Open Password – Wednesday, August 25, 2021
#965
Vivian Strotmann – Planetarium Bochum – “Parastronaut Fly” Feasibility Project – Libraries, Archives and Museums – Democratic Spaces – Scandinavia – UB Bochum – Ragnar Audunson – Herbjorn Andersen – Cicilie Fagerlid – Erik Henningsen – Hans-Christoph Hobohm – Henrik Jochumsen – Hakon Larsen – Tonje Vold – Current Topics in Library and Information Practice – Policies – Professions – Users – ALMPUB – Participation – Community Building – Digitalization – Sacralization – Sweden – Norway – ABM-utvikling – Social Turn – Technological Turn – Digital Society – Social Media – All-roundness – Empowerment – Sámi Population – Wikipedia – Hermann Huemer – Information Competence – Lifelong Learning – Bern Jörs – Prior Knowledge – Disinformation – Children and Information Literacy – Institute for Information Competence & Information Infrastructure – Aktuellkontor – Euronics – Blogger Relevance Index – CH Beck – DZ Bank – Specialist Blogs – Topic Leadership – Roland Heintze
I
Information competence as a competence for lifelong learning – By Hermann Huemer
II.
Parastronaut Fly: The view towards the firmament
III.
Cover story
Libraries, Archives and Museums as Democratic Spaces in a Digital Age: More participation, transparency and community through LAM institutions – The example of Scandinavia and other countries – By Vivian Strotmann
Germany’s top 50 corporate blogs
Information literacy
Information literacy as a competency
for lifelong learning
To: Bernd Jörs, How “information competence” can be examined methodologically and operationally, in: Open Password, August 20, 2021
Dear Mr. Bredemeier,
I am always happy when you address the topic of information literacy in your medium. I would also be happy if it was discussed beyond libraries and information science.
I agree with Mr. Jörs that you cannot evaluate or judge anything without prior knowledge. However, I would not go so far as to consider my (prior) knowledge as an integral part of my information skills. Then information competence becomes the universal competence that he talks about later.
I see my information competence as enabling me to obtain the necessary (prior) knowledge with the help of information products. This puts me in a position to familiarize myself with any subject with information literacy (regardless of the level). Regardless of my (prior) knowledge, I can then create a pre-scientific work as well as a doctoral thesis, take part in a political election or decide on investments or health issues. And if it seems relevant to me, I can question every message and check for dis-/misinformation, not only in my subject, but regardless of my previous (prior) knowledge.
This also explains the definition of information competence as a competence for lifelong learning. From this perspective, I can well imagine a “general ability to distinguish truth from falsehood” (or truth from untruth and falsity from correctness). We call it “information literacy” as a collective term for the many small skills that are necessary.
Another thought about “the poor children” (who should be taught information skills): I agree that information skills should not be established as a school subject and then tested at the end. However, I advocate that even small children should learn what is true and what is a lie, what is wrong and what is right and why that is so.
Finally, I agree that this understanding of information literacy is not limited to books or library use.
With best regards from Vienna
Hermann Huemer, IICIIS – Institute for Information Competence
& Information Infrastructure, office@iiciis.org , https://iiciis.org
Parastronaut Fly
The view towards the firmament
Open Password author Vivian Strotmann (ORCID: 0000-0002-6009-5182) recently led her from the UB Bochum to the Planetarium Bochum and from there – at least mentally – on to the stars.
To the stars:
Vivian Strotmann’s application photo
The Bochum Planetarium opened its newly renovated dome for the application photos and created the right atmosphere with atmospheric projections from the Universarium. A unique experience! With the photographs taken there, Vivian Strotmann was able to fulfill a lifelong wish and apply for the “Parastronaut Fly” Feasibility Project – the first call for disabled astronauts in the history of the ESA: http://www.esa.int/About_Us /Careers_at_ESA/ESA_Astronaut_Selection/Parastronaut_feasibility_project .
You can read how it went on and what the author thinks it has to do with work in the LIS area at https://de-de.facebook.com/UBBochum/ .
Libraries, Archives and Museums
as Democratic Spaces in a Digital Age
More participation, transparency and community
through LAM institutions
The example of Scandinavia and other countries
By Vivian Strotmann, UB Bochum (ORCID: 0000-0002-6009-5182)
Ragnar Audunson, Herbjorn Andersen, Cicilie Fagerlid, Erik Henningsen, Hans-Christoph Hobohm, Henrik Jochumsen, Hakon Larsen and Tonje Vold (eds.): Libraries Archives and Museums as Democratic Spaces in a Digital Age, De Gruyter/Saur, 2020. Open Access at: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110636628 (under Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) license, see: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc- nd/4.0/ ), 8 + 370 pages, ISBN: 9783110636628 (e-book) / 9783110629545 (hardcover)
This very comprehensive anthology is the ninth in the “Current Topics in Library and Information Practice” series. The fact that the volume is available open access is just one of the elements that makes it reader-friendly: the three-part overarching structure with the core areas “Policies”, “Professions” and “Users” is well thought out to cover the broad topic analytically to break up. Author biographies at the end of the book provide background information, and an index allows the reader to delve thematically into the subject of the study. Last but not least, each of the well-structured chapters ends with a bibliography (some including references to archival materials, etc.), which simplifies further reading and research.
What is striking is the geographical overhang of Scandinavian countries and the greater concentration on academic libraries compared to public ones. The geographical focus is partly based on the details of the “ALMPUB” project, on which the volume is based and for which it serves as the final publication. [1] Conceptually, the editors take this geographical emphasis into account by stating in their extensive introduction that this volume is an anthology. The three very different types of institutions are also brought together in the introduction. Libraries, archives and museums sometimes form the focus of their own chapters, and sometimes they are examined comparatively in chapters. There is a slight predominance of the library type.
The volume deals with the core question: “[H]ow do these institutions function as public spaces in the digitalized society? Can these institutions be instrumental in realizing […] a civilized information society […] and what roles do they play in ongoing transformations of the public sphere […]?” (p. 2). For this public space, it is stated that increasing digitalization is confronting it with a possible spectrum of development that could either lead to more participation, collaboration and transparency and thus more community and democracy, or to more self-talk in digital filter bubbles and echo chambers with the consequences growing isolation. Libraries, archives and museums, as publicly funded institutions that are at the same time committed to the needs of users and their information provision (as prerequisites for participation and empowering ), find themselves in a field of tension and potential. As the editors emphasize, this was and is often cited and discussed in legitimation discourses for LAM institutions (LAM for Libraries, Archives and Museums). However, particular focus in this volume will be on how LAM institutions develop and exercise these characteristics and capabilities in detail as places of social exchange, places for the development of participatory skills and places for community building. In short: it is important to the authors to support and test the above statement on the significance of libraries, museums and archives with concrete data and statements.
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Policies, Professions and Users
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The editors and the authors involved in the volume approach this project from the three perspectives of “Policies”, “Professions” and “Users”.
“Policies,” is dedicated to (scientific) political questions that affect LAM institutions. It is shown that the LAM institutions as actors not only have a reactive but also a creative effect. This part of the book opens with a chapter on the “Cross-country Comparison of Legislation and Statistics on Services and Use”, which sets the framework and background for the following contributions. This also shows the well-thought-out structure of the volume: the readers receive here and in further chapters, central background information on the concepts used and the countries considered, which makes it easier to classify the findings. It is equally pleasing that the various chapters come to different, sometimes contradictory conclusions. This offers readers a multi-layered opinion on the overarching questions of the volume For example, the third chapter, “The Digitalization Imperative: Sacralization of Technology in LAM Policies,” includes a critical examination of the concept of digitization using the concepts of “mimetic processes,” “epochal framing,” and “sacralization.” This and the following article The comments on “The Institutions Go Digital” also draw on philosophical concepts, which makes it exciting to read, but also requires the reader to have a certain amount of prior knowledge. These first contributions are still suitable for beginners to the topic, as they clearly derive and discuss basic questions that arise when LAM institutions and digitalization come together.
The latter chapter examines Sweden as an example. And similarly, the discussion of “Norwegian National Policies for Digitalization in the LAM Sector – Imperative and Implementation” focuses exclusively on a single country. Despite this geographical limitation, the results are also interesting for readers with an interest in other countries, as they highlight fundamental problems with retrodigitization and long-term archiving that can also occur in other countries (albeit under different local conditions). The limitation to the detailed discussion of one country also offers readers an advantage: Since individual chapters contain extensive references to the laws and guidelines discussed in individual countries, this book can be used by readers who are particularly interested in these countries Reference book can be used. Chapter six, “Organization and Funding of Digitization in the Visegrád Countries” (so-called “V4”), offers another interesting insight, this time from a European perspective. The final chapter of the first part, “Institutional Convergence and Divergence in Norwegian Cultural Policy: Central Government LAM Organization 1999–2019”, examines the development and closure of the central Norwegian institution “ABM-utvikling”, which was tasked with overseeing the entire LAM To develop an overarching strategy for the retro-digitization of printed material and the long-term archiving of born-digital material at the national level. The chapter shows the challenges that caused this venture to fail and asks questions about future developments. From a structural point of view, the reviewer wonders why this chapter was not grouped together with Sigrid Stokstad’s chapter on “Norwegian National Policies”. On the other hand, this overlap in content reveals a positive feature of the anthology that reveals editorial care: thematically and also throughout Explicit references link different chapters together, which increases the coherence of the anthology despite the very heterogeneous thematic composition.
The second part of the volume, “Professions” , opens with an examination of roles and understanding of institutions in “LAM Professionals and the Public Sphere” with the help of the concepts of the social turn , the technological turn and the consideration of the digital society, which was also discussed in previous chapters . In this first empirical chapter, differences between libraries, archives and museums become clear. In addition, “Perceptions and Implications of User Participation and Engagement in Libraries, Archives and Museums” addresses the question of whether and in what form LAM institutions are willing to include user contributions, particularly in the area of metadata. Using Scandinavian institutions as an example, the questions are discussed as to what this form of participation means for the ownership and curator roles of LAM institutions (also with regard to digital materials) and for the understanding of the roles of employees in LAM institutions. Another form of participation is described in the chapter “Like, Share and Comment!” The Use of Facebook by Public Libraries and Museums: A Case Study from Tromsø, Norway”. Using several institutions and using screenshots of their Facebook appearances, the article examines how the mandates to digitize collections and offer digital services to the public are reflected in the design and handling of social media channels. Like several previous chapters, this article also contains some tables that make the discussion quantitatively tangible and at the same time allow the empirical investigation to be classified. There are interesting suggestions for public relations work via social media in your own institution. The chapter “Reading Between the Shelves – the Library as Perspective in Life and Profession” is explicitly dedicated to public libraries. It examines how the politically defined mandate for “allsidighet” (“all-sidedness”) is implemented in the library in Gloppen, Norway, and how this implementation is received by users. This article draws on approaches from multiple disciplines to analyze specific situations that occurred on site during field research. This makes the place that is being talked about vividly clear to the reader, making for exciting reading.
This is followed by the third and final part of the anthology entitled “Users” . In the chapter “The Use of LAM Institutions in the Digital Age” the connections between sociographic factors and the use of digital services in LAM institutions in six countries are examined from different perspectives and based on a lot of data. The following chapter deals with “Libraries and Democracy in Germany. As Perceived by the Public in Contrast to the Professionals”. With the help of survey data, the question of how the LAM institutions have changed through digitalization and how employees and the public in Germany perceive their changed roles, taking other countries into account, is discussed. The article “Democratic Coexistence, Tiny Publics and Participatory Emancipation at the Public Library” presents the results of a year-long field study in libraries in Oslo and related institutions such as book clubs. The study examines the question of the extent to which these institutions contribute to the realization of participation opportunities and contribute to civil emancipation. “Being, Learning, Doing: A Palace for the Children?” looks at how an award-winning library in Oslo designed and operated specifically for children implements the concepts of participation and empowerment and how the autonomy and freedom it offers users :be perceived internally. The chapter discusses in detail the special challenges of the test subjects and allows them to have their say by reproducing quotes from interviews. In all of the contributions to the anthology, (socio-)political aspects are considered in one way or another and discussed to varying degrees of intensity. Perhaps the most political contribution is “Libraries and the Sámi population in Norway – Assimilation and Resistance”. This examines the role that libraries played in the early assimilation phase of the Sámi in Norway. The “Users” part concludes with a contribution to “The Joys of Wiki Work: Craftsmanship, Flow and Self-externalization in a Digital Environment”, which sees Wikipedia as a digital interaction and information medium and the motivation of the people who design this space. determined through interviews.
Hans-Christoph Hobohm summarizes the subject of the book as follows: “The starting point of the European project with partners from more than six countries was to establish the extent to which national populations attribute different roles to libraries in comparison to other countries, but also in comparison to the self-perceptions of library professionals in each respective country. The project is explained in more depth in the present volume” (p. 271). To this can be added the question addressed in all chapters as to how the relationship between libraries, archives and museums is or should be designed and to what extent it makes sense to treat these politically as a unified space.
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There is much to praise, but the crowning conclusion, a summary of the results, is missing.
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After over 300 pages, the reader is left to ask the question whether the goals of the volume have been achieved and the answer is: “Yes, but…”. Yes, the contributions are diverse thematically, in their sources, concepts and approaches and offer readers a multi-layered picture of the subject of the study that varies in the views represented. The previous brief overview alone shows this diversity and each contribution would be worth a more detailed discussion. To this should be added: the well thought-out structure of the volume as a whole – the effort to connect the individual chapters with each other – the good structural and content-related design of the individual chapters, which provide the reader with clear added value through background information, figures and facts. A wide variety of areas of work in LAM institutions are addressed, which makes the volume interesting for a wide range of readers. At the same time, the wide scope of the topic of ‘digitalization’ becomes clear.
But: From an editorial point of view, differences in the linguistic level of the various chapters and corresponding careless editing errors in terms of grammar and expression are noticeable – which is somewhat surprising given the care that was taken in other aspects of the volume. Given that the volume is intended to present the results of the “ALMPUB” project, it is noticeable that Norway is very well represented. In the reviewer’s opinion, the editors could have thought about a subtitle for the volume that would express the geographical focus and appear less universal.
Apart from these editorial and formal aspects, there is one fact in particular that is to be regretted, as it turns the volume’s greatest strength into a weakness: a conclusive summary of the findings was omitted. Given the complexity of the topic, the geographical range, and the methodological and conceptual diversity of the contributions, a conclusion in which the structural and content-related references of the contributions are related to one another and the various conclusions and perspectives are weighed would have been very useful for readers. It is due to the nature of the subject matter that there cannot be just one answer to the questions raised and each reader will probably assess the various arguments and results of the chapters differently. But a recapitulation and analysis of the content would have given readers a comprehensive answer to the question of what conclusions the project that the volume represents has reached. So it would have been a crowning conclusion to a very exciting and diverse collection.
[1] See about this project: https://hobohm.edublogs.org/2016/10/04/almpub-democratic-discourse-space-and-cultural-institutions/ (last accessed: July 18, 2021).
Facts Office .
Germany’s top 50 corporate blogs:
Content is King
Euronics ahead of CHBeck and DZ Bank
(Deloitte) Insights into new products and practical tips for everyday high-tech life – this is the mix that makes the “trend blog” of the purchasing cooperative Euronics the most successful corporate blog in Germany. It tops the hit list of the 50 most important company blogs, which the Hamburg communications consultancy Aktuellkontor identified with the help of the Blogger Relevance Index. This analysis tool continuously evaluates the performance of 2,000 German-language blogs based on visibility, links, social media performance, activity and interaction with its community.
Legal blog from CHBeck: With high-profile experts in second place. The “beck blog” from the specialist publisher CHBeck follows in second place. Top-class experts such as specialist lawyers and university professors publish a large number of articles here on issues relating to law and taxes and regularly stimulate lively discussions with them.
DZ Bank’s innovation blog is the most important financial weblog. The top 3 is rounded off by the most successful blog in the field of finance: The DZ Bank Group, the central institution of around 800 cooperative banks in Germany, positions itself at the forefront of digitalization in the financial sector with its “innovation blog”. Employees of the second largest German bank in terms of total assets write expertly about topics such as AI, blockchain and new business areas in the area of digital financial services – and specifically invite dialogue about them.
Around one in four top blogs deals with communication. Communication about communication dominates the top 50 corporate blogs in terms of content: 13 of them are all about communication services – no other subject area is represented more frequently. The Facts Office itself is responsible for two of the three most successful blogs in this field: Mediengau.de (about crisis PR) and Reputationzweinull.de (about reputation management and corporate social media). The blog of the intercontinental agency Lewis Communications from Munich takes the top position here.
With specialist blogs for topic leadership . “The vast majority of Germany’s most successful corporate blogs have one thing in common: they deal with specialist topics in which these companies have excellent expertise, rather than simply navel-gazing about themselves,” says Dr. Roland Heintze, managing partner and social media expert at the Aktuellkontor. “They attract readers by offering them useful content and thus help companies to build a public reputation as topic leaders in their respective fields.”
About the Blogger Relevance Index. The ratings according to the Blogger Relevance Index are based equally on five factors: The visibility of the blog on the Internet; the number of public links leading to the respective blog; networking the blog on social media; the activity (number of new posts) within the last three months; as well as the blog’s interaction with its community based on the number of comments within this time. The Blogger Relevance Index allows individual evaluations, among other things, with regard to certain things
Subject areas and industries, enabling companies to identify specific blogs that are really crucial for forming opinions in their industry environment. Further information at https://www.faktenkontor.de/blogger-relevanzindex/ .
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