Future Directions in Digital Information: Predictions, Practice, Participation

The last decade has seen significant global changes that have impacted the library, information, and learning services and sciences. There is now a mood to find pragmatic information solutions to pressing global challenges. Future Directions in Digital Information presents the latest ideas and approaches to digital information from across the globe, portraying a sense of transition from old to new. This title is a comprehensive, international take on key themes, advances, and trends in digital information, including the impact of developing technologies. The latest volume in the ‘Chandos Digital Information Review Series’, this book will help practitioners and thinkers looking to keep pace with, and excel among, the digital choices and pathways on offer, to develop new systems and models, and gain information on trends in the educational and industry contexts that make up the information sphere. A group of international contributors has been assembled to give their view on how information professionals and scientists are creating the future along five distinct themes: Strategy and Design; Who are the Users?; Where Formal meets Informal; Applications and Delivery; and finally, New Paradigms. The multinational perspectives contained in this volume acquaint readers with problems, approaches, and achievements in digital information from around the world, with equity of information access emerging as a key challenge.

Presents a global perspective on how information science and services are changing and how they can best adaptGives insight into how managers can make the best decisions about the future provision of their information servicesEngages key practical issues faced by information professionals such as how best to collect and deploy user data in librariesPresents digital literacy as a global theme, stressing the need to foster literacy in a broad range of contextsInterrogates how ready information professionals are for emergent technological and social change across the globe

1. Future directions in digital information: Scenarios and themes Part One – Strategy and Design 2. Current research information systems and institutional repositories: From data ingestion to convergence and merger 3. Effective strategies for information literacy education: Combatting 'fake news' and empowering critical thinking 4. Designing library-based research data management services from bottom-up

Part Two – Who are the users? 5. The power of accessible knowledge: Universities, suppliers, and transparency in the information age 6. Who is the online public library user? 7. Digital culture: The dynamics of incorporation 8. Information behaviour in an online university

Part Three – Where formal meets informal 9. Mobile technology and educational games in HE 10. The evolving role of library collections in the broader information ecosystem 11. Social media as a professional development tool for academic librarians

Part Four – Applications and delivery 12. Closing the digital skills gap: Working with business to address local labour market policy 13a. 'It’s all online!' Creating digital study resources for orchestral musicians 13b. Library acquisition, delivery, and discovery for a creative university 13c. Digital transformation trends in education 14. Transforming reference work into teaching: From a librarian to an information literacy-oriented university professor

Part Five – New Paradigms 15. Envisioning Education 4.0—A scenario planning approach to predicting the future 16. Data-driven modelling of public library infrastructure and usage in the United Kingdom 17. How can the specific skills of the librarian in a digital context be used in the future? 18. The user as a data source: The advance of surveillance capitalism 19. Future directions: Emergent process; constant invention; sum total

Appendix: Delphi questions