Librarian skills

Jenny Levine's been thinking about the 20 Technology Skills Every Educator Should Have and believes librarians should be equally steeped in these crafts.

" 1. Word Processing Skills
2. Spreadsheets Skills
3. Database Skills
4. Electronic Presentation Skills
5. Web Navigation Skills
6. Web Site Design Skills
7. E-Mail Management Skills
8. Digital Cameras
9. Computer Network Knowledge Applicable to your School System
10. File Management & Windows Explorer Skills
11. Downloading Software From the Web (Knowledge including eBooks)
12. Installing Computer Software onto a Computer System
13. WebCT or Blackboard Teaching Skills
14. Videoconferencing skills
15. Computer-Related Storage Devices (Knowledge: disks, CDs, USB drives, zip disks, DVDs, etc.)
16. Scanner Knowledge
17. Knowledge of PDAs
18. Deep Web Knowledge
19. Educational Copyright Knowledge
20. Computer Security Knowledge

It's a pretty good list, and it becomes useful for us if we substitute the word "librarian" for "educator" throughout, even for items like #13 about WebCT and Blackboard because you have to understand the distance learning you'll be supporting more and more in the future (speaking from a public librarian perspective)."

I agree item 13. should be on the librarian list but I'd prefer the term "virtual learning environments (or VLEs)" instead of "WebCT or Blackboard", which, after all are only proprietary systems. We've been working with evolving VLEs on an industrial scale for about 10 years at the Open University in the UK and we don't use either WebCT or Blackboard.

Blackboard also felt it necessary to get a restraining order preventing students revealing security vunerablilities in their systems in April 2003, in order to prevent "irreparable injury to Blackboard" and their intellectual property rights. The court granted the injunction, so the company had a presentable legal case. There is a legimate question, however, about the degree of control that companies who build digital education systems should exercise over the information that flows through or about those systems.

My own preference is for VLEs to be open, modular, flexible and interoperable.