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Intellectual Freedom as a Human Right : The Library’s Role in a Democratic Society

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Objective: Libraries have been called on by international organizations to avoid censorship and to provide access to diverse points of view. Public libraries are partially defined by their unrestricted services to patrons regardless of a person’s nationality, social status, or beliefs.

Methodology: This article will review the documents that describe the role libraries have in providing and protecting intellectual freedom. Specific organizations, educational practices, ethical statements, and polices in the United States will be reviewed.

Results: Librarians in all library types (academic, school, public, and special libraries) need to create and maintain two important policies for their libraries in order to protect against censorship. These policies are a collection development policy and a request for reconsideration policy.

Fansubbing from Spanish to Chinese: organization, roles and norms in collaborative writing

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Composition of the community (own elaboration)

Objective. This paper documents and analyzes how the members of an online community of fansubbers collaborate to subtitle Hispanic series and films in Chinese. In order to understand how this community organizes itself on the Internet to satisfactorily complete such a complex multimodal and multilingual process, the paper focuses on the community members’ roles and chain of production, the virtual spaces in which they work, their self-regulation strategies and the ethical issues they face.

Methodology. The authors used qualitative content analysis and discourse analysis of a corpus composed with the help of netnographic techniques, including semi-structured interviews, participant observation and field notes.

Results. The community was found to have a hierarchical structure, where a small group of managing members coordinated the others, who completed different tasks (e.g., transcription, synchronization, translation) in the overall collaborative project. The community took advantage of existing virtual spaces (e.g., official forums, social networks, online chats) to organize and promote its work and to develop a complete system of self-regulation, from recruitment to further training and evaluation with performance management. The authors conclude that fansubbers are cautious volunteers who make their own rules to protect and legitimize their community, which consists of freelance translators and technicians who are amateurs but who take their work seriously. These volunteers collaborate efficiently on the Internet, maintaining strict quality standards in their subtitling, and are supported by active audiences. Empowered in the digital age, this community is revolutionizing traditional modalities of reading and writing, recreating media products in an original way to meet the emerging needs of viewers

“Translation by fans for fans”: organization and practices in a Spanish-language community of scanlation

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Figura 1. Captura de Shiro mentre neteja una pàgina.

Objective: To describe the organization and literacy practices of a Spanish-speaking scanlation community (a group of fans who collaborate on the Internet to scan, translate and distribute mangas) by examining the community members’ roles and activities, the online environments in which they work and the resources they use.

Methodology: The study employed cyberethnographic techniques to create and analyse a database comprising 97 videos of onscreen activity, 32 transcripts of comments drawn from Facebook, blogs, forums and chats, 96 scanned manga chapters and, finally, six semi-structured interviews.

Results: The scanlation community in question assigned its members specific roles (of cleaning, translating, typesetting or correcting) and the members worked in a variety of online environments (email, Facebook, forums and chats). Members interacted to negotiate the development of projects, troubleshoot and exchange knowledge and expertise. Their literacy practices were regulated by the shared culture of scanlation communities as these exist worldwide, evidenced in the existence of a set of ethical standards, a common repertory of tools (translators, dictionaries, inventories of fonts, etc.) and a series of specific, socially valued semiotic practices (such as maintaining Japanese honorific suffixes in translations). This sophisticated level of organization challenges the notion that the cultural products of these vernacular and plurilingual practices are merely the result of their individual members’ creativity or of the spontaneous collaboration between them.

Eugene Garfield: innovator of the bibliographic control and entrepreneur with a cause*

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  [Versió catalana] Cristóbal Urbano Faculty of Library and Information Science Universitat of Barcelona urbano@ub.edu     * Laudation delivered by Cristóbal Urbano, lecturer at the Faculty of Library and Information Science, during the ceremony in which Eugene Garfield was awarded the University of Barcelona’s honorary degree the Doctor honoris causa, on 14 June 2016 … Read more

The e-portfolio as a facilitator of a diversified and reflective information competence*

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Impact of the e-portfolio/PLE on the four dimensions of the IFLA/GREAV Information Competency.

Objective: This paper identifies and analyses the categories of knowledge involved in the acquisition of information competence in a formal education setting, examining how this is enhanced by the use of a mixed e-portfolio/PLE. Our focus is on how the use of e-portfolios can help students develop systems of strategic or conditional knowledge.
— Methodology: This qualitative study uses a semi-structured interview and attributes categories by inter-rater reliability coding and the organization of codes for quantitative representation. The interviewees were students from the Faculty of Education at the Universidad Católica de Temuco in Chile. The competences and categories are adapted from the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA).
— Results: In higher education, there is often a focus on declarative and procedural learning, while more transversal, meta-cognitive competences are neglected. The use of e-portfolios helps students acquire the competences to assume greater control of their learning. For this reason, we have analysed the nature and volume of the content involved in the treatment of information competence through the use of mixed e-portfolio/PLE models and the importance of strategic processes in students’ acquisition of transversal knowledge. We have also extended the IFLA system of categorization to include those processes of reflection and planning that show how students develop systems of strategic knowledge.

How to implement entrepreneurship in LIS education: a Danish example

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The effectuation model

The present article intends to illustrate how entrepreneurship-centered teaching and learning can be implemented in a LIS-specific context while at the same time thematizing the challenges of implementing entrepreneurship in a general university context. The paper presents a concept of teaching and learning that is designed partly to meet academic requirements and partly to work satisfactorily, and in an appropriate manner, in a specifically LIS-related (i.e., a non-business) context. The theoretical basis of this teaching- and learning-related concept is explained and discussed. In addition, the article presents particular experiences, results and achievements obtained in seminars and course units at the Royal School of Library and Information Science, where the concept was developed.

The challenges of training in Library and Information Science

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  [Versió catalana | Versión castellana] Ernest Abadal Dean of the Faculty of Library and Information Science University of Barcelona abadal@ub.edu   1 Training, a cause for concern It is perhaps hard to experience in first person as many sad endings in university Library and Information Science (LIS) centres as Blaise Cronin has. Cronin studied in … Read more

Rethinking Library and Information Studies in Spain: Crossing the boundaries*

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Espanya. Les Ciències de la Informació estan adscrites a altres disciplines (facultats / departaments)

Objectives: The main objectives of this paper are to provide an overview of the current state of studies in library and information science in Spanish universities and to discuss the challenges this discipline is facing and the strategies that might strengthen the position of LIS-related studies and professional practice. But the paper also reconsiders why LIS in Spain is crossing the boundaries in two ways. First, it examines interdisciplinarity in LIS and identifies some of the travel companions LIS has made on its journey across the boundaries; and second, it analyzes the negative social repercussions LIS has experienced. Finally, the paper proposes initiatives to mitigate the low visibility of LIS education and the profession as a whole.

Methodology: Data were gathered from the official agencies the Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports, the Instituto Nacional de Estadística (National Institute of Statistics, INE) and the Red de Centros y Departamentos de Información y Documentación (Network of University Centres and Departments of Information and Documentation, RUID). Further data were obtained from the annual reports of Spanish universities.

Results: We describe the current situation of undergraduate courses, master’s degrees and doctoral programmes. Among other observations, we note the general decrease in the demand for LIS undergraduate studies and we propose that the increase in postgraduate studies is unsatisfactory. Finally we reflect on the challenges that these studies are currently facing in this country and suggest strategies that may be used to strengthen the position of both LIS education and the profession as a whole.

Assigning metadata to EPUB3 digital ebooks. Part 1: EPUB3 specifications for metadata

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Objectius: descriure els mecanismes i la funció de les metadades internes i descriptives en el format EPUB3 segons els estàndards vigents i les bones pràctiques difoses per la indústria editorial, i identificar un conjunt de recomanacions especialment orientades a petits editors o autors que s’autoediten les obres.

Metodologia: l’article és descriptiu i instructiu, ja que a partir de l’explicació de l’estructura interna d’un llibre en format EPUB3 s’expliquen els diferents elements de metadades, els estàndards corresponents, la seva estructura i els possibles valors. El conjunt de propostes s’exemplifica a partir d’un cas d’estudi.

Resultats: el format EPUB disposa de mecanismes de descripció del context, el contingut i l’estructura dels llibres que emulen, en origen, els instruments específicament orientats a la catalogació, una mostra de la consolidació del model de metadades en origen. Els autors recomanen especialment la inclusió dels cinc elements de metadades obligatoris, tres dels quals (identificador, títol i idioma) dins l’esquema Dublin Core i dos segons un esquema propi, per descriure la data de la darrera modificació i la durada dels mitjans audiovisuals inclosos.

Crowdsourcing in the memory institutions: mass transcriptions*

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Classificació dels diferents tipus de crowdsourcing [elaboració pròpia a partir d'Estellés-Arolas i González-Ladrón-de-Guevara (2012)]

In recent years, the growth of web-based social participation and the open source movement have prompted a number of initiatives, including the movement known as crowdsourcing . This paper examines crowdsourcing as a volunteering phenomenon and considers what motivates individuals to participate in crowdsourcing. In addition, the paper reviews the main projects in mass transcription being made in memory institutions worldwide (libraries, archives, museums and galleries), briefly introducing each project and analyzing its main features. Finally, a selection of best practices is offered to guide institutions in the implementation of mass transcription projects.