Digital divide: I, on and have the smaller portion

You may remember me blog about job interviews.

One of the questions of the interview I had in Cebu two years ago was about digitization. I was asked what would I say or do if my chief librarian would tell me that for the next ten years she plans to entirely do away with books and to digitize the library 100%. After the interview I felt such a total idiot for the answer I gave especially since it was suppose to be a job making electronic abstracts and providing electronic news, newsletters and such to executives and other people online. The feeling of being an absolute ignorant persisted longer than it should because one, I did not get the job and two, I immediately researched online about digitization and read about the collaboration between Google, Stanford and research libraries in the US and UK.

This is the gist of my idiotic answer: “I would tell my boss that first she has to send us or provide us her librarians with trainings and up-to-date education regarding computers and computerization, the internet and digitization in general. But a ten-year digitization plan might be too ambitious because of the reality regarding digitization efforts that are going on in the world. But let’s just say that a country like the United States is already digitizing old titles and old editions of books and publishes books in the traditional forms yet at the same time putting out the digital form, I can say with conviction that Philippine publishers are not doing it. And unless there is an equal effort in the Philippines for the next ten years to digitize then the library digitization plan will be a failure because Filipiniana books and journals will not be represented. Philippine publishers may not be too keen on publishing the traditional and digital forms of a book because of the very limited market of both forms. Ordinary Filipinos can not afford to buy the hardware to make e-books and digital books readable.” I said more of course but I really forgot.

On page 11 of Newsweek September 28, 2009 issue, there is an information aside that says: "The percentage of books in European National Archives that have been digitized: 1% (one percent)."

Some of the books in these archives might already be represented in the libraries in the US and therefore may already be digitized, but countries in Europe are publishing their own literature in their own languages which may or may not be translated into English and therefore may or may not be digitized and it is a very controversial and complicated issue besides…. What I am trying to say really is that Europe is rich and we are poor and they are yet at 1% or 5% Europeana.

I feel a little validated in my views regarding the digitization efforts in the rest of the world. Then too the Newsweek article says much on the availability and affordability of e-book readers. And really I should not have felt such idiocy because I was giving an answer basing from my situation and my experiences.

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Still seeking validation and yes I was not too far out after all. Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google laments: "But despite a number of important digitization efforts to date (Google has even helped fund others, including some by the Library of Congress), none have been at a comparable scale, simply because no one else has chosen to invest the requisite resources."

I am making it clear though, I am not against digitization. I am all for it. What I am seeking validation of was my view of the digitization efforts in the world.

The bubble bursts

I've only just found out during the last two years that when you are applying for a job, certain SOP's are to be followed. There is generally an interview process, a standardized IQ or psychological exams, and an imperative skills test. It was in my management class in graduate school that I learned about this. I cringed when I first heard of this because in all the jobs I applied for I never went through a skills test or an IQ or psychological exam. I've only ever been employed as a professional librarian in two institutions and in both cases I was only given an interview. On my first job, it was only the chief librarian who interviewed me and on my second job interview (my current job) I faced a panel of interviewers who if I remember correctly had not asked any difficult questions. Although I did apply for another two posts during my first job, I only ever went through an interview process.

In the past couple of years I have applied for two different jobs because I thought I would relocate. In one institution, the formal interview and the skills test were scrapped because the librarian knew my academic performance personally, but had I completed the whole list of human resources requirements, I would have taken a standardized IQ exam just to comply with requirements so the librarian said. In another job I applied for though not a librarian post I took a two-hour grammar and composition skills test, waited a week for a call to interview if you pass that exams and managed to go through a grueling 20-minute interview for each of the five individual interviewers and wait another week for the interview results. It was the first time I ever experienced that kind of procedure and it was nerve-racking. I realized then that the process I was going through was what my management professor was talking about. Even if I did not get the job I want to believe I went through with flying colors because the last time I heard from them after that difficult interview was that they have already contacted my reference persons and that I should wait for their call within the next three days. I don’t know if they did call but it was also during that week that my phone went dead. Or maybe I flunked that interview.

At the moment three of us in the library had finished with two of the three processes or procedures to a new job. There is supposed to be a promotion for one of us. We had the panel interview three weeks ago. The skills test—classification and cataloging and indexing were administered by one of the senior librarians yesterday. Within the next week or so we will take an IQ or a psychological test to be administered by human resources. Everyone in the library is surprised by this process because not one of them it seems has undergone the whole standard procedure but it seems human resources department is cleaning its act as per civil service hiring regulations. I have no big hopes for this. I got very low scores for my academic qualifications being a non-MSLS or its equivalent degree holder. But it is nice, painful but it lets you grow, to be once in a while shaken out of your complacency and taken out of your comfort zone.