Transition

The Bridges article dealing with managing transition brought up what I thought was an interesting point regarding how western culture is so in a state of flux that often it transitions from one thing to another without taking the time to look at or contemplate what it is transitioning from. If libraries and librarians see this as a time of major transition, it would be worth our while to take a good look at where we have been and how we have traditionally defined ourselves. By taking the time and effort to do this, I believe we can identify some important traits and attributes we have been cultivating for years that will further enable us to transition into our new roles in this age of prolific electronic information. If librarians can look at the skills of organization, storage, description, and service honed over the years and learn to mold them to work in this new season, there will be plenty of opportunities for librarians to play a vital role in this culture. Every once in a while I get the feeling that we view the traditional library values and skills as fading away with the hard copy book. While I believe that we need to re-define values and develop new skill sets, I think we have a good foundation to build from – not to throw completely out the door. Going back to the article on being successful in transition, it is important that time is taken to concretely reflect on where we have been and make a good effort to mold where we are going from our foundation. By doing this, we will have a clear vision of who we are and where we want to go.

Highlighting Professor Marcia Zeng

A few months ago I read an article from the Journal of Internet Cataloging that detailed an interview with Kent State Professor Marcia Zeng. I thought it would be neat to share a bit of Marcia Zeng's experience based on information gathered from this interview.
Professor Zeng first became interested in library science post Chinese cultural revolution in 1977. In China during this period admission rates to the universities were about 4%; she was fortunate to be accepted into one of two library science schools in the country. She became interested in the study of information retrieval languages and worked on projects such as the Index for Chinese Library Classification and the Chinese Classified Thesaurus. In 1988 she came to the United States after being accepted into the University of Pittsburgh's SLIS PhD program. She continued to focus her study on information retrieval and knowledge organization. After receiving her doctorate, she accepted a position at Kent State's School of Library and Information Science. She has been at Kent State for the past 12 years and has published many papers in her field. At the end of the interview, Professor Zeng is asked about her vision of future trends in digital librarianship. She has a firm belief that the Semantic Web is the next generation of communication. She also states that the leaders and practitioners of the Semantic Web have used (or borrowed) fundamentals of library and information science; especially KOS theories and practices. What does this mean to the library schools? Professor Zeng sees this as a great challenge and wonderful opportunity. Her advice to library schools would be to make sure the courses and curriculum are up-to-date, challenging, and (most importantly) cover theory and current practical applications. To her, librarians working with information and systems are not dealing with the "same wine in a new bottle". She states, "New types of information sources introduce many new issues. The information itself is different in its granularity and the technology it requires." Based on this, our great challenge rests in how librarians are going to better serve users in this new electronic learning environment.

Perkins, J. Marcia Zeng, PhD: from indexing to knowledge organization systems, one woman's journey across the globe and into the future of library and information science. Journal of Internet Cataloging. 2004;7(2):9-18.

This article detailed a very interesting and accomplished individual in Professor Marcia Zeng. I was inspired by her story coming out of the Chinese cultural revolution to a career in library science. Hers is an expertise that is remarkably challenging and on the front lines in this age of information. Library Science needs leaders such as her to help define the librarian's role in the coming years.