Data Tracking: A Problem or No Big Deal?

Hello, I hope everyone had a great holiday season, my Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays were fantastic and now that we have made it through New Year's Day I am looking forward to my final semester at the University of Kentucky.

One of my classes this past fall allowed students to lead weekly class discussions by selecting pertinent articles from the Chronicle of Higher Education and setting up prompts/discussion questions to jump start the class conversation. Around Thanksgiving, we read this article about whether or not it was ethical for the researchers at Harvard University to use cameras in order to track student attendance without telling the students about the study. One of the questions asked by that week's discussion leaders was whether or not we felt differently about our privacy if it was predominantly online information being tracked versus information about our physical interactions.

I was surprised to find that many of my classmates were not all that concerned by the data tracking, and seemed to even appreciate it if they benefited from it in some small financial way (such as a targeted coupon). Moreover, several classmates mentioned that since they were not doing anything illegal then they had nothing to be concerned/paranoid about. I won't quote anyone directly without their permission (although if you are a classmate who has stumbled onto this blog and would like to give me permission to republish your comment, I will do so), but below I have copied and pasted my response to the prompt. Feel free to let me know what you think, because I am very curious to get the opinions of others on this subject.

(Originally published in a Blackboard discussion thread on November 15, 2014)

"I wish that I could share my classmates' nonchalance towards data tracking, but even though I am considered a millennial I am a bit more wary of those who gather the information. Regardless of whether or not I get less annoying ads or better coupon deals, I  don't believe anyone has a right to track someone unless it is for crime solving purposes. And I don't think that wanting your data protected necessarily means you have anything to hide. It is your information, and people, companies, and the government should respect that. You would not open the door to the police or door-to-door salespeople so they can rifle through your things and get a better idea of what products they should market to you. Granted, companies are going to track what sells in their stores and do marketing research but the data they gather on their sales should be stripped of your identifying information and they certainly should not sell your e-mail address! Furthermore, how do I know that companies are keeping this information safe? Look at Target and Home Depot, just to name a few companies that have been targeted by hackers for identity and credit card theft. Bottom line is that if someone has your information, someone else can most likely get it, whether that is the government or hackers which sometimes might be one in the same." 

"I know this may seem paranoid, but it is only paranoia if it isn't true. Look at what whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed about the NSA and their spying practices. Some of this information has led cell phone makers to up the security and encryption on cell phones, and now the FBI is saying that could be a problem for them in solving crime. The nerve of people for expecting their privacy! Part of me feels as though law enforcement officials, particularly on the federal level, are too reliant on easy access to people's electronic data for fishing expeditions in order to make their cases. Although I do understand that there must be some give and take with the expectation of privacy and solving crime, but there also must be better oversight aimed at deterring unnecessary data tracking." 

"As for the original question about whether I feel differently about online data tracking versus the tracking of physical interactions I would have to say no, because I feel that neither should be unnecessarily surveilled nor tracked without my knowledge unless I am a legitimate suspect in a crime. To me this is just a further, albeit more personal extension of the ALA's Code of Ethics' third tenet which states: "We protect each library user's right to privacy and confidentiality with respect to information sought or received and resources consulted, borrowed, acquired or transmitted." If we as librarians would consider it our duty to fight a National Security Letter (NSL) from the FBI in order to protect our patrons' rights to privacy, then to me it stands to reason that we should be as protective of our own privacy." 

"This is also why I believe that there are grave potential implications to academic libraries. Universities have long been bastions of learning and innovation. How is that supposed to continue unfettered if scholars are unable to trust the institution's ability, or willingness to protect their information? Many colleges have visiting professors from around the country and abroad which is aimed at bringing the brightest scholars to their campus. If professors are concerned about the government intruding on their privacy whether because of their country of origin or area of research, and they know that the library won't or is unable to protect their privacy, then they will most likely go elsewhere. I understand that this may seem like an over exaggeration, and I suppose it is to some extent in order to make my point. However, while the misuse or unnecessary data tracking may seem to be a minor concern, over time it could easily evolve into a much scarier and serious issue for academic libraries as a whole." 

Fall Semester Update.

So I am still* alive and kicking. I had planned on keeping this blog updated with posts about library school, however this semester has been my busiest yet and I have not had the time to post as much as I would have preferred. I'll try and post more frequently next semester. This semester I am taking:

LIS 621: Introduction to Information Services
LIS 645: Public Libraries
LIS 646: Academic Libraries

Throughout the course of my first year in the program, I gradually adjusted to the larger amount of weekly readings, made great strides in my writing abilities, and I feel as though the quality of my work greatly improved and was more on par with a graduate level. And just when I was thinking I had graduate school down pat, this semester comes along and knocks me flat. Seriously. I was not expecting the number of projects and assignments this semester. Overall there is a combined total of thirteen assignments in all three courses, six in one class, five in another, and two in the other. As if things were not stressful enough between staying on top of all of the weekly readings and discussion assignments, many of the additional class assignments are due within a day of one another!

Melodramatic stressing aside, I have managed to do relatively well so far this semester. I was trucking right along, joyfully anticipating the start of winter break in five weeks, when I got a not so great grade on an assignment. FYI, 'not so great grade' is not my perfectionist way of saying an A- or a B+ instead of an A+. I'm not THAT much of an annoying, overachiever to be quibbling over an A- /B+ and an A+ in such a challenging class.

Let me be clear, I am not disputing the grading of the assignment or anything like that. I am more concerned that the grade is an indication that I am woefully unprepared for a post-MLIS career since it is so far off from my normal grades. Not that it takes much to send me into an insecurity spiral of DOOM, but when most of my grades are A+ and then I get a drastically different grade, it is unnerving and makes me wonder if I have what it takes/belong in the library and information science field. 

This is what my pity party typically looks like.

However, after I allowed myself a ten minute pity party (complete with cute animal pictures), I went back to work studying the class readings for the upcoming week. Because as much as I sometimes want to spend my time bemoaning one grade, and I do think that concern is appropriate, I cannot allow it to make me lose focus on everything else. I am one semester and five weeks away from graduating with my master's in library and information science. I still have five additional assignments, four or five (depending on the class) discussion assignments, and a final exam until I can relax during the holiday break. I also have to keep in mind that I have done remarkably well (in my, admittedly biased, opinion) for a student who had a four year break between college and graduate school, and who has absolutely zero** library experience. Regardless, I cannot expect to ace every assignment nor know everything LIS related upon graduation. I just need to have faith that my education will provide me the foundation to be successful in a library/information science career and that on-the-job experiences will fill in the remaining gaps.

That's enough angsty school reflections for me, back to work!

*Knock on wood, because the semester isn't over yet!
**Unless you want to count the summer I spent shelving books as a volunteer at my local public library in middle school.

P.S. - These are my go-to cute GIFs for when life gets you down:

 

GIF Source: Buzzfeed, where else?

Year End Review

Welcome to my year end review AKA The blog in which I sing the praises of my calendar.

So this semester ended a lot better than the last one and as you may have guessed, I attribute this to my calendar. Last semester at the midterm I was sitting pretty with straight A's. In fact, I had straight A's for about 75% of the fall semester, however, when it was all over with I ended up with 2 B's and one A.

Now, bear in mind I graduated college in 2009, so I have been out of the game a bit and it took some time to acclimate to the work load. Side note about the workload: (Not that I'm trying to scare anyone off) Between my three classes each semester I had to read at least a couple hundred pages+ each week. This was in addition to keeping up with (or attempting to anyway) the latest news in the library and information science (LIS) biz. Do you have to keep up with the scholarly journals and news articles? No, but it really is necessary so that you can see how your textbook readings apply to real world library issues, plus it makes discussion boards more interesting if you can cite other non-class readings to back up your opinion or give examples.

Anyway, back to the grade situation. This semester I received straight A's in all three of my classes. So what did I do differently? My first semester, I focused on my weekly assignments but I didn't leave myself enough time to work on the various papers and assignments, or else I would spend too much time on the research aspect of the assignment. This led to a ton of all nighters and general anxiety on my behalf. The lack of assignments in grad school is a double edged sword. Yes, you have less to do, but that means each grade is that much more important. For most of my classes, I received grades for weekly discussion board participation (ranging anywhere from 2 to 4 required posts/week), 2-4 papers (or projects) per class, along with a midterm and final. Well this semester, I was determined to get straight A's and not be super stressed out. Enter: The calendar. As soon as I got my syllabuses, I wrote out my reading assignments and my semester assignments. I worked on completing the weekly reading & participation activities during the first part of the week, and that allowed me to spend the remainder of the week working ahead on assignments due in the near future. The other big thing for me was going to the library to actually write my papers and other projects. For some reason, sitting at my computer at home I am much more likely to procrastinate, but at the library I have an easier time of staying on task.  Plus, being able to look at my monthly calendar and see what is due and when, let me know of multiple assignments with the same due date and helped me plan my time accordingly.

I don't mean to lecture about calendars and staying focused, I just want to share what study habits have worked best for me in the hopes that they help others. So if you have any questions about pursuing a master's in library and information science, either in general or specific to UK's program, feel free to ask me here in the comments or on twitter (@whitnage). =)

Nonaka, Knowledge Economy, & Informational Cities.

So this week I finally read one of the oft cited articles in knowledge management literature, I am of course speaking about the Nonaka article, A dynamic theory of organizational knowledge creation. A week or so ago, Anne and I discussed in the comments section our reading list order. I believe she had the right idea to move Nonaka up towards the topof the list, me on the other hand, I took the dart throwing method when it came to picking articles to read this semester! 

In addition to Nonaka, I also read the Powell and Snellman article, The knowledge economy and the Stock article, Informational cities: Analysis and construction of cities in the knowledge society.

As I mentioned earlier, Nonaka’s article is often cited and considered very important in the field of KM literature. This is because Nonaka is one of the first to sort of parlay what Polanyi calls tacit knowledge and explicit knowledge into something that is applicable for businesses. Not only that, but he develops a model for it as well. Nonaka proposed that the “continuous interaction” between tacit knowledge and explicit knowledge enables organizations to create knowledge about their own “patterns of interaction” which allows them to “take account of ambiguity, redundancy, noise, or randomness generated.”(p. 18). Thus the creation of the field of knowledge management! Although, it probably existed in some form prior to this, people just didn’t know what to call it! But to me, knowledge management has always sounded somewhat similar to quality assurance or auditing.

The next article I read was the Powell and Snellman article, I’m not even going to lie, this article drove me nuts. It was one of those I had to read several times in a row to feel like I had a grasp of what they were trying to say. And I know that I don’t fully agree with their article. Apparently I’m not the only one, because Darra had thisexcellent blog post about the Powell and Snellman article back in March. Like Darra, I agree that it is overly simplistic to assume that an increase in the number of patents equates with “knowledge production.” Although, they do point out in their conclusion that the challenge all km researchers face is “to connect the abundant qualitative indicators with qualitative studies of substantive changes in organizational practices and their outcomes (p. 216).” 

My final article for this week, was the Stock article about Informational cities. In this article the authors view cities as booming centers of information, from digital libraries to technical training of employees. This article was neat because they took urban demographics and looked at them from an information science perspective to determine why some cities are successful information centers and others are not. They found that cities with more cultural diversity are more innovative, and that “four types of enterprise dominate the informational city: financial service providers, knowledge-intensive high-tech industry sectors, companies of the information economy, and further creative and knowledge-intensive service companies (p. 981).” They also found that all four of those types of enterprise are “absolutely reliant on ICT and cognitive infrastructures (p. 981).” This echoes what Goggins and Mascaro discussed in the article I blogged about last week. Or rather, they echo Stock, since their article came after his. For a quick recap, Goggins and Mascaro found that “technology and computing have an affect beyond those organizations in the social setting.” This is definitely something that needs to be researched further, but I did found the direction that Stock and Goggins and Mascaro are going very intriguing because of the implications it could have for knowledge management and ICT. 

Sources

Nonaka, I. (1994). A dynamic theory of organizational knowledge creation. Organization science, 5(1), 14-37.

Powell, W. W., & Snellman, K. (2004). The knowledge economy. Annual review of sociology, 199-220.

Stock, W. G. (2011). Informational cities: Analysis and construction of cities in the knowledge society. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 62(5), 963-986.

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