Volunteering at ASIS&T PNC 2002
Volunteering at ASIS&T PNC 2002 |
While skills and tools may be gained through classroom learning, real knowledge often only comes from experience. In this section, I describe how I obtained practical experience and interacted with professionals through directed fieldwork and service in professional organizations.
I was able to test my skills learned from coursework in professional practice by doing a directed fieldwork. In volunteering at three conferences, I provided a service to the professional community. While these two experiences are vastly different, they represent two major aspects of any career: the practice and the community of practice (in other words, the skills and knowledge to do the job and the people who do that job).
Before entering the MLIS program at the Information School, I worked for the University of Washington Program for Educational Transformation Through Technology (PETTT) as a web applications developer and educational technology researcher. When I went to graduate school, my job with PETTT became a graduate assistantship. During my first year at the iSchool, I assisted PETTT in the development of a non-functional demo for the Washington State Bar Association (WSBA) Council on Public Legal Education (CPLE) Legal Gateway Project, now known as LawForWa.org. The goal of the Legal Gateway Project was to create a public portal to the myriad web sites containing information for the general public on legal issues in Washington State. PETTT and several people at the iSchool were involved in this project due to its relevance to educational technology and content management.
After the demo, I saw an opportunity in the Legal Gateway Project to apply some of the knowledge gained in my MLIS coursework in a real-life setting. During a project meeting, I suggested hiring interns from the Information School to assist in the collection of resources and creation of a taxonomy for the web site. They asked me if I would be willing to work as an intern on the methods and technology they would use to collect and categorize the resources. I consented, and I immediately started the process for setting up a Directed Fieldwork through Lynnea Erickson, the Information School's fieldwork coordinator.
In the summer of 2002, I went to work for the WSBA. My mission was twofold:
I worked with a group of other interns from the Information School, UW Law School, and Seattle University Law School who were collecting resources and suggesting terms for the taxonomy. Marc Lampson, a PhD student at the Information School with a background in law, was the supervisor for the interns. The other iSchool interns, since they had some experience with taxonomies, teamed up with the law students to help them choose terms. My role was to draft the structure of the taxonomy, create a database to hold the terms and records, and load the collected resources into the database.
My coursework in the MLIS program had greatly influenced my view of taxonomic structures. I believed that faceted classification -- the multi-dimensional, poly-hierarchical categorization of information, was the best method (see the section on Classification and Information Architecture for my argument). After taking classes on Organization of Information and Resources (LIS 530) and Classification Theory (LIS 535), I felt confident that I understood the concepts involved in constructing a faceted classification scheme. However, conveying this understanding to a group of law students and to the Legal Gateway Project team proved to be quite challenging.
I consulted with Judge Marlin Appelwick (CPLE Chair), Pam Inglesby (WSBA Education Manager) and Marc Lampson on the facets we should use for the taxonomy. We came up with four a priori dimensions: Purpose, Type, Topic, and Question. Isolates in each facet were to be arranged hierarchically. For instance, "Employment -- Discrimination -- Age" was an isolate for the Topic facet. I then created a blank MS Excel spreadsheet for collecting resources.
In one of the first meetings with the interns, I explained the concept of faceted classification and introduced the spreadsheet. I laid out guidelines for selecting terms and notation for creating categories. My presentation was met with nods from the iSchool interns and perplexed expressions from the Law School interns. It was then I realized that faceted classification might be too complicated a concept to convey to non-information professionals. So, taking a lesson from the Photoshop Workshops, I suggested to Marc that we team iSchool interns with Law School interns and assign each team of 2 to a different area of the law.
He did so, and the interns went about collecting and categorizing resources in their spreadsheets. We continued to meet as a group and individually with Marc Lampson once a week to discuss our progress. By the end of Summer quarter, we had a fledgling (though imperfect) taxonomy and a modest collection of over 1000 resources.
Meanwhile, I worked with Eric Maddox, PETTT web and database developer, to create an Entity Relationship Diagram (ERD) and logical schema for the database that would store the records. From this, we decided on a system architecture that would best accommodate the data design.
Eric began building the data storage mechanism while I created an interface for uploading, editing and viewing the documents. We connected the database and the interface together and began testing the basic functionality.
Before loading the records collected by the interns into the database, I had to clean up the spreadsheets. I combined the separate files into one spreadsheet and started the arduous process of normalizing the data. After a week of this, I began to see problems with the approach we had taken. Very few of the interns had truly understood the purpose of the classification process, mostly due to a lack of collaboration with their teams. The terms some chose were full of legal jargon, while others used entry terms to describe categories. Different people had different conventions for representing the terms, and few had followed the guidelines I had given them at the beginning of the quarter. In short, it was a mess.
I did my best to clean up the data and load it into the database, but the technology was having problems as well. Theoretically, everything should have worked, but we were stymied by the idiosyncrasies of the platform & approach we had chosen. In the end, we opted for a simpler, more scalable system.
As with many projects involving technology, we ran into some frustrating obstacles, such as scalability and performance problems. I also encountered firsthand some of the difficulties of interdisciplinary teamwork. Our team suffered from a lack of collaboration and clear communication, possibly due to the differences in language between the law students and the librarianship students.
In spite of these challenges, the project was finished to the satisfaction of the stakeholders, and we came away with a greater appreciation for the intricacies of taxonomy construction.
I have continued to work with Eric and other PETTT team members to guide the development of the Legal Gateway web site, now called LawForWa.org. They are nearing a public release of the site, but much work remains behind the scenes on the content management system, scalability and speed of the technology, and, of course, the taxonomy. The Topic facet was too vague and became too bloated with terms, so I have suggested breaking it out into three sub-facets: Problem, Context, and Strategy. The Question facet was also loaded with a great deal of duplicates and vagaries, and I have recommended arranging it hierarchically as well, according to the need addressed in each question. I will be working with the LawForWa team to refine their taxonomy and test its utility with the potential users of the site.
Several years before beginning the MLIS program at the University of Washington Information School, I worked for the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington, DC (a national professional organization for scientists). I was able to help plan their annual meeting and interact with influential scientists from around the world. As a result of that experience, I became a firm believer in professional and academic organizations and their power to define, direct, and advocate a profession or discipline.
When I started my graduate studies at the iSchool, I was very interested in being involved in the various professional organizations in Library & Information Science (LIS). I attended several events held by the Special Libraries Association (SLA), the American Library Association (ALA), and the American Society for Information Science & Technology (ASIS&T). The community I became most active in, however, was ASIS&T. Following are my most significant service experiences in the professional organizations of LIS:
In May, 2002, a professor at the UW Information School, Raya Fidel, announced that CoLIS (an international semi-annual conference on the theoretical foundations of Library & Information Science) would be held at the University of Washington in July and that they were seeking volunteers to help run the conference. I jumped at the chance, hoping to see a few of the LIS "celebrities" whose works I had appreciated in my classes.
At the conference, I was put to work setting up the AV systems for conference rooms and signing in participants. As a volunteer, I had the unique role of acting simultaneously as an attendant and a participant. In this role, I was able to relate to the presenters in ways I may not have been able to otherwise. In addition, during the sessions where I was not working, I attended a variety of presentations and mingled with scholars and professionals from around the world.
Some of the sessions invited some interesting academic debate: I felt privileged to see Birger Hjørland, Marcia Bates, and Michael Buckland arguing about information seeking strategies. This was my first exposure to the professional community of LIS, and I truly enjoyed the lively debate, the interesting histories, and the gossip. I considered it the sign of a healthy scholarly organization.
Following CoLIS, I was told about an opportunity to volunteer at the annual meeting of the Pacific Northwest chapter of ASIS&T in exchange for free registration. I was enthusiastic at the possibility of meeting local professionals and networking with those who will soon be my colleagues.
The conference was held at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon. My duties included checking in participants, among other tasks. I spent much time chatting with local members of ASIS&T, asking them questions about their jobs and answering their questions about my graduate work. I was able to attend several sessions, notably the keynote speech by Peter Morville, co-author of Information Architecture for the World Wide Web.
Several of the presentations focused on the future of our profession and were punctuated with lively discussions of the state of the economy, organizational psychology, and best practices. It became clear to me that the people who make up the Pacific Northwest chapter of ASIS&T are a fairly diverse yet well-knit community of professionals. But most importantly, they seemed like my kind of people.
Because of the overwhelmingly positive experiences with my previous two conferences, I signed up immediately when the call for volunteers went out for the ASIS&T Annual Meeting in Philadelphia. No matter that it was in November, was a week long, was clear across the country, would cost over $600, and conflicted with all of my classes. Rumor had it that half the iSchool faculty were going to be there anyway.
To keep costs down, I shared a hotel room with two other iSchool students. This turned out to be an excellent decision, as they were able to attend the sessions I couldn't. We'd fill each other in on what we learned, keep each other informed of conference events, and, best of all, introduce each other to interesting people we met. We managed to collect a group of students from other universities with whom we became fast friends. Together we explored Philadelphia, shared thoughts and stories about our graduate programs, and talked about the future of our profession.
The conference sessions provided many opportunities to learn about the current state of research and practice in LIS. As a volunteer, I monitored several different sessions over the week. This exposed me to a diversity of presentations I may not have chosen myself but that were interesting and rewarding.
By the end of the conference, I was exhausted and behind in my schoolwork (although I was able to connect to the Internet from the hotel and submit my assignments online). However, the experience on the whole was well worth the time and energy.
Each of these conferences allowed me a difference glimpse of the professional and academic community in Library & Information Science. I began to notice familiar faces, especially those of the leading thinkers and of the local chapter of ASIS&T. The discussions and presentations at each conference gave me a feeling for the most pertinent issues facing our discipline. My position as a volunteer gave me a perspective from behind-the-scenes at the inner workings and leadership of the conferences.
I feel that I came away from these experiences with skills in networking and the beginnings of a social network in LIS. While the volunteer work itself was not measurably arduous or intellectually challenging, it provided me with countless learning opportunities and contacts at each conference.
ASIS&T 2002 Annual Meeting, Philadelphia
Since I will soon be entering the LIS profession, I hope to remain involved with all these professional organizations as time allows. I also plan to keep in touch with those I've met along the way and perhaps take an active role in planning and participating in activities at the regional and national level.