Chapter 10

Education for Digital Librarians: Some

European Observations

Sue Myburgh and Anna Maria Tammaro

Abstract

Purpose – Changes in the environment – political, economic, social,educational and technological – have demanded changes in manyareas of work, most particularly in the roles and tasks of thoseinvolved in the preservation and transmission of cultural heritage, andinterpersonal information intervention. Sending, storing and receivingdigital information are commonplace activities, and now formallyconstructed digital libraries constitute an important component of thisvirtual information environment. Similar to traditional physicallibraries, digital libraries are constructed for particular purposes, toserve particular clienteles or to collect and provide access to selectedinformation resources (whether text documents or artefacts). Informa-tion intermediaries – or digital librarians – in this transformedinformation environment must learn new skills, play different rolesand possess a new suite of competencies.

Design, methodology and approach – Myburgh and Tammaro have, forseveral years, examined the new knowledge, skills and competenciesthat are now demanded, in order to design and test a curriculum fordigital librarians which has found expression in the Erasmus MundusMaster’s in Digital Library Learning (DILL), now in its sixth year.

Findings – The chief objective of the Digital library program is to prepareinformation intermediaries for effective contribution to their particularcommunities and societies, in order to assist present and future generations

Library and Information Science Trends and Research: Europe

Library and Information Science, Volume 6, 217–245

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218 Sue Myburgh and Anna Maria Tammaro

of digital natives to negotiate the digital information environmenteffectively. This includes, for example, the necessity for digital librariansto be able to teach cultural competency, critical information literacies andknowledge valuemapping, aswell as understanding the newstandards andformats that are still being developed in order to capture, store, describe,locate and preserve digital materials.

Research limitations – In this chapter, we propose describing the workwe have done thus far, with special reference to the development of amodel of the role of the digital librarian, including competencies, skills,knowledge base and praxis.

Social implications – Amongst the various issues that have arisen anddemanded consideration and investigation are the importance of amultidisciplinarity dimension in the education of digital librarians, asinformation work is orthogonal to other disciplinary and culturalcategorisations; that a gradual convergence or confluence is beingidentified between various cultural institutions which include libraries,archives and museums; the new modes of learning and teaching, withparticular regard to knowledge translation and the learner-generatedenvironment or context; and possibly even a reconsideration of the role ofthe information professional and new service models for their praxis.

Originality/value – The chapter tries to evidence the present debateabout digital librarianship in Europe.

Keywords: Digital libraries; LIS education; Europe; informationprofession

10.1. Digitisation

A digital or virtual information environment has been viewed enthusiasti-cally in Europe since the internet became widely known in the early 1990s.The publication of the so-called ‘Bangemann report’ in 1994, which outlinedthe desired position of the European Union (EU) in the global informationsociety, made European enthusiasm for ICTs very clear. The first sentencesof this report, produced by the High-Level Group on the InformationSociety chaired by Martin Bangemann, read as follows:

Throughout the world, information and communications technologies are

generating a new industrial revolution already as significant and far-reaching

as those of the past. It is a revolution based on information, itself the

expression of human knowledge. Technological progress now enables us to

process, store, retrieve and communicate information in whatever form it may

take — oral, written or visual — unconstrained by distance, time and volume.

Education for Digital Librarians: Some European Observations 219

This revolution adds huge new capacities to human intelligence and constitutes

a resource which changes the way we work together and the way we live

together. (Bangemann report, 1994, online)

This was the first of several such reports and strategies: in 2000, theLisbon Strategy (or Process or Agenda) appeared which placed greatemphasis on innovation and the ‘learning economy’. Its aim was to make theEU ‘the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in theworld capable of sustainable economic growth with more and better jobsand greater social cohesion’ (EU, 2000, see Europen Union, 2005, 2010a,2010b, 2011a, 2011c). The emphasis clearly fell on the possibilities offered bythe use of ICTs, rather than information, as was made clear in thesubsequent series of plans: eEurope 2002 aimed at getting more peopleonline; eEurope 2005 sought to increase broadband installation and use, andthen i2010: European Information Society, effectively a continuation of theprior plans, focused specifically on making Europe more competitive anddynamic specifically by encouraging the growth and diffusion of ICTs.Sadly, all of these goals were not realised by their original deadlines, butwork on the achievement of these goals continues nonetheless continues.

Thus, the i2010 plan was succeeded by Europe 2020 which containedEurope’s Digital Agenda. As an economic plan (which appeared after thefinancial crisis of 2008), it identified three ‘drivers’ for growth, the first ofwhich was identified as ‘smart growth’, which involves ‘fostering knowledge,innovation, education and the digital society’ (EU, 2010, online). A monthafter its release, Neelie Kroes, now the European Commission Vice-president for the Digital Agenda, reiterated the belief that ICTs can producemajor social and economic benefits for the European community, noting anICT skills shortage and a digital literacy deficit (EU, 2010, online). Europe2020 pays more attention to educational matters, indicating that one aim is‘to enhance the performance and international attractiveness of Europe’shigher education institutions and raise the overall quality of all levels ofeducation and training in the EU ...’ (EU, 2011a, online). One of its flagshipinitiatives is the so-called ‘Digital Agenda for Europe’, which represents astrategy for Europe to develop ‘a flourishing digital economy by 2020’.Exactly what constitutes a ‘digital economy’ is not made clear. While a greatdeal can be said about the prevalent belief that ICTs are capable ofenormous and positive social change simply by being available, what is ofmore interest here is how this affects education in Europe generally, andhigher education and lifelong learning in particular, as well as the role thatlibraries may play in such strategies.

Alongside the strategies and plans mentioned above, there have beensome major educational reforms associated with the European vision of theinformation society, such as the European Bologna Process (BP) (Lørring,2006; Bawden, 2007; Virkus, 2007). The Bologna Declaration was producedin 1999, and it has provided the blueprint for higher education ever since. Its

220 Sue Myburgh and Anna Maria Tammaro

central goal is to create a European Higher Education Area (EuropeanUnion, 1999) to encourage global academic collaboration. The BP alsoformulated a standard and uniform degree structure (bachelor–master–doctorate), taken further by the so-called ‘Dublin Descriptors’1 in 2004(which were used by the ‘Tuning project’) (Gonzalez & Wagenaar, 2003) inorder to develop qualifications in Europe that were comparable to oneanother. The intention was to make equivalency and recognition ofqualifications between countries and institutions clearer. While this beganas a project ‘to link the political objectives of the Bologna Process and the

1. Dublin Descriptors defines the competences of the Bachelor level as:

� Knowledge and understanding: [is] supported by advanced text books [with] some aspects

informed by knowledge at the forefront of their field of study;� Applying knowledge and understanding: [through] devising and sustaining arguments;� Making judgement: [involves] gathering and interpreting relevant data;� Communication: [of] information, ideas, problems and solutions;� Learning skills: have developed those skills needed to study further with a high level of

autonomy.

Dublin Descriptors defines the competences of Master as:

� Knowledge and understanding: provides a basis or opportunity for originality in developing

or applying ideas often in a research context;� Applying knowledge and understanding: [through] problem solving abilities [applied] in new

or unfamiliar environments within broader (or multidisciplinary) contexts;� Making judgement: [demonstrates] the ability to integrate knowledge and handle complexity,

and formulate judgements with incomplete data;� Communication: [of] their conclusions and the underpinning knowledge and rationale

(restricted scope) to specialist and non-specialist audiences (monologue);� Learning skills: study in a manner that may be largely self-directed or autonomous.

Dublin Descriptors defines the competences of Doctorate as:

� Knowledge and understanding: [includes] a systematic understanding of their field of study

and mastery of the methods of research associated with that field;� Applying knowledge and understanding: [is demonstrated by the] ability to conceive, design,

implement and adapt a substantial process of research with scholarly integrity. [is in the

context of] a contribution that extends the frontier of knowledge by developing� a substantial body of work some of which merits national or international refereed

publication;� Making judgement: [requires being] capable of critical analysis, evaluation and synthesis of

new and complex ideas;� Communication: With their peers, the larger scholarly community and with society in general

(dialogue) about their areas of expertise (broad scope);� Learning skills: Expected to be able to promote Doctoral level within academic and

professional contexts, technological, social or cultural advancement.

Education for Digital Librarians: Some European Observations 221

Lisbon Strategy to the higher educational sector’ (EU, 2011c), it has becomea process which facilitates the design, development, implementation,evaluation and enhancement of all educational programmes. A creditsystem that facilitates student mobility was also implemented. The EuropeanResearch Area (ERA) was first proposed in 2000 (and relaunched in 2007),also with the intent of increasing cooperation in research and learning acrossthe EU to encourage innovation (the ‘Innovation Union’).

Importantly, a Digital Libraries Initiative formed part of the DigitalAgenda of Europe 2020, first announced in 2005 (EU, 2005, online), thepurpose of which was to make Europe’s cultural, audiovisual and scientificheritage accessible to all. In this document, ‘digital libraries’ are defined as:

organised collections of digital content made available to the public. They can

consist of material that has been digitised, such as digital copies of books and

other ‘physical’ material from libraries and archives. Alternatively, they can be

based on information originally produced in digital format.

A Network of Excellence for Digital Libraries (DELOS) was launched in2003 and works on Europe’s digital library, archive and museum, Europeana,began in 2008. More recently, a group of experts known as the Comite dessages released a document entitled The New Renaissance (2011d) whichdescribes, inter alia, suggestions for funding, access and cooperation betweenpublic and private organisations for digitising and providing access toEurope’s cultural heritage, showing further support for this work. The NewRenaissance outlines challenges concerning intellectual property, orphanworks and long-term funding, indicating that further commitment is requiredfrom all EU member states. Overall it is fervent in its mission, describingdigitisation as a ‘moral obligation’ (Digital libraries initiative, EU, 2011b).

Digitisation breathes new life into material from the past, and turns it into a

formidable asset for the individual user and an important building block of the

digital economy ...We think that the benefits are worth the effort. These

benefits are in the first place related to the wider access to and democratisation

of culture and knowledge, as well as the benefits for the educational system —

both schools and universities. Other major benefits lie in the economic sphere

and concern the development of new technologies and services for digitisation,

for digital preservation and for interacting in innovative ways with the cultural

material. The digitised material can in itself be a driver of innovation and be at

the basis of new services in sectors such as tourism and learning. (Digital

libraries initiative, EU, 2011b, p. 4)

In Europe, formally constructed digital libraries now constitute animportant component of the virtual information environment. With suchsupport for DLs generally (and Europeana in particular) found in Europe, it

222 Sue Myburgh and Anna Maria Tammaro

is evident that new generations of librarians (and other informationprofessionals) must be adequately prepared for life and work in the digitalinformation zone.

10.2. Education for Digital Librarians

Education for library and information science (LIS) has long extensivelydiscussed but remains a fraught issue: every country and every institutionoffers different levels, content and format. The report of a fairly recentEuropean curriculum development project shows great diversity in thesecurricula (Kajberg and Lørring, 2005), as do the chapters from anEducational Forum at the 2007 CoLIS conference (Bawden, 2008). In neitherof these reports is there any evidence of programmes devoted solely — oreven partially — to educating digital librarians. Research on curriculumdevelopment for DLs was first published in 1998 in the United States, whenSpink and Cool (like Saracevic & Dalbello, 2001) examined courses in DLsthat were being offered, mostly in the United States. Then, as now, therewere no programmes devoted in their entirety to DLs, while a number ofindividual courses existed. Saracevic and Dalbello (2001) felt that the socialand cultural role of information should be emphasised, together with thepurpose of DLs. Croneis and Henderson (2002) identified a number oftopics that could be included in a DL programme, based on job descriptionsfor digital librarian positions.

Other research was completed by Liu (2004), who examined the Websitesof US LIS schools; what characteristics employers were looking for(Marion, 2001); the technical skills that digital librarians thought theyshould have learnt in their LIS programme (Choi & Rasmussen, 2006a), andincreasing fragmentation in the information professions, noting that DLdevelopment occurred most prominently in the discipline of computerscience (Coleman, 2002). Coleman (2002) expressed the view that digitallibrarianship could not be a separate profession, and that a moremultidisciplinary approach (in particular involving computer scientists)should be adopted. She further suggested that three concepts —interdisciplinarity, interactivity and interoperability — become integralparts of DL research (Coleman, 2002).

Jeffrey Pomerantz from the University of North Carolina (UNC) haswritten extensively on education for DLs. For example, in 2006, heinterestingly investigated what could be considered ‘core’ in education forDLs by identifying the readings that were assigned in digital library courses,and specifically identifying the topics to which students were referred, andthere was some consistency. In a work undertaken with a cross-disciplinary

Education for Digital Librarians: Some European Observations 223

team of colleagues — Yang, Fox, Wildemuth and Oh (2006), a modelknown as the ‘5S’ framework was adopted in order to design aninterdisciplinary curriculum for DL education, which was considered tobe a kind of template which would ensure that all aspects would be included.Pomerantz has described this curriculum elsewhere in some detail (e.g.Pomerantz, Wildemuth, Oh, Yang, & Fox, 2006, 2007; Pomerantz, 2009),and it includes topics such as collection development, digital objects,information/knowledge organisation, architecture, user behaviour, services,archiving and preservation, management and evaluation, and DL educationand research. This is not further discussed here, as it is essentially a NorthAmerican, rather than European, development.

Allard (2002) described various models of DLs. Bawden et al. (2007)investigated the competencies of digital librarians, noting that they were wide-ranging (it is noteworthy that all kinds of librarians require ‘wide-ranging’competencies). The significant differences between traditional librariansand digital librarians were include a shift from ownership of informationresources to providing access to them; changes in searching techniquesbecause of search engines and users have different expectations. Weechprovided an overview of DL education in 2005, while Manzuch, Vatanen andAparac-Jelusic (2005) examined the approaches to digitisation in Europe. Thefollowing year, Tammaro (2006) considered what technological qualificationswere desirable for digital librarians, noting the emergence of the concept of‘memory institutions’, the library approach to information and knowledgemanagement and the separation of IT from LIS schools. She also noted thatsynergies were desirable between the related information professions:

The suggested educational model is based on a multi-layered concept of

communication of memory that reflects the complex nature of the cultural

heritage phenomenon and foresees the synergies between LIS, archival science,

museology and computer science. Another educational model, more library-

based, has the Knowledge Management approach as its conceptual framework

and is integrated into the existing LIS courses. (Tammaro, 2006, p. 14)

Weech also pursued the notion of multidisciplinarity in LIS (Weech,2007). In 2009, Twidale and Nichols examined the literature which describedthe characteristics of the digital librarians which had been consideredby Coleman (2005), Marion (2001), Mostafa, Brancolini, Smith, and Misco(2005) and Pomerantz, Wildemuth, Oh, Yang, and Fox (2006), and fromthis drew the conclusion that such education was similar to that of atraditional librarian, particular in terms of ethos and core guiding theories(they name ‘access’ and ‘cataloguing’ as such theories), but it differed only inthe necessity for further ‘technical skills’. Choi and Rasmussen (2006b)identified DL architecture and software as vital knowledge for digital

224 Sue Myburgh and Anna Maria Tammaro

librarians. Presently, the emphasis for the content of DL programmes seemsto fall on the following subject areas: tools for building and managing DLs,the DL in a social and cultural environment; and preservation andcontinuity of digital documents and artefacts (Cole, 2002).

The Masters’ Degree course in Digital Library Learning (DILL) is offeredby the European Commission initiative, the Erasmus Mundus programme,and this appears to be the only programme totally devoted to digital librariesinEurope at themoment, and as far as couldbe established, in theworld (at thetime of writing). It is taught at three European universities: the University ofOslo,Norway; theUniversity ofTalinn,Estonia, and theUniversity of Parma,Italy, and all studentsmust have already completed a degree in LIS or a relatedarea. Entry is restricted to 12 citizens of ‘Third Countries’, and eight fromEuropean Union countries. In keeping with its emphasis on internationalisa-tion, experts from all over the world, in librarianship and computer science,participate in the programme as guest lecturers. These include, for example,Carol Kuhtlhau, IanWitten, SteveWitt, Vittore Casarosa, Emil Levin, DavidLankes, Paul Sturges, Ron Day, Lilian Cassells, Michael Malinconico,Edward Fox, Ton de Bruyn, Alyson Pickard, Pat Dixon, Federico Monaco,Carlo Menghini, and Marisa Ponti, to name just a few.

While the findings of previous studies on the work of, or education fordigital librarianship suggest new aspects of an emerging profession’scompetencies, they are now rather dated or not based on a comprehensivestudy, and no research study has fully investigated digital librarianship from aholistic view of what is required now, or what will be required imminently andin the foreseeable future, in Europe or elsewhere. A further deficiency in thesestudies is that they all reveal, to a greater or lesser extent, rather cautious, ifnot retrospective positions on education for digital librarianship. Planningfor the future does not necessary evolve from the results of an investigationinto what is presently being done. The future can seldom be extrapolated fromthe past: progress does not occur in such a linear way (life would be easier if itdid!), but rather with sudden jolts and lurches, and sometimes changing trackentirely. Sometimes, a more imaginative or creative vision gives space forreconciliation of previously clashing views, or shows what is no longernecessary, as new territory is explored together. Such an approach wouldunderstand DLs as phenomena that integrate social, cultural, economical,political and technological perspectives, as Weech (2005) suggests.

DLs are complex sociotechnical systems, in that they have both atechnological infrastructure and a social purpose and effect. The socio-technical systems perspective stimulates and encourages an inter-disciplinaryapproach. As noted, while much work exploring education for LIS isconcerned with content that should be included in programmes, or meetingaccreditation requirements, or exploring modes of delivery, DLs present anextraordinary opportunity for librarians to reformulate their knowledge

Education for Digital Librarians: Some European Observations 225

base, consolidate their affiliations with other information professionals andcultural custodians, enhance their professional presence by becoming moreengaged with the communities they serve, and meet the new demands ofcontemporary technologies.

Presently, the central impetus for the development of DLs in Europe hascome from the European Union Parliament, as noted above, in their effortsto ‘digitise’ Europe. These aspirations are generally more economic thancultural, more financial than social, raising educational levels is motivatedby the desire to have a more productive workforce: much as one mightexpect from government, perhaps. Nonetheless, the European Union is, andhas been, very active in the establishment of digital libraries, in particularEuropeana, as noted. But what has been almost totally ignored has been theeducation of those who will work on such endeavours, with much attentionbeing paid to the technological aspects, and little attention to providingeducational programmes for the information workers who will act as theinformation interventionists in the processes of knowledge creation, whichare so necessary if an information society in Europe is to become a reality.

It has become increasingly clear that regeneration of the informationprofessions, particularly in Europe, is now essential, given the presentcontext and government directives. They have, unfortunately, long beeninvisible or, if noticed at all, have suffered from a very poor professionalimage. The stereotypical image is of the female ‘institutionalised’ librarian,trapped in a warehouse of printed materials over which she must keepguard, while she protects Culture and Canon.2 She is, by definition, amissionary of high culture, erudite and literary; the supporter of order, theupholder and defender of the status quo, the judge of good and subversivetexts and at the same time out of touch with contemporary society — old-fashioned, technophobic and unable to cope in a digital world. There is littlepublic understanding of what a librarian, archivist or museologist actually‘do’, beyond the obvious and superficial, and sometimes this is the casewithin the professions themselves too.

Several researchers have suggested that cultural institutions of all kinds,and libraries in particular, will be (or possibly already have been) maderedundant by ICTs (e.g. Godin, 2010; Inayatullah, 2010; Morrison, 2010;

2. Dee Garrison calls librarians ‘apostles of culture’.

3. Gregg Sapp’s (2007) annotated bibliography on the ‘history of the future of libraries’

illustrates this point well.

4. For example, on 23 January 2007, the Wired Campus Blog of The Chronicle, an editorial that

appeared in the Washington Post, suggested that books had become irrelevant, and that today’s

librarians were more concerned with teaching information literacy skills that comprised

mastering computer skills.

226 Sue Myburgh and Anna Maria Tammaro

Prinsen, 2001; Rausing, 2010).3,4 This may well be the underlying sentimentexpressed in Europe’s Digital Agenda, as expediency and the possibility ofreplacing manual activities by technologies form a leitmotif to these plans.The professionals and the collections they manage are all predicted to sharethis fate as information is increasingly digitised and networked, leavinginformation technologists and computer scientists in charge to develop newtools, capture content and provide access.

Superficially, this sounds eminently logical. Close examination reveals itsabsurdity: why would ICTs (and indeed, how could they?) replace librariansspecifically, when they have not replaced the many other disciplinary andprofessional areas where they are used? There has been no suggestion thatICTs will replace accountants, plumbers, lawyers or teachers — even thoughsome processes of their work may have changed. Perhaps librarians andother information workers are singled out because they deal with‘information’, and thus, purportedly, occupy the same professional spaceas computer scientists and other technologists. This would suggest thatfuture information professionals should become computer scientists. At thisjuncture, when considering what education may be necessary for futurelibrarians, it is more critical to consider some of the wider and morefundamental issues that are either not considered in this regard, or havebeen tackled in fragmented ways, and which remain unresolved.

10.3. Pressing European Problems in LIS Education

Education for information work in the digital virtual environment requires afundamental conceptual shift — one might even say a ‘paradigm shift’ if thatphrase had not become so tired — as ICTs open up entirely new possibilitieswhich are not achievable using physical information resources. It should beremembered, in the face of such change, that there is no immutable set offixed principles for librarians and therefore no need to cling to those whichwere determined by their prevailing social, cultural and technologicalcontexts some time ago: these must be reinterpreted. Librarians have longcome to constitute themselves within specific ideological paradigms andsocial programs, but often without any real critical engagement of thosecontextual framings, or consciousness of any need to maintain currency withongoing social change. Hawkins and Battin (1998) warn that, ‘When simplechange becomes transformational change, the desire for continuity becomesa dysfunctional mirage, and the dysfunctionality of librarianship wasexpressed by Frohmann (1994) as ‘its perennial and increasingly well-founded anxiety of irrelevance’.

In line with the overall ambition of the European Commission to useICTs to improve living standards, strengthen the economy, provide

Education for Digital Librarians: Some European Observations 227

employment, raise educational levels, and in general create positive socialchange, it would seem that reconsideration of the fundamental elementsof librarianship, as a discipline and as a profession, should be revisited, sothat the professional contribution of librarianship to the Europeaninformation society can be elucidated and made effective. Four issues canbe identified.

1. Firstly, the nature of librarianship (and indeed any ‘information work’)must be explained as a discipline/profession.

2. Secondly, and closely related, there is the necessity for a theoreticalframework which, at the same time, would suggest what is core knowledgefor the domain.

3. Thirdly, one of the necessities for a theoretical structure which can beunderstood by all involved in a possible metacommunity of informationprofessionals (across libraries, archives and museums) is conceptualclarity: in particular, an operational definition for the term ‘information’.This is increasingly important, as the Europeana project illustrates well.

4. Finally, the particular social purpose or responsibility of librarians in theinformation society must be elucidated.

10.4. Why These Issues Are Important: A Discussion

Librarianship (or LIS) can be described as a discipline/profession, as itcomprises theoretical and practical aspects. A profession can be defined bythe role it plays in society, but it nonetheless needs a disciplinary ortheoretical base to inform its praxis: it requires a supporting discipline whichexhibits epistemological commitments and develops theory which supportspractice. A discipline can be characterised, according to Klein, as ‘[T]hetools, methods, procedures, exempla, concepts and theories that accountcoherently for a set of objects or subjects’ (Klein, 1990). Disciplinescomprise an object of study, theories, and epistemological commitments, asdisciplines are a means for, in Foucauldian terms, constructing andcontrolling knowledge production. A discipline therefore includes adisciplinary culture, which provides an identity, credentials and values forits practitioners. It imparts, in addition, a particular view of the object of itsstudy and this is what commonly differentiates disciplines: the objects andthe way in which they are studied, which Kuhn (1962/1970) called aparadigm or world view. The knowledge domain depends, in turn, onidentified objects of study, and established methods and procedures forexamination of these objects within the discipline. Theory is the core of anacademic discipline (as opposed to its practical expression as a profession),and concepts are the core of a theory.

228 Sue Myburgh and Anna Maria Tammaro

Parsons suggests that there are several core criteria which distinguishprofessional work from the work of other occupations, namely a ‘requirementof formal technical training ... giving prominence to an intellectual compo-nent’; the development of ‘skills in some form of its use’; and the ‘sociallyresponsible uses’ of the profession (Parsons, 1968, his italics). Among thevarious distinguishing criteria of a profession are: a core body of knowledgeoutlining and governing its practices, a social problem or need which theprofession uses its knowledge base to deal with, and a degree of autonomy.Some definitions add characteristics such as a regulatory body, the existenceof a professional association, standards of competence and university-leveltraining. Abbott (1988, p. 8) defines professions as ‘exclusive occupationalgroups applying somewhat abstract knowledge to particular cases’, and hebelieves that a profession’s strongest claim of jurisdiction over a problem isthat its knowledge system is effective in the task domain. Blackler (1995)compares command of the abstractions which constitute a knowledge domainto a ‘black box’ of professional knowledge (c.f. Latour and Woolgar, 1986).This professional knowledge is not shared by other professions: separationand isolation give authority to such knowledge (Blackler, 1995). This suggeststhat both a theoretical foundation and a clear social purpose are necessary ininformation work, particularly when the match between future socialdemands and professional competencies is made. This connection has notyet been fully explored or enunciated in LIS or its associated informationprofessions. Instead, there seems to have been a steady drift towardsincreasing the technological components of such courses.

There are problems with developing theory in LIS, however, which arelong-standing. The dearth of theory and an underlying philosophy for thefield has long been noted and lamented in the professional literature.Because of this lack of theory, LIS presents what Foucault (in Sheridan,1980; Foucault, 1972, 1980) calls a ‘low epistemological profile’; the field hasalso been referred to as an ‘academic impostor’ (Manley, 1991). By 1931,Waples felt that librarianship was ready for a ‘critical, academic approach’and that in order for a scientific study of librarianship to develop, aninterdisciplinary focus was necessary, demanding contact with otherdisciplines (perhaps recognising the orthogonal nature of information andknowledge). Butler (1933) famously stated that librarians are singularlyuninterested in the theoretical aspects of their profession. In 1934, J. P.Danton was prompted to publish an article entitled ‘Plea for a Philosophy ofLibrarianship’ in which he noted. When the library profession becomesthoroughly conscious of precisely what it is trying to do and why it is doingit, we may hope to see a very significant change affecting not only librariesand librarians but also the society in which they serve. The bewilderedgroping which characterises so much of our activity is largely the result oflack of a definite conception of our purposes (Danton, 1934).

Education for Digital Librarians: Some European Observations 229

In 2003, Floridi came to the conclusion that ‘There is no specific orunique theory, science or other body of knowledge studied by LISy’, eventhough he believes the field ‘has a phenomenologically-biased level ofinvestigation’. There is, controversially, no ‘information theory’5 that couldserve as the basis for establishing what information work is, or what it couldbe in the Information Society. There is no ‘theory of information’6 whichrelates to the social roles and responsibilities of librarians or otherinformation workers, involved with solving society’s information problemsand engaging in a social mission of upliftment. The paucity of theory andepistemological commitment for LIS leaves the discipline/professionparticularly vulnerable to the fundamental shifts in its frame of referencethat have occurred over the past two decades, and this is clear when oneconsiders the long-standing tradition of apprenticeship, or training futurelibrarians by having them work in libraries, that prevails in Italy, and is alsofound at the British Library and elsewhere.

Epistemology is concerned with how knowledge is created, and withproviding a philosophical grounding for deciding what kinds of knowledgeare possible within a knowledge domain, ensuring that they are bothadequate and legitimate. Without such a framework, it is difficult to provideevidence of either disciplinary or professional identification. Epistemologicalconsensus can only be achieved once a theoretical framework has beenestablished, comprising an ontology, taxonomy and teleology accompaniedby axiological obligation.7 In particular, conceptual clarity is requiredconcerning the object of the LIS knowledge domain. The matter ofidentification of epistemological commitments for the field is farfrom settled, and there has been a recent resurgence of interest in thisproblem, notably by researchers such as Capurro, Fleissner and Hofkirch-ner (1999), Hofkirchner (2001) and Hjørland (in the majority of his work)and others.

5. Shannon and Weaver’s ‘Information Theory’ is more suitable for computer scientists and

telecommunications engineers, than IPs.

6. What is known as ‘information theory’, and sometimes ‘communication theory’, is that

developed by Shannon and Weaver, who were telecommunications engineers. However, this

theory continues to be used as a basis for formulation of meaning for the terms data,

information and knowledge (e.g. Floridi, 2005), but it is, in fact, concerned with signalling, or

the transmission of data.

7. Hofkirchner agrees that the development of an ontology is the first necessary step:

‘In this chapter I attempted to show that, without addressing ontological questions, it is

difficult, if not impossible, to arrive at an understanding of information phenomena that is

capable of providing a single comprehensive concept required for a unified theory of

information’ (Hofkirchner, 2001).

230 Sue Myburgh and Anna Maria Tammaro

10.5. The Evasive Concept of ‘Information’

A discipline or profession, as a discourse community, determines themeaning of its specialised vocabulary, which has a symbolic value for thatcommunity and distinguishes it from other communities by prescribing itsboundaries. A lexical register provides a coherent system of meanings,which describes the entities that are the object or focus of the domain andthe relationships that are assumed to hold among them. The assumptionsand generalisations drawn from such terminology are used to guidepractice. Herold (2001) states that information is the ‘deepest commonagenda’ of the information professions: ‘Information has emblazoned theheraldic crest of our profession, regardless of what terms and titles havecome to describe our work’ (Herold, 2001), whereas Frohmann claims thatthe key words of the IP domain are ‘information’, ‘information users’ and‘information uses’, and these ‘are used to set the limits of possible questions,issues, hypotheses, demonstrations, data and research methodologies’(Frohmann, 1994).

The definition of ‘information’ has itself become a famous subject ofintense scrutiny and debate. Innumerable meanings have been ascribed tothis term, even within the professional and disciplinary context, withresulting conceptual confusion. Feather and Sturges describe information as‘Possibly the most used and least precisely used, term in the library andinformation world’ (Feather and Sturges, 1997). Attempts to locate alldefinitions of ‘information’ have been made, most notably by Schrader(1986), who, in 1986, counted 134 separate notions of the concept of‘information’ within the field of Information Science alone’. He noted thatthe specification of the term ‘information’ was central to the field, and yet, inan earlier study (Schrader, 1983), he had noted a number of problems in theliterature concerning the definition of ‘information science’, in particular,‘y the multiplicity of vague, contradictory, and sometimes bizarre notionsof the nature of the term ‘‘information’’’ (Schrader, 1993).

What is of concern within the European context (as elsewhere) is that theterm is used interchangeably with ‘technology’ or ICTs, even though they dohave different meanings and are two quite different concepts, each with theirown genesis, practice and effects. However, quite apart from this, there hasbeen a perhaps even more substantial historical connection between physicaldocuments (such as the monograph or codex) and information, because ofthe ideas recorded in such physical artefacts. Information work as adiscipline has become characterised by the methods it has developed tomanage documents, with the emphasis on materiality extended into praxis.The location of praxis (‘the library’, ‘the archives’, ‘the museum’) is at theheart of the discipline/profession of information work, and the very wordsconjure up visions of shelves of deliberately placed and annotateddocuments and artefacts.

Education for Digital Librarians: Some European Observations 231

While in the United States and concomitantly much of the English-speaking world, educational programmes for the information professionstend to follow the model set by Melvil Dewey and so they are predicatedlargely on the archetypal physical document and the management ofwarehouses of documents. Managing collections of physical documents gaverise to what is now often considered ‘core’ to the field, such as cataloguing,classification, thesaurus construction and so forth. In some ways, thisprominence is perhaps even more pronounced in Europe, where largecollections of manuscripts and incunabula exist, and these have interest andimportance as artefacts, sometimes perhaps even more than the informationthey contain. In the digital world, this necessity for some kind of physicaland visible order and access no longer exists; furthermore, describing eachdocument uniquely can be performed in different ways, and often bycomputers themselves. One only has to consider the success of Google in thisregard. However, the very terminology (‘digital library’) suggests that DLsare little more than a reincarnation of the libraries that have existed forhundreds of years, even though the term remains unclear and contested,having a variety of meanings which range from ‘database’ to ‘a digitisedcollection of material’ similar to that which one might find in a traditionallibrary. The definition most frequently quoted and used is that developed bythe Digital Library Federation (DLF):

Digital libraries are organizations that provide the resources, including the

specialized staff, to select, structure, offer intellectual access to, interpret,

distribute, preserve the integrity of, and ensure the persistence over time of

collections of digital works so that they are readily and economically available

for use by a defined community or set of communities. (DLF, 1998, online)

The materiality of the document, and its apparent ‘disappearance’ whendigitised, perplexes the issue. But the objective of libraries — and DLs inparticular — is to promote intellectual activity, and this can best be achievedby understanding how knowledge is created and for what purposes, besidesknowing how to find it amongst recorded literature. This would suggest adramatic modification of the work of librarians, and, of course, theireducation, even though books and other technologies, such as ICTs, areonly means to an end: the achievement of the social responsibilities of theprofession.

10.6. Proposed Definitions of Knowledge, Information and

Document

A useful way of understanding these terms for the purposes of laterconstructing a theoretical framework, as well as an intellectual construct or

232 Sue Myburgh and Anna Maria Tammaro

mental schema on which to base an educational programme has beenproposed by Myburgh elsewhere (2009). The creation and acquisition ofknowledge in individuals, organisations and society, is the ultimate aim ofthe information professions. As knowledge is concerned with what anindividual — and a community — knows, at a fundamental level it must berelated to the creation of information and data, but it seems impossible tounderstand either data or information without first comprehending knowl-edge. The following definitions are offered.

Knowledge is that which we ‘know’, accumulating it over a lifetimethrough direct and vicarious experience. We ponder and puzzle over ourpersonal experiences in order to make meaning; we also deliberate over whatwe are told by others, bearing in mind that their accounts may be,consciously or unconsciously, distorted. We are also creative, and haveflashes of insight and invention. Our personalities, competencies andabilities, as well as our existing knowledge, will shape what we come toknow.

Information, as far as LIS is concerned, can be considered to be that partof knowledge which we choose to share with certain people at certain times,in certain ways. The only way in which we can share (or communicate) ourknowledge (or ideas) is to represent it in some way: inter alia, dancing,singing, drawing or speaking. In other words, symbols must stand in for ourideas, and these symbols must have a shared meaning which is usually isculturally derived.8

Information may be represented in spoken language, for example: spokenlanguage can in turn, be recorded in writing, in letters of one of severalalphabets, which are also cultural symbols which have no inherent meaning.Letters of the alphabet can, in turn, be digitised — turned into binary code,or a sequence of electronic pulses, recognisable only to a machine. All ofthese — the pen, the paper, the print, the electronic pulse, theelectromagnetic tape, the hard disk — create the corporeal ‘document’: thecontainer of information. The term ‘document’ is interpreted here to meanany natural object, artefact, model or other entity that carries informationor which is, in some way, an encoded representation of knowledge. Briet

8. Saussure distinguished between the signifier (word or term) that indicates or represents the

signified, which is the concept, entity or phenomenon existing in a material or social sense. He

argues that a word is an arbitrary sound (or, when written, collection of signs or letters) that is

associated with an idea or concept: it cannot, in itself, have ‘meaning’. Whatever meaning is

allocated to a word or sound is associated with the language use of a particular community.

According to de Saussure, ‘the signifier must unfold the signified’ (de Saussure, 1959, pp. 67–70)

but this can occur only within a language community. Wittgenstein further suggests that

knowledge is effectively embedded in language.

Education for Digital Librarians: Some European Observations 233

famously compared a document to an antelope in a zoo (Briet, 1951,translated by Day, 2006). The term can be considered as more or lesssynonymous with the term ‘text’ as it is used in linguistics and discourseanalysis. As Day (2006) explained, Briet’s idea of a document goes beyondthe usual understanding of a document being a fixed form, and allows us toconceive ‘an unlimited horizon of physical forms and aesthetic formats fordocuments and an unlimited horizon of techniques and technologies (and of‘documentary agencies’ employing these) in the service of multitudes ofparticular cultures’.

But it is the ideas that such a document contains, the meaning or ideasthat the codes and symbols represent, that is the ‘stuff’ that librarians, andother information professionals, must deal with in order to achieve theirprofessional social obligations. The document exists to record re-representa-tions of ideas in order to overcome spatio-temporal constraints. To succeedin their role in transforming lives, the contribution to knowledge and thecreation of new knowledge must be encouraged, by librarians guiding usersto other ideas which may be relevant, and encouraging them to becomecreators and producers of knowledge and information as well as ‘users’.That a document is now digital rather than physical makes no difference, ifthese definitions are accepted.

There is a strong tradition of librarians being very familiar with thecontent of the documents they managed, in Europe in particular. Thecontent of books was central to the ‘scholar-librarian’: a tradition whichbegan with Callimachus of Cyrene, the librarian of Alexandria, andcontinued with (inter alia and in no particular order) luminaries such as SirThomas Bodley (1545–1613), Ludovico Antonio Murator (1672–1750),Anthony Panizzi (1797–1789), Zenodotus (c280BC), Jorge Luis Borges(1899–1986), Arna Bontemps (1902–1973), Pierre le Courayer (1681–1776)and Thomas James (1572–1629). If librarians and other informationworkers continue to be associated with the documents they deal with,rather than the ideas that such documents contain, then they can bejustifiably concerned about their future in the networked, digitised world.Shera expressed this clearly: if LIS were to perform its social role indisseminating knowledge, two questions needed to be answered: ‘What isknowledge; or more specifically, what are the characteristics of recordedknowledge? and How it is put to work?’ (Shera, 1972, p. 176). These are thequestions which deserve close examination as digital cultural institutionsappear.

What DLs make very clear is that there is a difference between thedocument as a physical object to be managed, and as a container of ideas.Documents can achieve this even more successfully when they are digitised.The DL dematerialises the document, exposing the content or ideas itcontains. The DELOS grand vision is that ‘Digital Libraries should enable

234 Sue Myburgh and Anna Maria Tammaro

any citizen to access all human knowledge anytime and anywhere, in afriendly, multi-modal, efficient and effective way, by overcoming barriers ofdistance, language, and culture and by using multiple Internet-connecteddevices’ (ERCIM news, 2006, online). The possibility of viewing particularand specialised collections of unique and culturally significant documentsand artefacts from anywhere distinguishes DLs from other types of internetresources. It is this that becomes the ‘stuff’ or ‘matter’ that the digitallibrarian will manage (provide access to, describe, organise, and explain)and in this way, digital cultural workers are perfectly poised to perform thisfunction of contributing to social well-being.

The duality of the performance of library and information work (orderand protection) and its purpose (intellectual enrichment or augmentation) isnot clearly articulated in the ongoing conversation about education fordigital librarianship. The seemingly schizophrenic nature of the libraryconcept — which it is, at the same time, a warehouse of books (ordocuments) and a phrontistery (or thinking place; a place of ideas) —illustrates the peculiar split personality of a document: its corporealexistence and the intangible nature of the ideas it contains. This must beaddressed. Determining whether a document is an information carrier orinformation container, or understanding it as both, is a fundamentalquestion to be answered in order to design education for those informationprofessionals who will work primarily with digitised documents. The ideathat librarians should be more concerned with the ideas that documentscontain, rather than with the techniques of managing physical documents, isnot new: Shera explained that ‘science deals with things ... whereas librariansdeal with ideas, concepts, and thoughts. Librarians are, or should be,characterised by their knowledge, not their instrumentation’ (Shera, inMachlup & Mansfield, 1983). This suggests that the work of librarians isunique and can be distinguished from technologists, and groups together thework of librarians, archivists and museologists, all of whom seek to preservecultural memory, or records and evidence of what has so far come to beknown.

10.7. Purpose of Digital Librarianship

Perhaps the most significant change brought about by DLs will be not somuch the new roles assumed by digital librarians, but the shift in focus fromthe library as an organisation or institution to the social responsibilities oflibrarians. As long ago as 1972, Wasserman advocated the notion oflibrarians as ‘change agents’, in contrast to the assumption that librarianshave a ‘bookish orientation, elite values, institutional focus and who share a

Education for Digital Librarians: Some European Observations 235

fundamental commitment to the transcendent values of books and reading’(Wasserman, 1972). For Wasserman ‘the genuine issue in the culture is notwhether individuals have free access to suggestive prose, but whether theyhave access to the intelligence to aid them to improve their social, politicaland economic conditions’ (p. 242).

This places new responsibilities on the shoulders of digital librarians. Nolonger will it be sufficient to provide classification numbers which indicatethe physical positions of certain information resources in response toreference questions. Wasserman insisted that libraries must transform ‘froman institution concentrated upon collection and procedures to a clientsystem’ (Wasserman, 1972). Instead, a far more personal and perhapscontinuous relationship will form between librarian and user. Foucault’snotion of a library was as a place to explore knowledge, rather than to fix it,for a library provides a context for never-ending and multi-facetedknowledge creation, as each text located and read strengthens knowledgebut never makes it final. Rather, a new text comes to make sense only in thecontexts of those already accessed and used (in the knowledge alreadyaccumulated). In the Bibliotheque fantastique, there is no longer a canon(implying hegemony or privileging some ideas over others); insteadeverything is potentially valuable, depending on the individual searcher.Foucault (1970) writes that ‘the imaginary is not formed in opposition toreality as its denial or compensation; it grows among signs, from bookto book, in the interstices of repetitions and commentaries; it is born andtakes shape in the interval between books. It is a phenomenon of the library’(p. 91).

The ‘interval between books’ is understood here to indicate the uniquelyhuman characteristics of making sense of what has been read, and inspiringcreativity. This view was repeated more recently, when Anderson deniedthat the library, as a place, is a warehouse of documents which is a staticcontainer of knowledge and information. Like Foucault, he suggests it israther a context for knowledge creation9 (Anderson, 1992). Anderson (1992)continues that the goal of the library must be to ‘enable the reader or authorto frame knowledge without constraints and focus energy towards thecreation of knowledge rather than on understanding an imposed, externalorganisation of that knowledge. Freedom exists when the author/reader canbuild upon the linkages and paths of knowledge in a flexible, multifacetedworld’ (p. 114).

9. As well as, no doubt, the forming of one’s own views. Foucault, Marx, Engels, and Lenin’s

wife, amongst others, were known as enthusiastic users of libraries.

236 Sue Myburgh and Anna Maria Tammaro

Following Habermas, libraries effectively provide access to the publicsphere10; a place where market forces can lose power and where individualscan (or perhaps should) be heard. Such an approach would involve payingattention to the present social milieu, with its emphasis on consumerism,globalisation, cultural neo-imperialism, and the power and unaccountabilityof corporations. Libraries, through their control of access to information,are able to influence the development of opinions, and assist in the criticalinterpretation of information, while at the same time assuming and main-taining a neutral position, using the approach of Foucault’s Bibliothequefantastique. This means providing all points of view on particular issues, sothat individuals can draw their own conclusions: information is neverethically inert.

Knowledge can be understood in quite different ways and have quitedifferent, and sometimes contradictory meanings (as indeed can theselection of ideas to share, and the ways in which these are (re)presented).This is a view endorsed by, inter alia, Foucault, who suggested thatdiscursive formations constrain how things are understood — in otherwords, how things are negotiated will affect the results of such negotiations.The content of a text can be considered a social phenomenon shaped by itscontext, which includes the circumstances under which the text was created,and its relationship with other texts. A text can be considered as a node in anetwork (Foucault, 1972, 1980), and therefore a material element within adiscursive formation. Barthes sees a text as ‘a methodological field’ (Barthes,1977), or a ‘network’ (Barthes, 1977) that ‘exists in the movement of adiscourse’ (Barthes, 1977). Individual texts are implicated in an intertextualand material weave that forms their context: any text is thus an embodimentof connections across a literature base, linking various works, and

10. Habermas (1962) argues in his book The Structural Transformation of the Bourgeois Public

Sphere that art criticism, social criticism and literary criticism developed in public spaces like

coffee houses. They became organised in the sense that criticism developed particular forms of

communication in order to talk and write about social, political and cultural issues in society.

These particular modes of communication were maintained because of their appeal to and belief

in rational discussion within the public sphere. The success of the public sphere, according to

Habermas, depends upon:

� the extent of access (as close to universal as possible),� the degree of autonomy (the citizens must be free of coercion),� the rejection of hierarchy (so that each might participate on an equal footing),� the rule of law (particularly the subordination of the state),� the quality of participation (the common commitment to the ways of logic).� rational-critical discourse (Rutherford, 2000).

Education for Digital Librarians: Some European Observations 237

displaying and articulating a particular discourse, as Barthes (1977)explains:

[The Text is] woven entirely with citations, references, echoes, cultural

languages (what language is not?), antecedent and contemporary, which cut

across it through and through in a vast stereophony. The intertextual in which

every text is held, it itself being the text-between of another text, is not to be

confused with some origin of the text: to try to find the ‘sources’, the

‘influences’ of a work, is to fall in with the myth of filiation; the citations which

go to make up a text are anonymous, untraceable, and yet already read: they

are quotations without inverted commas. (Barthes, 1977, p. 160)

Barthes considers this intertextuality to be important for the fullunderstanding or meaning creation of any given text, and of course thedigital library, with its metadata and networked links, can make this easilypossible — once again reinforcing the point that the librarian must be awareof ideas and their formation and creation. Furthermore, the complex natureof texts, whether digital or analogue, is important to all informationprofessionals, whether librarians or archivists or museum curators. But thepublishers, printers, typesetters and editors also add to (or possibly detractfrom) the meaning of a text. Students of digital librarianship must be certainthat digitised documents do not provide a source of confusion rather thanclarification, particularly in a cultural moment which exhibits dependencyon audio-visual communication techniques. It cannot be assumed that thedigital version of a text is equivalent in every way.

This problem was explored, in particular, by McKenzie, who consideredthe ‘sociology of the text’ (McKenzie, 1986). He stated that ‘forms affectsense’, a position interpreted as Chartier as follows:

A text is always conveyed by a specific materiality; the written object upon

which it is copied or printed, the voice that reads, recites, or otherwise utters it,

the performance that allows it to be heard. Each of these forms of publication

is arranged in its own unique fashion, and each form, in different ways,

influences how meaning is produced. (Chartier, 2004, online)

These views would suggest that much work is required on interpretationof digital documents, and, in particular, the ways in which informationprofessionals can assist users not only in identifying and locating them, butin interpreting and making meaning of them: activities that informationprofessionals have typically not engaged in, but now must be emphasised ifall texts are presented on the same machine.

238 Sue Myburgh and Anna Maria Tammaro

10.8. Digital and Transliteracies

Bearing in mind the social and political obligations of informationintermediaries, a new (or modified) role emerges for digital librarians: asteachers of critical digital media (or trans) literacies. Because of the complexnature of information as indicated above, and mediating technologies,digital literacy (and interpretation or making meaning) is critical in adigitised information environment. Some have suggested that it is a‘metaliteracy’:

The development of our personal information infrastructure is roughly

equivalent to our level of information literacy. Thus, information literacy is

best considered to be a continuum of skills, concepts, attitudes, and

experiences related to information access, understanding, evaluation, commu-

nication, application, creation, and value. (SCONUL, 1999, p. 18)

This resonates with the notion of building ‘civilisational competence’which Caidi describes:

libraries as social and cultural institutions have a role to play in enabling

individuals to acquire the types of skills and competencies that extend far

beyond the realm of the library walls to encompass practices that translate into

various spheres of individuals’ lives, including their participation in political,

economic and civic life. (Caidi, 2006)

In 2003, the European Commission published eLearning: Designingtomorrow’s education, which emphasised the point that everybody shouldhave the skills to live and work in an information society, and specificallythat they should have access to digital culture, for which digital literacy wasessential. Digital literacy is understood to be fundamental to the possibilityof elearning,11 enabling people to overcome a lack of formal education.‘Digital literacy’ was defined by the Commission as

the acquisition of the technical competence for using information and

communication technologies, understood in a broad sense, in addition to the

acquisition of the basic practical and intellectual capacities for individuals to

completely develop themselves in the Information Society. (European

Commission, 2003, p. 29)

11. The European Commission defined elearning as: ‘the use of new multimedia technologies

and Internet for improving the quality of learning by means of access to resources and services,

and long distance collaborations and exchanges’ (European Commission, 2003, p. 26).

Education for Digital Librarians: Some European Observations 239

However, if we once again distinguish between the physical and theintellectual, it is easy to see that the ability to use ICTs is only one step inachieving digital literacy, as any literacy (e.g. of printed texts or audio-visualmedia) goes beyond technical skill and implies that there is interpretationand that meaning is made. ‘As social practices, all literacies—includinginformation literacy—are situated responses to specific political economiesof educational contexts and classrooms’ (Luke & Kapitzke, 2000). In 1999,Luke and Kapitzke noted that

Within the technologisation of language and literacy in cyberspace and

hypermedia, notions of ‘literacy’ and of being ‘literate’ are being reinvented.

Critical literacy, visual literacy, electronic literacy, digital literacy, internet

literacy, media literacy, technological literacy and multiliteracies (Kress and

Van Leeuwen, 1995; New London Group, 1996; Craver, 1997; Gilster, 1997;

Kubey, 1997; A. Luke, 1997; C. Luke, 1997; Martin, 1997) are but some of the

hybridised forms of textual practices that have been devised in response to,

inter alia, digitised technologies. (Luke and Kapitzke, 1999, online)

Fernando Hervas Soriano and Fulvio Mulatero (2010) saw ‘digitalliteracy’ more inclusively as well as critically’. Digital literacy consists of theability to access digital media and ICT, to understand and critically evaluatedifferent aspects of digital media and media contents and to communicateeffectively in a variety of contexts. Digital competence, as defined in the ECRecommendation on Key Competences (EU, 2006) involves the confidentand critical use of ICT for employment, learning, self-development andparticipation in society. His broad definition of digital competence providesthe necessary context (i.e. the knowledge, skills and attitudes) for working,living and learning in the knowledge society.

Understanding what an ‘author’ (or creator of any text) has thought, howthe idea was formulated and the reasons for its dissemination are allrequisite steps in achieving literacy. Transliteracy is the newest term toappear in the ‘literacy’ family and is strongly related to ‘digital literacy’:briefly, it suggests the ability to understand and ‘read’ different formats ofpresentation of information, such as computer games, videos, tweets, textmessages and so forth. Critical and analytical, or cognitive, abilities are vitalto interpretation and understanding if information is to be useful andtransformative to an individual. Digital librarians must have some under-standing of the different ways in which knowledge can be created in order toassist their users. There is little doubt that education for digital librariansshould provide a sound introduction to methods of knowledge creation aswell as an understanding of critical literacies, because of the number ofquestions that are raised by ICTs and the dissemination of digitiseddocuments, and future constructions and reconstructions of discipline,

240 Sue Myburgh and Anna Maria Tammaro

knowledge and even cultural identity. Howard Winter (as cited byShaughnessy) describes the discipline/profession of librarianship as ‘asystematically acquitted understanding of the nature of knowledge, itssources, its records and the human uses made of its records’ (Winter, citedby Shaughnessy, 1976) and this provides a neat summary of what a digitallibrarian should know.

In other words, digital libraries as social institutions will be understood asfunctions, not places, in a networked information universe, where meaninglies not in documents, but within the information they contain, thoseselections which get read, and the paths taken through the body ofrepresented knowledge which aggregates the results of all the perceptive andcognitive functions undertaken by individuals. This capacity has for toolong been for understood only as a passive provision of a space in whichinformation accumulates. Now, however, this role can be transformed into adeliberative and culturally powerful selection — and so de-selection — of‘what counts’, which surely reveals every aspect of information practice ascontributing to cultural meaning. It is critical now that the informationprofessions define their own intellectual or knowledge domain, which it maybe tacitly realised, is different from other areas of endeavour, but has, todate, not being clearly articulated. It is the part played by librarians asinformation intermediaries or more active ‘interventionists’ (Myburgh,2007) that will keep the ‘library’ concept alive.

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