Competencies

Competency 8: Technologies

image of sputnik

Sputnik, the first satellite launched by humans

COMPETENCY STATEMENT

Each graduate of the Master of Library and Information Science program is able to…

…demonstrate proficiency in identifying, using, and evaluating current and emerging information and communication technologies

Page Contents

IMPORTANCE OF THE COMPETENCY TO ME

As mentioned elsewhere in earlier competency pages, I want to use my MLIS to become a data curator for geoscience datasets. With this goal in mind, being proficient at using current information technologies and keeping up with developments is paramount. Because this is a both a library science and information science program, I have kept up with multiple developments in communication technologies as well, making sure that I know how to wrangle most of the popular applications that might be in use at a library.

Our modern world relies on information and communication technologies to a head-spinning depth for someone who used an Apple IIe, one of the first personal computers on the market ("Apple II series", 2015), in high school in 1980, and who watched the Internet expand from a little email system for government employees and scientists to a part of much of the world's hourly lives, of literally inestimable value. In my last two jobs, my co-workers and I–who sit feet away from each other–use instant messaging and chat rooms to communicate. This turns out to be really effective and efficient in that we can type communications interspersed with continuous work instead of having to stop and listen, and it keeps our small, open work spaces quiet for folks who are not involved. The software tester contractors I manage are in India, and without communication technologies, we could not work together.

Communication technologies are vital for bringing people together, across distances and sometimes with different types of understanding than are possible when speaking in person. Information technologies are a way of creating knowledge out of data, of discovering, processing and learning from raw materials. Information technologies allow us to preserve data, organize it, analyze it, and share it. In order to work with remote sensing data, I have to be aware of, conversant with, and possibly expert in the latest storage technologies, ways to transfer and share data, metadata developments and standards, and data processing tools.
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WHAT WORK PREPARED ME TO UNDERSTAND AND PERFORM THIS COMPETENCY?

I have been working with computers since I was 14, at my first job, which was as a computer science engineer (GS-1, the lowest government service level there is) at Fort Belvoir (VA) for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. I obtained a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science and have worked with computer technology my entire career. I have programmed in the following languages: Pascal, FORTRAN and FORTRAN IV, C, and perl. I have mastered too many applications to list, in the fields of documentation, graphic user interface (GUI) development, graphic design, publishing, visual analysis, social media, databases, and scientific analysis. I am an intermediate UNIX user: I use vi and vim without thinking about the mechanics, and I can run (and sometimes write) small shell scripts to use at the command line. I have worked on both Windows-based and Mac computers, almost every iteration of their operating systems (including DOS), and have experience testing in most browsers going back to the first graphical browser, Mosaic, in 1994.

While in iSchool, I have made it a point to seek out new social media applications, even if I do not use them myself, so that I understand the landscape of options. I have worked on four course management systems, as they changed under me: Blackboard, Angel, Desire2Learn, and now Canvas. I learned a bit of PHP in "Information Technology Tools and Applications–Advanced: Introduction to PHP/MySQL" (LIBR246) and learned the basics of Splunk, a big data management and analysis system, in "Information Technology Tools and Applications–Advanced: Big Data Analytics and Management" (LIBR246). I learned to manipulate Google Maps with HTML for a project in "Resources and Information Services in the Disciplines and Professions: Maps and Geographic Information Systems" (LIBR220), and I taught myself Keyhole Markup Language (KML) in order to use Google Earth for a project in "Resources and Information Services in the Disciplines and Professions: Science and Technology" (LIBR220). I became adept at using the various databases available at the King Library to search for information. This e-Portfolio is presented on a private instance of WordPress, and in producing it I have increased my understanding of CSS tricks.
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EVIDENCE

Discussion Post: "Research on NoSQL Database Use Cases"

As mentioned in Comptency 5: Databases, I hope to learn NoSQL soon. For a discussion post in LIBR46 (big data), I evaluated a government agency that is using MarkLogic NoSQL, and I used their application to look up the house I was raised in and the schools I had attended. This is one of many web-based applications I have used to find information.

Paper: "Introduction to Splunk"

Paper: "Using Splunk–Basic and Advanced"

In LIBR246 (big data), I was introduced to Splunk, a platform for Operational Intelligence. It can be used to analyze big data as long as the data are text-based and associated with a time stamp. I present two assignments that taught me the basics of using Splunk. It is possible that Splunk could be used for an "off-label" purpose–instead of analyzing operational data, such as marketing-related events, it could be used for geolocated data.

Historic Sea Ice Data Home Page

My final project for LIBR220 (science & technology) was about understanding Arctic sea ice by gleaning data from before we had remote sensing. It involved learning how to use KML and Google Earth, two technologies that will probably be useful to understand in working with geoscience data. Even if I do not use KML and Google Earth specifically, ArcGIS and other GIS tools work on similar principles, and I am now prepared to work in depth with remote sensing datasets via GIS applications.

Paper: An XML Schema for IMMA

If I make the data available from the project described above, I will need to use a format called International Maritime Meteorological Archive (IMMA). In "Seminar in Contemporary Issues: Metadata" (LIBR281) I did research on IMMA (see Comptency 7: Organizing) and concluded that it is rather clumsy to use, so for my final project I constructed an XML schema to allow data to be entered into IMMA format with more modern methods. Some final testing needs to be done to make sure the XML schema is written correctly before it is shared with the Old Weather community; Dr. Bolin also proposed publishing the paper in her journal Library Philosophy and Practice, but I do not want to do this until I have completed XML testing.
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CONCLUSION

I am lucky in that understanding and using technology has been easier for me than for some of my fellow iSchool students. Because I have a background in computer science and have always worked in technical fields, learning and using information and communication technologies was not difficult for me. I have 35 years of experience working with computers that will make learning and perhaps building applications in my future career as easy as reading books: necessary, and not always trivial, but a means to an end, and a tool to the greater purpose of creating and helping others create knowledge.
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REFERENCES

Apple II series. (2015, March 24). Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_II_series

Ruiz, S. (2013, December 10). Master's project: Sputnik [Online image]. Retrieved from http://www.saroy.net/2013/12/masters-project-sputnik/

Last updated: Friday, April 17, 2015