Information Lifecycles: Role and Responsibilities

As people move through their academic careers (and even in the Real World) they assume changing roles and have associated responsibilities in terms of information fluency. In addition to using technologies effectively, there is great value in understanding the types of information that exist, the networks that exist to create and transmit this information, and the best tools and techniques to maximize these resources for a particular situation.

Examples of considerations include:

Student – Study skills: develops from from repeating ideas to critical thinking, synthesis, and creating new content. Benefits from building a Knowledge Management portfolio to capture, organize, and retrieve discovered information. Utilizeautoalerts for remaining current and for competitive advantage.May use social networking and other information sharing tools.

Graduate Student – In addition to all the skills mentioned above, many graduate students are involved in research, which requires a new set of skills. Considerations include leading research groups, legal liability, documenting operations and discoveries, and publishing results. Many graduate students area also involved in teaching, and must develop skills in the following areas: integrating primary and secondary materials into curriculum, developing learning outcomes, assessment, reader’s advisory, KM portfolio suites for self and the course, and recognizing and addressing plagiarism.

Faculty - In addition to all the skills mentioned above, many faculty are involved in leading research groups, obtaining grants, addressing legal liability concerns, documenting operations and discoveries, and publishing results. Autoalertsare essential for performing competitive intelligence scans. In addition, many faculty are involved in editing and must develop skills in peer review practices, ethics within priority challenges, current awareness of research fronts, and monitoring Impact Factors for their publications.

Changing Responsibilities as people assume different Roles in the Information Lifecycle

ASPECTS: Search/Awareness,

Critical Thinking,

Knowledge Handling ...

Fair Use,

Licensing,

Attribution...

Editor,

Administrator.

Searcher

  • critical thinking/ACRL competencies (navigation, filtering, iterative process)
  • current awareness services
  • subject librarians
  • help web pages

Reader

  • downloading
  • copying
  • distributing

Compiler/Knowledge Manager

  • tagging
  • annotating
  • searching personal KM data
  • re-purposing
  • downloading
  • anthologies
  • sharing
  • mashing/attribution

Teacher

  • Fair Use rules (purpose, amount, nature <fact v creation>, effect)
  • Public Domain
  • Orphan works

Researcher

  • downloading
  • sharing
  • consulting for profit
  • citations/attribution

Administrator

  • RoI analysis (citatin studies, ESI, JCR)
  • tenure support
  • verification
  • faculty portfolios

Author

  • initial rights: reproduce copies, prepare derivative works, distribute copies, perform the work, display the work, transmit the work digitally
  • re-purposing: citations/attributionvs plagiarism<ethics>; concepts vs wording
  • Transformative vs Derivative (crticism/parody vs concept infringement, compilations)
  • posting to web
  • Intellectual property considerations (lab specimen regulations, possible profits, infringement)
  • Creative Commons
  • Open Access

Editor

  • peer review
  • Open Access
  • finances
  • RoI analysis (JCR ranking)