The Personal Information Trainer
At SLA, Stuart Basefsky presented a proposal for the Personal Information Trainer (PIT). A PIT is an employee benefit reserved for key individuals within an organization. The idea is to change the librarian from a cost center to a valued employee benefit, and the perception of the library from a free service to a valued service. Basefsky made a comparison to bottled water—it is essentially the same thing as free tap water, yet we pay a premium for it.
Basefsky stressed that the PIT would still be available to and provide services to everyone in the organization, but he admitted that the idea might still go against the ingrained egalitarianism shared by most librarians.
Heidi Yacker and John Ganly provided insightful commentary and questions about Basefsky’s proposal, and then the audience and presenters entered into a lively discussion. Ganly said he thought the PIT idea, startling as it may seem to some, is not really a new idea but rather a return to “human presence” in libraries. He added that the problem with outsourcing is the loss of the “cultural ethos” of the organization.
Kudos to Basefsky for bringing a bold proposal to SLA, and to the session organizers for the format. I’d love to see more responders at presentations next year.
December 7, 2007 at 2:26 pm
[...] Stuart Basefsky an Information Specialist and Lecturer at Cornell has a fantastic article in the November issue of Information Outlook (SLA membership required to view online), called “The Personal Information Trainer.” Apparently this is based on a presentation he made earlier this year at SLA, as covered by the DIY Librarian. [...]
June 23, 2009 at 6:34 am
THE BEGINNING OF OPEN ACCESS REPOSITORIES
http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/595-guid.html
Stuart Basefsky, Senior Reference Librarian at Cornell, writes, in The End of Institutional Repositories & the Beginning of Social Academic Research Service: An Enhanced Role For Libraries:
“In building IRs, the evidence is clear that their mere existence does not translate into use. Hence the necessity to come up with Harvard-like mandates to force compliance of faculty. The social, academic foundation for cooperation and active participation in IR efforts was overlooked. However, a lesson can be learned from these failings…”
(1) Stuart Basefsky seems to count mandating IR deposit — a strategy that has been demonstrated to be successful in filling IRs — as a “failing.” One wonders why?
(2) Alma Swan’s author surveys (unmentioned by Basefsky) have shown that most researchers report they do not yet deposit their papers in their IRs, but if deposit were mandated by their institutions or funders, 95% of them say they would deposit, 14% of them reluctantly, 81% willingly.
(3) Arthur Sale’s outcome studies (likewise unmentioned) have shown that researchers actually do as they say they would, and in about two years an IR with a deposit mandate is well on the way to filling.
(4) Of the 768 IRs registered in ROAR — the overwhelming majority of them very far from full — Cornell’s are not in the top 10%.
(5) Nor is Cornell as yet one of the 51 institutions and departments (and 36 funders) that have adopted a deposit mandate.
(6) The failing, it seems to me, is that of the mere existence of IRs failing to be sufficient to fill them.
(6) The lesson, it seems to me, is that deposit mandates successfully fill them.
(7) And the IR usage stats and OA impact advantage are the evidence that full IRs are heavily used.
(8) Stuart Basefsky’s article lists many promising things an IR can do to make itself more useful.
(9) But he seems to regard the most important of them — mandating deposit — as a “failing.”
(10) And he does not seem to realize that if an IR fails to fill itself with its own institutional research output, it may be some sort of an online information resource, but it is not an IR.
Stevan Harnad
Université du Québec à Montréal
University of Southampton