karl Popper, the founder of the theory of World III.

Refs
Metadata development in China: research and practice. D-Lib Magazine [USA], December 2004. At URL: http://www.dlib.org/dlib/december04/liu/12liu.html
Digital library activities in Europe: a brief overview. Journal of Educational Media & Library Sciences, Vol. 42, No.4 (June 2005)

Is the collaborative service always superior to the single library service? : a project for evaluating the chat reference services in USA. Bibliothek: Forschung und Praxis = Library: Research and Practice, Vol. 30, No. 3 (2006): 353-66.
Metadata and its applications in the digital library. Westport, CT, USA: Libraries Unlimited, June 2007; [forthcoming]


7. FOCUS ON M. PAUL PANDIAN

Dr. M.Paul Pandian is Head, Library and Information Resource Centre at the Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai, India. He is currently implementing a Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) based system for his library, which is a wireless technology comprising tags, readers and antennas. With respect to its implementation in libraries, each book has an RFID tag attached to it which contains information specific to that book. General library operations such as checking out, checking in are self operated by users and stack verification can be quickened.

Prior to this he was the Head, Library and Information Resource Centre at the Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Indore, India and a member of the core team that was responsible for setting up of a campus wide information system for IIM. He also worked as Scientist at INFLIBNET, University Grants Commission, India. He was responsible for developing online union catalogs of participating libraries for the Information and Library Network (INFLIBNET) Centre. This Centre is an AutonomousInter-University Centre (IUC) of University Grants Commission (UGC) involved in creating infrastructure for sharing of library and information resources and services among Academic and Research Institutions. INFLIBNET works collaboratively with Indian university libraries to shape the future of the academic libraries in the evolving information environment.

Also as a course coordinator at INFLIBNET, he designed and developed course materials for a six weeks residential course on applications of computer and communication technologies in Libraries for library executives and information scientists.He has published several articles and one book in the area of library information sciences. Chandos Publishing: Oxford will soon be publishing his new book entitled Emerging Technologies for knowledgeresource management.

The main purpose of this book is to examine various factors that contribute to an enabled environment for optimum utilisation of information resources. These include the digital form of information resources, which are inherently sharable, consortia as a concept to bring people and materials together and unified portal as technology to bring together disparate and heterogeneous resources for share and access. An attempt has been made to explore the capabilities of emerging technologies that support sharing electronic resources in a heterogeneous and distributed consortia environment. The book also provides reviews of existing portal models for sharing resources and identifies the gap in meeting the objectives. In order to demonstrate the capabilities of these contributing factors and emerging technologies, the book provides a framework for a cost effective unified portal model to share the electronic information resources available in the participating libraries in a distributed digital environmentHe is also contributing an article to the forthcoming special issue on ‘Digital Libraries’ for Policy Futures in Education, which myself and Isaac Hunter Dunlap are editing. His article is entitled "Digital Knowledge Resources" and it provides an overview of digital knowledge resources, their characteristics, growth and development and impact on information access and use. It also deals with issues relevant to building digital knowledge resources in a distributed environment.

Refs
Pandian, M, Paul Jambhekar, A and Karisiddappa, C.R. (2002) IIM Digital Library System: Consortia based approach. Electronic Library, 20(3), p.211-214

Paul Pandian, M. and Karisiddappa, C.R. (2003a). Standards formodern library consortia: librarians' perspectives. In proceedings of SIS2004, IIT, Chennai, IndiaPaul Pandian, M and

Karisiddappa, C.R., (2003b). Technology issues for library consortia in India. CALIBER 2003, INFLIBNET, UGC, India

Pandian, M. Paul (2005) Unified access to heterogeneous resources in a distributed library consortia environment. Presented at International Conference on Information management in a knowledge society (ICIM), IASLIC, Mumbai, India

Radio Talk: Relevance of books in the internet era. Talk broadcasted in All India Radio on 21.11.2000 at 20.00 Hrs.



8. CITY BUSINESS LIBRARY UNDER REVIEW
Martin Waller reports in The Times this month that the City Business Library, which has been based off Aldermanbury since 1991 is under review. It might go entirely online or could form part of the British Library or partner with a local business school. There has been an archive service at Guildhall since the 19th century, but big financial institutions have now built up their own databases. Meanwhile, the library costs the council £1.3 million a year, and visitor numbers have halved since late 1990s, and the lease on the building runs out in 2009.

So, once again, we have another library that is under threat. Do such matters concern us, or are we happy with a continued decline in actual physical library buildings? Where is all this leading to in the future?

Report in The Times, 2nd May 2007, ‘Is library past the point of no return?’ by Martin Waller.



9. CREATIVE METHODS NETWORK EVENT 3 PERFORMING DATA
Finally, here is something different!
The Creative Methods Network is holding an event focusng on performative data at Dartington Hall in Devon on the 18th and 19th June 2007, for an amazing £50.00, which includes accommodation and meals. There will be theatre workshops and a session on dramatising experience through playback theatre. See: http://www.creativemethods.org.uk/
This is educational, research-related.



Many thanks to Steve Fesenmaier, Helen Raduntz, Jia Liu, Paul Pandian, Bruce Lloyd and Pauline Brooke, for providing information for items 2, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9 respectively.

Best wishes,

Ruth



5th May 2007