The Emerging Information Professional

The Emerging Information Professional explores trends and demystifies emerging technologies that affect and shape the practice of the Librarian/information professional in the higher education context. The starting point is the evolving attitudes and trends in the higher education ecosystem and the technologies pertaining to these attitudes. The book is divided into three sections, following the introduction, it explores the turbulent changes in higher education and the identity of the student body, and then provides a detailed background of the origins of and evolution of mobility, personalisation, digital curation, visualisation, openness, emerging issues in global connectedness, an array of good practices when thinking about employing gamification in library settings. The final part considers the new roles of the higher education librarian and it aims to empower the information professionals in embracing our identity, envisioning our future and driving innovation.

• fills a gap in the literature pertaining to analysis to the trends in academic libraries in one place
• offers interdisciplinary and inter-domain insights drawing from the corporate environment as well as library and information management, computer sciences, business studies and learning and teaching scholarship
• maps the set of skills, competencies and attributes needed by information professionals and reveals areas for professional development

Part 1 Setting the scene: Making sense of the higher education environment, the students of the present and the future, “Packaging” or filtering information for students, key debates amongst Librarians/Information professionals about our future, Key conclusions. Part 2 Attitudes & technologies, technologies & attitudes: Mobility - live, learn, work and play on the move, Personalisation - Learning Analytics: What is this about?, Digital curation, Big data: from mobile digital breadcrumbs to Big data, Visualisation - An old thing in new terms, Openness - Open academic practices, Resources and massive courses, Connectedness - connecting with people, Global citizenship, connecting with machines, data and people, The Internet of Things, Gamification - is it all fun and games? Part 3 The 21st Century information professional: Our evolving identity: envisioning our future: Cultivating communities of practice and not communities of resistance, cultivating a culture of reflection, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, Conclusions: Driving Innovation not following trends.