Future Skills for the LIS Profession

By Simon Burton

When recruiters at U.K.-based CB Resourcing (cbresourcing.com) noticed a shift in some of the skills our clients asked for, we decided to do some research to learn about the skills gap, understand what’s really going on, and identify what professionals and managers need to do to be ready for the next 5 years. The research project looked at our two core markets: the legal sector and academic librarianship. For the former, we partnered with BIALL (British and Irish Association of Law Librarians; biall.org.uk) and for the latter, we partnered with CILIP (The Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals; cilip.org.uk).

Both sectors identified a number of key themes driven not only by changes in technology but also by the need to maintain the people skills necessary within LIS teams to deliver value to service users. The results of the surveys provide varying perspectives and insights into the future skills requirements of LIS professionals as well as raising some very provocative questions as to how, as a profession, we may acquire the skills needed for the future.

LIS Skills in Academia

To discover skills gaps in academic libraries, we took a slightly different approach. We worked with CILIP to develop an e-survey, which we sent out to heads, directors, and managers of libraries at every higher-education (HE) institute in the U.K. and Ireland. We also promoted the survey via Society of College, National and University Libraries (SCONUL) and CILIP. We had six specific aims in mind: 

• Understand the current skills requirements and gaps in HE sector library teams.
• Gain an understanding of how leaders develop their own skills. Get a picture of the need for professional accreditation and professional registration.
• Get a picture of how the current environment library teams operate in covering both the physical space, services provided, and technology used.
• Look at future changes and anticipated challenges
• Understand where the skills gaps may lie in the future.

With this information, we hoped to provide a current snapshot of the sector and what the leaders working within it saw as key developments and disruptive events that would shape the future, specifically during the next 5 years. [Readmore]

THE HELP DESK
Six Tech Tools to Fall for in 2019

by Sophia Guevara

have you fallen in love with any new technology yet this year? If not, here are six tools that can help you in your day-to-day work.

FreeOnlinePhotoEditor.com
It’s always good to have a free online photo editor handy. In fact, that is the name of this tool: FreeOnlinePhotoEditor.com (freeonlinephotoeditor.com). I’ve recommended it to people who are interested in a way to crop screenshots for use in their work. You can also edit, add clip art, enhance, add borders, use filters, etc. If you want to take your image further, you can choose to order a print of it from CanvasPop.


Blog Title Generator
This tool is of special interest to those who write. Provided by SEOPressor, Blog Title Generator (seopressor.com/blog-title-generator) has suggestions for catchy blog titles. You enter in a term and select the context from the several options available: an event, a product, a person’s name, a location, etc. On the page that follows, you get a list of titles that you can refresh by clicking on the Generate More Titles button.


PowToon
PowToon (powtoon.com) allows you to make videos and presentations for free. While there are paid plans available, you can do quite a bit with a free account. The tool itself is not complicated, and the output will be worth the time and patience you put in. What I have found most valuable when creating a presentation is the ability to use free video clips that make my work look professional. In addition, you can select a soundtrack to include in your final product.


Google Lens
Google Lens (lens.google.com) is an app that allows you to scan images or take pictures and look them up on your mobile device. One way to use it could be at a conference in a city you are not familiar with. You can take pictures of buildings or historic sites and use Google Lens to learn more about what you’re seeing.

Emaze

With Emaze (emaze.com), which has free and paid options, you can create presentations, websites, e-cards, blogs, and photo albums. I am most interested in using the visually stunning templates to make presentations. There are some presentation templates that offer animated graphics and provide a similar experience as you might see in a Prezi (prezi.com) presentation.

Doodle

Doodle (doodle.com) is meant for those who are involved in teamwork and are looking to schedule meetings—either virtual or in-person—at a day and time that work best for everyone. It provides both free and paid options, and you have the opportunity to select days and times that meeting invitees can vote on. The organizer can then choose a day and time based on the data collected. [Readmore]

Applications for Blind and Visually Impaired Students

NVDA Installer http://www.nvaccess.org/

The Non-Visual Desktop Access (NVDA) is a free, open-source Windows-based screen reader designed to bring computer access to blind and visually impaired users. NVDA's built-in speech synthesizer enables users to interact with all Windows operating system components. The main applications NVDA supports include Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Outlook Express, and Microsoft Calculator, Word, and Excel. A portable version of NVDA is also available.

Multimedia Calculator.Net

The Multimedia Calculator displays an onscreen calculator that enables users to choose what function buttons will be displayed. The numbers appear in a different color from the function keys to improve resolution. The calculator has a 21-digit display. Settings enable users to hear each keystroke spoken aloud and to reverse the number layout.

Pointing Magnifier

The Pointing Magnifier is a mouse-activated magnifying glass that enlarges a circular area on the computer monitor. The user first moves a virtual lens with the mouse over the area they wish to enlarge. They then put the cursor within the circle and click any mouse button. Everything inside the circle is magnified; the cursor is pinned in place. Any mouse action a user then takes within the magnified circle returns the Pointing Magnifier to its original size. [Readmore]

9 facts about librarians you probably didn't know

(CNN)Libraries in the US have long been community fixtures, providing gathering spaces along with public access to books and information. And at the center of these hubs are your local librarians, juggling reference requests while helping patrons find reliable resources. In honor of National Library Week, which runs from April 7-13, here are some facts about librarians that might surprise you.

1. They serve more customers than your local movie theater

According to the Institute of Museum and Library Services, around 1.3 billion people visit public libraries every year, more than the 1.24 billion movie theater admissions in 2017. These readers will probably tell you the book is better than the movie, too.

2. There are more of them than you might think According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are about 126,800 librarians in the US. New York has the most, with 12,360 librarians.

3. They help spies Want to work for the Central Intelligence Agency? A library degree (and the ability to pass an intensive background check) might be your ticket in. At the CIA, you can earn up to six figures working in their library.

4. They help preserve your favorite music The Library of Congress has been preserving recordings in the National Recording Registry since 2002. Latest additions included hip-hop group Run-DMC's 1986 album "Raising Hell," Fleetwood Mac's 1977 album "Rumours" and the soundtrack to "The Sound of Music."

5. Their job prospects are on the rise Employment of librarians is expected to grow 9% by 2026. Some 12,000 jobs are projected to open as communities look to librarians for a variety of information services.

6. They have left their mark on history Former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, author Lewis Carroll, former first lady Laura Bush and China's Mao Zedong all worked as librarians or in libraries.

7. They are trusted resources According to a Pew Research Center poll, 78% of American adults feel that public libraries help them find reliable sources.

8. They sometimes watch over historic artifacts The New York Public Library contains around 46 million items, though not all of them are books. It houses a 16th-century globe, an original copy of the Bill of Rights and a Honus Wagner baseball card largely considered to be one of the rarest in the world.

9. Working in a library used to be considered too intense for women At the end of the 19th century, library work was considered to be too overwhelming for women, and in 1900, the Brooklyn Public Library Association proposed building "a seaside rest home for those who had broken down in library service." Melvil Dewey, who invented the Dewey Decimal System, also believed women would have a hard time working in libraries because of their supposed poor health. Thankfully, these ideas began to disappear around the 1920s. [Readmore]

With WorldCat Discovery

WorldCat Discovery helps your library have a greater impact. Smarter searching with easy access to local and global resources—in all kinds of formats—inspires bold ideas. Every WorldCat Discovery feature and enhancement, small or large, is influenced by input from library staff and end users. We combine this feedback with a methodological approach to testing, a mix of technology and library expertise, and a broad view beyond the library community.[ReadMore]

Turning bibliographic metadata into actionable knowledge

by: Jeff Mixter

OCLC has been publishing bibliographic linked data since 2012. Since then we have published three major datasets as linked open data: WorldCat.org, WorldCat Works and OCLC Persons.

As we continue to work on creating and publishing linked data, a key goal is to demonstrate how this technology fits into library workflows and how it can add value for both librarians and users.

As part of this process, OCLC Research has used the recent work of Google Research as inspiration for the development of a Knowledge Vault pipeline. The focus of our effort is to develop a pipeline process that allows for the harvesting, extraction, normalization, scoring/weighting and synthesizing of knowledge from Authority files, bibliographic records and eventually resources from across the Web such as WikiData or user-contributed feedback.[ReadMore]