Techie Yaki Udon

Challenges of Transition

2010-02-14T21:01:00.000-08:00

A new organizational unit within an institution in transition has a two-fold birth pang: the newness of the unit, and the transition of the larger institution itself.

Also, two protocol forces coexist in terms of management reporting and subordination mechanism: the unit can be immune to the conditions of the larger institution and vice versa, such that the small unit gets left out in the flux of organizational change management.

The writer of this blog is situated in a new unit (small), created as a result of international pressure to increase the larger's compliance to world safety regulations. Commencing the small unit's existence was undoubtedly a challenge in itself. In retrospect, three concerns abound: new procedures, new logistical mechanisms and new people to train with the procedures and stuff... new everything.

Challenges can be on the menials such as maintaining the supply chain of paper and ink to the larger ones such as forging alliances with other departments to forward your own micro-ICT policy (yes.. we have functional ICT concerns and our staff are recruited based on their ICT proficiency).

The newness of the bureaucracy has some things to teach us, such as Strategic Communications, where memos are logically drafted to achieve an approval or to keep higher management informed of what's going on in your unit so as not to be left out from the larger unit's wave.

Let this blog evolve from mere journaling to a provocative collection of management analyses in the context of the job of the Chief Information Officer.

Comments are always welcome!

But the excitement to create all of these

Reflections about our Moments in Makiling

2008-09-29T00:06:00.000-07:00

When classmates were deliberating where to conduct the field trip, there were some suggestions to take us out of Luzon for a different kind of exposure. Unfortunately, it was not possible, not because of budget constraints, but due to the fact that most modern libraries in the country are still found in Metro Manila. Some "modern" and technology-liberal repositories are even located at the peripheries of the nation's capital, namely the IRRI Library and units of the UP Open University and UPLB.

It was advantageous to us Manileños because of its considerable proximity, for the ease of conducting such a trip, but it speaks of a tacit and sad fact: Modern Collections are still centralized in Luzon, if not Manila only and its peripheries.

This rings me about a recent lecture about the "digital divide". The Filipino People can be liberal with the use of Information Technology, but access to its latest forms can depend on your place in the pyramidal economic strata. Let us not complicate things yet. Think of the fundamentals: Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Why would the country's policymakers invest taxpesos on Computers in the middle of an imminent rice shortage or food crisis?

But I say, this brings us to the never-ending debate on what should come first: food or education? Let's face it, we apply the latest technology in our Libraries to aid the spread of information, facilitate user imagination and ensure an enhanced learning experience. Congressman Joson of Nueva Ecija confronts this by saying: "How can you effectively teach students if they dont have food in their bellies?"

The Congressman has a point, which makes me see this food-education debate as a chicken and egg thing. Think of this: how can society learn how to cultivate the land and harvest alot of food if we dont educate them first?

I may seem to blabber far from the issue of librarianship and information technology, but I believe the policy debate mentioned above is very relevant to my coursework. The spread and use of IT, as well as the survival of the profession depends on this.

To state my advocacy, I still believe in the tenets contained in the Official Recommendations done by the Taft Commission when they evaluated this country by the turn of the 1900's. Among their legendary recommendations were the creation of a national government, local governments, a stable bureaucracy, and most important of all: universal primary education. William Howard Taft et al. were the architects of the Philippine public educational system, mandating all locals to study K12 as a matter of national priority "to lift them out of the dark ages brought by Spanish Rule".

This is why we have Librarianship in the Philippines, because of the benevolent policies of the American Occupation. As an offshoot of curiosity in librarianship, now we have the liberal use of Information Technology. But 60 years after the American Regime, technology is still centralized in Luzon, or only Manila perhaps, along with the modern schools and universities.

It's good we're now spreading the IT to the major cities across the country thru Business Process Outsourcing, and Libraries in other regions must follow suit to modernize.

Data Mining and DBMS

2008-09-23T20:14:00.000-07:00

The field of data mining shares ancestry from multiple generalist subjects, mainly: computer science, librarianship, linguistics etc. On the practical sense, the idea of data mining is often relevant to the research ventures of computer theorists, who may define it as "analytical and systematic retrieval of bits of data to produce information"... for a number of applications (libraries and decision support systems).

Curiously, data mining is closely intertwined with both knowledge discovery (mechanism of formulating newly packaged info out of the systems' data) and artificial intelligence (when no human interference is present in the manipulation of data). Whatever and however the computer system does with the data to generate new information all by itself, its processes are always rooted on the design of its information architecture and algorithms.

The following article explores data mining algorithms in the context of "neighborhood paths", where the computer is "taught" or optimized to take the shortest and efficient way to mine data and generate useful information. The following are salient features of the study:

Article URL: http://www.springerlink.com/content/n5687066m7388n78/fulltext.pdf

First, there is a premise of problematic algorithms that steer the data away from the "starting object". This is because the obejct of study is an SDBS (Spatial Database System) much attributed to Geographical Information Systems. It seems that GIS and SDBS's have perennial problems on algorithms that make data lose their way through a "neighborhood" or a spatial entity. We somewhat get a misguided result out of data lost in the street.

Second, the study introduces "database primitives" which according to the authors are based on neighborhood relations between data. This is closely concerned about the flaw of relational databases when they produce redundancies due to the absence of identifiable uniqueness such as primary keys. In the context of spatial databases, the "neighborhood" is expected to have unique elements as database objects. This is interesting because it is based on the geographic uniqueness assumption that no two corner places on a map are exactly the same, and algorithms should be all about teaching the computer how to recognize these uniquenesses.

Third, so as to contribute to the theory of relational databases, the study proposes the use of algorithm construction based on topological relations, spatial clustering, characterization etc. I find these really mindblowing!

Generally, there's more to the study of databases than mere tables and relationships. The issue that often emerges is about techniques of clustering and cassification, good design to achieve retrieval effeciency and knowledge discovery. By the time all books are turned to bytes, librarians will no longer be concerned with shelving bound knowledge, but in the generation of useful information.

Moments at Makiling =)

2008-09-14T01:47:00.000-07:00

Rage Against the System

2008-08-27T18:54:00.000-07:00

The field of IT management can primarily be viewed as the best source of frameworks for adopting a process of evaluating a library system, or in our case, an "Integrated Library System". The concept of the integrated library recently made the librarianship profession live side-by-side with the network administrators when interlibrary resource loaning went digital instead of the old physical document delivery. As a result, the concept of "systems" in librarianship merged with the "information systems" track of computer science. Library theorists and observers saw this as an impending digital colonization of librarianship instead of a marriage of concepts. Many old schoolers fear that librarianship will be superseded by pure code and algorithm, such that the puristic study of information systems mean the death of retrieval tehniques and processes. Deputy University Librarian at the University of Exeter Martin Myhill explores this issue of too much intrusion by computer science into the field, and argues that once a library system goes digitized into an "integrated computer system", hybrid mechanisms must be in place to preserve the practice of delivering quality information to clients. Three important things will give us enlightenment:

Article: Snakes and Ladders: towards a post-maturity evaluation index of Integrated Library System ownership / MARTIN MYHILL, Deputy University Librarian at the University of Exeter, Stocker Rd, Exeter UK

URL: eric.exeter.ac.uk/exeter/bitstream/10036/11019/1/Snakes%20and%20Laddersprogramarticle03v2.doc

First, these hybrid mechanisms call for a well-rounded and consultative development of an evaluation process into what he called a "toolkit system evaluation". Myhill states the contents of this toolkit includes "best practice analysis, benchmarking, self-assessment checklists, consideration of management statistics, and key indicators such as achieving targets in the service level agreements" (Myhill, 2006?). Does this sound like the Operations Research in Industrial Engineering? Maybe so, or even parallel to what Six Sigma preaches, which opens the door for another fertile speculation in Library Management.

Second, Myhill cites Van House in recognizing the "multiplicity of library effectiveness", which makes a traditional evaluation process difficult due to uncontrollable variables. This goes to show that there is no single library system service that serves as a general indicator of its success, or failure. Their analysis is apt for the postmodern age when both Myhill and Van House ponders that ILS effectiveness is a "multidimensional construct" vis-a-vis the system's lifecycle. Each phase of the cycle is treated as distinct contexts and given a value or a mark, building some kind of a point system.

Third, the scalar point system used in Myhill's toolkit seeks to eliminate the high probability of subjectivity and partiality which is rampant in quantitative evaluations. Each phase in the system's lifecycle from procurement and deployment to development and replacement is deconstructed even more down to specific sub-phases and given/deducted with points.

His paper is said to work towards a post-maturity evaluation system, recognizing the inevitability of systems growing old and outdated. If the old interlibrary resource-sharing system wishes to survive amidst computer science onslaught, it must morph and be evaluated in its hybrid form.

You have an Online Dilemma?

2008-07-24T22:25:00.000-07:00

During the late nineties, highschoolers saw the dawn of a new era. Grappling with the Herculean load of accomplishing ten written assignments for ten subjects each day, a student in the secondary level encountered a miracle that will surely change the way they submit assignments: the internet.

All of us can remember this. The era of Netscape was exciting. A highschooler can experiment with this thing called "browsing", while hoping you get what the teacher wants. And how about "search engines"? You can thank the God of Computers for delivering us Yahoo. Typing a keyword in a textbox was a WoW moment! You get some degree of relevance to what you want.

And the biggest blessing of all: downloading! Forget going to the school library with all the old books, and the DDC you can't understand. Now here comes your computer that is now able to save webpages in a jiffy to your 3.5 floppy. Forget reading them! Submitting the printed webpages and impressing your teacher sounds more important.

Five years later, it seems highschool teachers could'nt care more about the internet-borne assigments. I went to UP along with the batch of "downloaders". But I was surprised by the way some of my classmates delivered reports in GE classes. Their slides were copy-pasted, even their speeches were copy pasted from web content. I remember my Professors calling us the "copy-paste" generation. We were subsequently banned from using any online source.

I write about this, not to appear powerless to the dawn of a new web researching phenomena, but my attitude towards online sourcing is one of jittery acceptance. Change is inevitable. It is necessary to survive by adapting to new methods. But if we are concerned if this web-researching thing brings positive change to our kids, we should constantly monitor their learning curve. Do they learn from copy-pasting and downloading? Maybe yes, on how to navigate through a dizzy online interface. But do they learn about the topic at hand? Slightly, maybe zero. All they care about is speedy submission. Not the content, but just the form.

But actually, the internet really does have benefits that outweigh its shortcomings. In fact, this is what the e-learning movement is trying to resolve: how to speed up the flow of information from repository to end-user without sacrificing (or better yet, enhance) in-depth learning. Online media should be seen as a catalyst for cognitive abilities. It should aid users to surpass their learning habits by being informed as quick as the fiber optic cable delivers the information to their senses.

The private sector loves to use e-learning as their corporate social responsibility. In 2007, I was connected with a corporate foundation that brings internet literacy to public schools far from Metro Manila connectivity. The most laudable thing about this project is when they make a reading program connive with internet literacy. A study focusing on analyzing students' scores from a reading comprehension exam concluded that the internet helped children read and learn better.

How do you do that? The secret: teacher supervision in online searching/browsing and a solid integration of the internet in the curriculum. The key here is having a carefully refereed internet use among kids, so as not to forget the learning process amidst speedy data processing. This practice calls for the whole new field of Knowledge Management!

Comments are always welcome!

Resurreccion de un Tradicionalista

2008-07-17T00:27:00.000-07:00

Critique on Resureccion's Search Strategies

It was only last Wednesday (July 16, 2008) when I heard that you can "digitize" after "downloading" web information. I was not the only one who gave an eyebrow: I was sitting with the whole of Ms. Esposo's LIS 260 class, all with clutched foreheads.

For the record, digitizing means turning analog format into bytes (wiki definition). There should be a premise of starting with a hard format to be turned into the digital softcopy. The process stands in contrast with information "born-digital", that is, records created using a digital platform and saving it as digital file. It basically started its lifecycle in the digital world. If it's not born digital, it may be written by hand or any hard medium on a hard platform, say paper. With Dr. Resureccion's statement of digitizing sources from the web, I cannot logically perceive any workflow involving the digitization of already digitized data. I am not sure if she got such an idea from her PhD studies.

These are not the only blabber I got from her dangerous mindset. Her whole speech was delivered in a tone attacking the web as a source to be treated with the least credibility. Although online encyclopedias like WIkipedia cannot be treated with shining respect in academic circles, the web now stands as a formidable source of the latest data on any field of study. Instead of attacking its weaknesses, Dr. Resurreccion should have presented it as a possible source and means of delivering current awareness, with the disclaimer that librarians should do their jobs by verifying the veracity of online information while using it, not ignoring its presence. Such an attack on the web is tantamount to attacking the use of information technology and the progressive attitude of Filipino Librarians.

Second, the whole seminar ran in a one-way stream of information, completely contradictory to the concept of Web 2.0. An open forum occurred but failed to invite user involvement into the pool of ideas by avoiding an answer to simple questions. Her misleading responses were evident when she talked of mere statistics when asked about evaluating a reading program. She could not grasp the concept on the first note by referring to only the quantitative responses from users, ignoring the possibility for qualitative feedback.

Third, the motive for money-making was obvious. There was a prearranged lecture series which does not contain the least of what participants expect: comprehensive information to aid their practice. We came to be enlightened about search strategies and were only given websites & traditional sources. We were expecting some tips on Boolean use, at least, but we were disappointed to find a refresher on citing sources. Walking home without anything new to learn, my classmates may have felt shortchanged. I havent visited the Ortigas Library and I'm no longer excited to see it.

Actually, there is nothing wrong with traditionalism or sticking with the old school. Society needs traditionalists to keep generations in line with common moral ground. But aspiring information professionals like us need to cope with change to survive. Professionals minimally expect the prospects for a brighter future in the workplace by learning about the latest trends in seminars. I got it from Resurreccion: "what is money if you can learn something". But it was something old, biased and anti-progressive. If one is concerned about the future of the information industry, you better not attend another seminar like this. And this seminar thing could have been a business afterall. 200bucks per head wasnt a bad profit for 2 hours of talking.

Web two point Oh! =)

2008-07-10T23:27:00.000-07:00

Article: Web 2.0, Library 2.0, and Librarian 2.0: Preparing for the 2.0 World
Author: Stephen Abram
http://www.imakenews.com/sirsi/e_article000505688.cfm

I was not born tech savvy, but I love technology and all of its forms. Fortunately, I dont feel a nosebleed everytime I force myself to absorb computing concepts. The ideas appear to be futuristic which are amusing and provocative. As if Java and MySQL were not enough to make your head turn, there's this Web two point oh! Now we get it: if Web 1.0 deals with getting information on the web (setup by the webmaster), then web 2.0 is about more user involvement. Some people have described it with more "syndication", or collaboration to fill-up the web with more media like pictures and videos. According to Abram's article, all of these new developments in cyberspace are geared towards enhancing the users' experience. As an MLS student himself, he even goes further to state that Librarians are patterned to upgrade to the 2.0 phenomena with the use of the new web technologies. True enough: the web is all about enhancing access to information and who will be in a better front line than the "library" and the "librarian". Here are the striking points.

Web Users do not only get enhanced information, they are also empowered to feed/upload information. Such empowerment to get involved is being motivated by the same growing attitude of reading the bare unedited works of your peers online. Abram also tells something of sprouting online communities of information users and producers.

The concept of folksonomies sounds like a truly representative form of Web 2.0 technology. And this one is the most relevant to librarians moving away from the traditionalist paradigm. Imagine allowing your users to contribute to the indexing of keywords for your online resources? It makes the indexing process more decentralized and user-oriented. How about quality in the absence of a controlled vocabulary? Maybe we should forget about quality because of its relativity.

Lastly, Web 2.0 technologies make information revolve tighter around users. This is the holy grail of library promotion: how to sell your collection and make your users aware of your materials. This is going to change the way we do SDI (twink!). Take RSS for instance: news can be fed directly to your mobile equipment as info gets available. 'Makes the case for more automation of information-gathering and processing.

In terms of adjusting, Librarians need not fear about the shift to a better web. For all intents and purposes, we are using the principles of the new web subconciously. You dont feel the change but Blogging felt comfortable to do; instant messaging on our cell fones felt normal and part of our lives. Maybe librarians should be afraid of the day when all users are dependent on the new technology, and the library has failed to catch up. Ofcourse, this can be avoided through a sensitivity of users' technological needs.

How your bytes FLOW!

2008-07-07T20:03:00.000-07:00

Article: How ROM works
URL: http://computer.howstuffworks.com/rom3.htm

Photo credit: How Stuff Works

I thought I forgot to write something about this. It should be about how computers work, but let's see how to think beyond the usual basic input-output system. Because we cannot do without the physicality of hardware to tinker with software, the article I got was about the long-misconcieved hardstuff: ROM (Read Only Memory). It is confused with the much-worried RAM, such that ROM is more fixed or "immutable" than the more fluid and temporary RAM (Random Access Memory). The usually useful How Stuff Works website provides ample explanation on the idea that information is not only dependent on software, but also has a hard component in the form of the ROM chip. Here's the stuff I got:

First, ROM is fixed but not necessarily permanent. In contrast to RAM with its easily-erasable contents, ROM content can also be erased with a special software to execute it. Best example is your mobile flash, which is gaining popularity among mobile techies nowadays. The flashdisk requires specialized USB device drivers to enable a user to store and erase data at will. On the other hand, RAM chips on your mother board is just a temporary scratchpad that doesnt need any trigger software.

Second, talking about permanence, your motherboard is loaded with a fixed BIOS. A lot of people wonder how such a BIOS software is embedded in the board as "firmware". But in fact, the BIOS is stored in a ROM chip that underwent a special manufacturing process. The article discusses the chip's use of diodes to act as data bridges between other chips or components. It is dependent on the binary system (1 and 0) to open or close the bridge, making a very permament physical wayward of information down the whole board. The flow of information cannot be changed by reporgramming software, just like the City of Manila can no longer change the layout of its streets and avenues. But you can open or close the bridges.

Third, ROM stands as the transition between the hardware and the software. The programming of ROM is dependent on the physical ROM arrangement of its tiny equipment, like the charge flows among PROM chips. And this is where the important data (to be processed into information) flows like cars on streets. If you have organized routes and planned roads, cars arrive at their destination faster, just like data is transferred quicker in newer motherboards. Hardware in turn facilitates better data processing and software running.

Information Professionals should also be concious of the abilities of their access machines. A consistent evaluation of their computer hardware to meet increasing standards in data access speed must be part and parcel of the mission to provide quality access to information in an increasingly competitive information economy. Now that organizations put a premium on information speed and quality, postmodern librarians are now tech savvy, not only in the software sense, but also in the physical technology that drives data faster.

IRS Evaluation: a Holistic paradigm

2008-07-02T22:24:00.000-07:00

Article: Evaluation of Retrieval Effectiveness for a Full-text Document Retrieval System
Author: David Blair, University of Michigan
http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/dspace/bitstream/

Traditionalists used to see the librarian as a positivist individual, independent of the pecularities of the parent organization. Information Retrieval used to be an imposing process: the system dictates how users should search and acceptability is good as along as information is obtained. But as the librarians are now known as "information professionals" living in the postmodern age, concern is now anchored more on access than content glamour. Blair's paper on Retrieval Effectiveness for a Full-text system explores the ambits of the evaluation process. The following are the salient points:

First, there is 1:1 correspondence between input and output of information. What comes in will come out. If nothing comes in, nothing will be blurted out by the system. This existential nature of information as a "process" puts a premium on the job of information professionals and/or librarians as human data handlers. The system is as good as the human who maintains it.

Second, recall is everything. The evaluation process is anchored solely on the quality of recall or "hits". This "blurting out of data" phase determines the IRS' place in an organization's value chain.

Third, the secret of IRS effectivity and quality is based on a holistic approach of data management, that is, getting the stakeholders and the data handlers all involved in the optimization of the system. The librarian must be consultative of his/her clientele in determining their information retrieval needs and preferences. In fact, a study on delineation of user classifications and their seeking behavior can help. Traditionally, this is addressed by the basic function of standardizing vocabulary (controlled vocab), but as the librarian faces more sophisticated data systems (OPACs and finding aides for archivists), the challenge for usability and user-friendliness becomes apparent.

The subject of Holism says well of the requirement of today's postmodern data handlers: more well-rounded and user-sensitive professionals are needed to optimize info systems. Business concepts can well be helpful in this new paradigm, where market-research now becomes the norm, and the system now focuses on the nature of data processes rather than content.

Comments are welcome.

Booing the Boolean

2008-06-30T18:45:00.000-07:00

Article:

"Failing universal classification schemes from Aristotle to the Semantic Web"

Author: Florian Cramer
www.nettime.org

I started taking computers seriously in the age of Cyberspace and the advent of the World Wide Web (1997 onwards?). I feel that my computing generation has a significant gap with the geeks of the 70's and the 80's when black screen programming was still hip. Yet Cramer's article made me realize that today's graphics-laden search engines online is now a far techie cry from the search technologies of the early 90's. I now live in the age of Google and Yahoo searching, all using search techniques embodied in the general sense called the Age of the Semantic Web, which is very much different from the barebone searching of the Boolean Logic. Let's see how different things are:

First, Boolean searching is overly simplistic. Based on the four fundamental operations of mathematical logic (+, -, *, /), "and" "or" "not" statements are used to qualify search parameters. There are also some applications of "if" "then" in human logic. But the correspondence of the ifs with thens is still 1:1. Classification keywords are treated as distinct numerical units.

Second, another weakness of the Boolean lies on its computer science naivete. Purely mathematical treatment of search techniques can breed a misunderstanding of the necessity of context-based searching. This means that majority of the keywords do not have a 1:1 correspondence with their supposed meanings/concepts. There can be multiple conceptual connotations for a single keyword, which makes the end user (the searcher) ignorant of the possible relationships with other concepts. This is partly resolved by the relational database model, embodied in Oracle and MySQL, yet retreiving tables and their data still need a 1:1 "trigger" keyword to attach to your Boolean statement.

Third, the search technologies embodied by the likes of Google is a product of
the continous merging of the contextuality in the social sciences and the logic of computer science. Today's online searching defies the traditionalist Boolean to the extent of advocating a "semantic" searching and retrieval. This is exactly why we call it the World Wide "Web". Concepts and keywords are "meta-tagged", belonging to a larger WEB of ideas with unlimited crisscrossing relationships. Cramer even states the beauty of users' contributions to the system, where the user can contribute meta tags in the web of ideas to help make the most pertinent hits for, say, an image or document, just like an open source project. It's not AI, but depends on more user involvement to make the system more "intelligent" to relate with human idiosyncratic searching.

This is where the Librarian is strategically situated: in the middle of the social science and the computer science. It takes a social science expert to tweak the computer system in order to develop an effective retrieval of data. Also, the profession poses as a valuable middle ground for effective collaboration between system and its users. Creating semantic tagging needs a user "pulse" to build effective search architectures, and the librarian should be a systems search jobber.

Fresh Beginnings: "science" versus "technology"

2008-06-29T17:34:00.000-07:00

Information Science
wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_science

As this blog was obviously created for LIS 260, the content and presentation of information herein aims to surpass mere class requirements. Blogging not only fulfills the objective of instilling a writing component to a graduate class, but also stimulates lasting intellectual ferment in a digital environment.

For starters, there are no obvious differences between "information science" and "information technology", if there are, very ambigious or negligible. But if an information professional thinks beyond his/her institutionalist upbringings, the huge differences exist right under your nose. To illustrate the disparity in cyberspace, everyone is tempted to use Wikipedia as a start. Its article on "Information Science" greatly describes The Science as interdisciplinary, more concerned with the "collection, classification and retrieval" of information and its application/management in organizations. It is mistakenly considered a branch of computer science, veering more in Library Science and the social sciences.

Three things provoked by this easy-to-find article: First is the obvious but often unnoticed basic disparity between science and technology. The educational curriculum worldwide differentiates science as puristic and more knowledge based, involves tinkering with ideas, concepts and phenomena to generate theory. Technology deals with the applications of science, or the applied sciences. This is the realm of how man uses knowledge to benefit humanity. One is puristic in approach, the other is result-oriented.

Second is the conflict with the field of Computer Science. LIS professionals are often accused of replicating or duplicating the thinking and workings of CompSci professionals. But a resolution to this growing conflict and accusations of redundancy should be made based on differentiating science and technology. It may be safe to assume that "IS" is veering towards the LIS fields, while information technology or "IT" is the focus of the computer experts. But the LIS people should not be confined to mere IS upbringings. Much of their work in providing accessible info to users must involve technology. I would say LIS people must define themselves as the middle ground of IS and IT.

Third is the prospects for an exciting future or collaboration with technologists that would change the way Librarians can work and see themselves. IS and IT is the prime mover of David Bearmann's provocation on the paradigm shift in Librarianship, where LIS people are now moving from the backdoors of organizations to being proactive movers of the information age.

The abovementioned ideas offer more prospects for progress in the existing workplace. First is that a sense of proactiveness should be part of the information profession. Second is collaboration and liberal use of technology. Lastly is a more techie image-building.

Your comments are welcome.