The Australian Library Journal
volume 50 issue 4

Editorial

Turning points

The phrase 'the events of september 11th' has burned its way into the language. It has acquired a range of connotations in its own right: these have been added to by the coincidence of a federal election, in the run-up to which rhetoricians of all colorations have imposed their own spin on it. It hangs over everything we do, and will continue to do so for some time. It was present at the recent RAISS Symposium in Melbourne, whose proceedings I was invited to bring to a close. In doing so, I acknowledged the potency of September 11th and attempted to predict a number of possible consequences for those reference librarians and their allies who attended.

One immediate consequence is that Australia's prime minister has committed this country to a war footing: on just what constitutional or consensual basis is not quite clear, but he has certainly been abetted in his declaration by that shadow of its former self, the Australian Labor Party (ALP), the nominal 'opposition' party. Whatever misgivings those of us who remember previous 'wars' both real and undeclared may retain, between them the two major parties (and just how many members does each have?) must be taken to represent a simple majority of Australians, and almost casually and overnight, they have transformed the concept of the free and open society that we thought we belonged to.

Access to information is always the second casualty when this happens, and already the government has moved to limit our awareness of the extent and nature of the deployment of armed force against the attempts of people who claim to be refugees to enter this country by sea. As information professionals such restrictions should be a matter for concern, and no doubt the directors of ALIA have already registered a view with the prime minister.

Apart from such direct concerns, however, there are likely to be a number of other consequences which follow from our 'war footing' which is likely to continue for some time, perhaps for a very long time. In speaking to the delegates to the Symposium, I postulated a number of possible or probable scenarios for our profession and asked each to consider for herself:

• What is the probability of this event occurring?
• Have I identified this as an issue coming over my horizon?
• What sort of consequences attach to it?
• Within what timeframe?
• Is it a high-, medium- or low-risk factor for me and the environment I work in?
• If it is high-risk, what options are open to me?
• What responsibilities impinge?
• To what extent have I been equipped to deal with it by my training or experience?
• What is my professional association doing?

The issues which I raised were:

Continued shortfalls in funding. Whoever wins the next election, levels of funding in our part of the environment are unlikely to improve markedly. The exercise of the blockade over the seas to our northwest has already cost a mort of money and our war footing will cost us a great deal more. This will have to be found somewhere in a period of intense timidity regarding taxation and its essential functions. We will continue, no doubt, to do more with less, but for how long?

Restrictions on physical access to our public institutions, including to libraries of all kinds will be imposed. This has not been an issue so far, but I suspect that it will begin to emerge, especially in relation to those contexts with an institutional boundary, such as colleges, universities, and probably, schools. I do not know of any library or campus that already requires students and staff to carry a displayed ID, but it's just around the corner. There may be restrictions of another kind in the offing as institutions become less open in the present media- and politician-inspired fear and phobia. In my memory, outbreaks of infectious diseases had major implications for libraries and the use of their material: how would we cope with a library-centred anthrax episode in Australia?

Competition from private providers, freelancers and challenges from other professions: it is probable that this will increase as institutional funding contracts or remains steady with an increasing demand. The flood of unemployed IT personnel just coming on the market will increase competition for jobs and money. The salary component of any institution is now just so overloaded with on-costs that this component of funding is not likely to increase. We will eventually reach saturation point in our ability to 'do more with less', and although 'outsourcing' has probably gone to its maximum (ridiculous) lengths, independent contracting or the appointment of non-professionals to critical posts may encroach on 'our' domain. This may reach quite serious dimensions; the position of university librarian at Monash University is about to become vacant, and although the vice-chancellor is understood to have given an assurance that a librarian will be appointed, I would not bet on it.

There will be an increased politicisation of the internet. It is an absolute certainty that there will be an expansion of regulation in web access and in relation to other information sources. We will also see the expansion of surveillance and monitoring (already in place in relation to child pornography). Freedom of Information (FOI) is already emasculated and will become increasingly limited (note the shroud thrown over the Tampa affair).

There will be an increasing tendency to shift information to people, rather than the reverse. This is already an established trend, but it will be accentuated as people, especially business class people, fly less and discover that actual face-to-face meetings are not as essential as they were once thought to be. There will be other attempted hijackings; it is a cheap and easy, and enormously effective form of attack - at least in Western countries. The technology, but not just the technology, will sharpen our focus on this aspect of information access, and there will be a substantial increase in information flow and opportunities in the management of that flow.

With the discontinuation of ALIA's Board of Education, what are the implications for RAISS and other professional specialisations in this increasingly complex and challenging environment? What means will be available to shape and monitor the curriculum at the first professional qualification and subsequent levels? Where will the initiatives for professional development come from? Outside the academy? We will need to distinguish more clearly between 'education' and 'training'. If the curriculum is overloaded, how has this been allowed to happen? When will we draw breath and take a look at this critical issue? If, as was asserted at the Symposium, the Queensland University of Technology Law Faculty has shifted the focus of its curriculum from content to process, what are the implications for our professional syllabus?

What is it makes an expert information worker? How do I advertise for one? What impact is 'knowledge management' having? What would the selection criteria be? Are we any closer to defining and testing for the essential attitudes, skills, training and knowledge, and to getting these built into the professional curriculum? Or of inculcating them outside the curriculum? The need for closer integration of CPD and first professional qualification? Is this at all feasible?

Intellectual and political spamming - a new approach. We have all endured commercial and other forms of spamming via e-mail and the internet, but it is likely that it will acquire a new and different degree of intensity as the conflict between 'terrorism' and 'the West' drags on and perhaps intensifies. We may move into information warfare: a new dimension of the old psychological version. Users of our libraries, especially public library users, may be particularly exposed. The web is an ideal instrument for propaganda of all kinds.

We may expect the emergence of new groups or categories of the information needy; to what extent, for example, do asylum seekers qualify for our service? What information access is already available to them? Very little, I suspect. Will we want to buy into this and other similar issues?

The web is always pushing existing legal boundaries: as ever, the technology outruns our desire or capacity to control or regulate it. New legal implications will probably emerge. Would sending information (say on the attitude of Australians to cruise missile attacks on Afghanistan) via a library computer to a remote user in Iraq be looked at askance? And by whom? And how?

It is likely that those who seek to attack our society will strike at our communication facilities. We may have to contend with an increase in virus attacks; these may be more carefully targeted than the usual hacker merely demonstrating what s/he can do. It may well be that our databases, websites, software will be corrupted in increasingly sophisticated ways. The integrity of communications networks: a prime target? And what consequences for us?

Will there be an extension of democratic rights such as polling the electorate on critical issues, rather than leaving the responsibility for decisions with our elected 'representatives'? Would libraries be nodes in this process? Or perhaps there will be a curtailment of traditional democratic rights? If Australia really is 'at war', what might this mean for us? An increase in 'censorship' certainly: what else? How far are we as a profession prepared to go in defence of freedom of access to information?

Information rich and poor: is the divide widening? With what implications? And is the divide consistent across postcodes? Institutions?

A tendency (marked) towards a diminution of precision in spoken and written language. In my less optimistic moments, I suspect that this is part of a deliberate and concerted move to dumb us down. On the other hand, perhaps this doesn't matter in that language defines and shapes itself as it evolves. But it does suggest that we might need to be more lateral, precise or probing in our thinking about how we respond to demands for information and during the reference interview (if that still occurs).

Information literacy (IL). What exactly does this term mean? I wonder how widely this view is accepted in any particular academic community? Especially when, as is asserted elsewhere, not all, perhaps even only a minority of academics are 'information-literate'. Is the term used outside our profession? Are we in danger of believing our own assertions? Everyone their own librarian? Is this not a logical conclusion to the IL argument? What conclusions follow? What will happen if someone else takes up the teaching of IL? If, as is widely acknowledged, there has been a general decline in the ability of students to read, think and write, does not IL pale somewhat as an issue? How do we find out what our users' competencies are? Clearly more and different skills are needed than when print was the dominant mode. So are our users becoming more or less competent to access the range of resources to which any library offers access? And what about PC access time? How effectively can a client work if fifteen minutes is all that can be allowed in any one session?

Some of the possibilities which I have touched on above have already become realities at least for colleagues in the United States; I would be interested to learn what my readers think about the likelihood of their occurring here. In any case, and particularly since this is the last issue for 2001 (and where did that year go?) let me terminate this gloomy recital by offering to readers of this journal my closing words to the RAISS Symposium:

'Your energy, commitment and enterprise is inspiring: the profession lives or dies by what occurs at the conjunction brought about between our clients and the information which they need to achieve their personal goals. May you continue to have the strength, courage and endurance which have brought you this far. May you somehow be granted the time to pause, reflect, redefine and reorient your professional roles. The challenges which you have met thus far have been considerable: those that lie ahead are immense.'

We lead with an overview by Gray Southon and Ross Todd in which they complete their research into the problematic area of knowledge management: they survey the perceptions of a number of experienced professionals on aspects of the phenomenon in a very timely contribution to the continuing debate about the professional curriculum. Stephen Crothers, Margaret Prabhu and Shirley Sullivan look at the underside of the electronic journal phenomenon and find that accessing them is not quite as seamless as proponents would have us believe. Deborah Cronau, who is also a steady contributor to the reviews pages, reports on her recent experiences in fitting reader education to the individual student so as to lend lifelong enrichment to the lives of each. Miroslaw Kruk, who has rattled the bars of the public library cage on at least one previous occasion, this time pokes a stick at the rough beast of superstition, and asks, not unreasonably, how books on pseudo science find a place on our shelves. Phil Teece tackles myths of a different kind as he takes aim at the shadowy outline of workplace flexibility, a curiously asymmetric beast. And a score or so of reviews of the best of recent professional literature: worth reading just for their own sake, but also invaluable conversation-fodder for those of us too hard-pressed to read the actual book itself. Effective reviewing is a very fine art, and we have some highly skilled and subtle practitioners. Like to try it? Let Dr Gary Gorman know about your interests: he's recovering from a mild attack of cardiac arrest, brought on, he says by the disappearance of a certain trophy to the near-tropical north, but I'm sure he'd love to hear from you. Especially during the dog-days of the cricket season.

A small correction (or two) In our first issue of volume 48 we published a lovely article on the irascible Leonard Jolley by the totally rascible Dr Brian Dibble, who writes to gently assert that '...Jolley's maternal grandmother should be described as a chapwoman not a charwoman...' Brian also asked me to point out that Ben Joel's portrait of Leonard Jolley belongs to the University of Western Australia (not Curtin University) and was used with that institution's generous permission.

My thanks to all of those who contributed items this year, from poems to letters to articles: it is a pleasure and privilege to see such material into print. It seems to me to have been a particularly good year and although my expectations about contributions which would celebrate the founder of this journal, John Metcalfe, were not fulfilled, I do not think even he could quibble about the quality of the content overall. I must also acknowledge the support of staff in the National Office of ALIA, which actually publishes the Journal: Jennefer Nicholson, Ivan Trundle, Amanda Jacobsen, Emma Davis, Marie Murphy have all been immensely supportive. The reviews editor, Dr Gary Gorman has been rock-solid and reliable in managing a corps of devoted volunteers who between them conspire to deliver each issue's quota of informative, critical, quirky and totally professional reviews. And finally to the readers and subscribers, never far from an editor's mind: your shadowy presence looms over the keyboard as I attempt to find a balance in the contributions that arrive steadily onto my screen. Thank you for being there.