A Chrysalis Campaign Opinion White Paper

The Global Learning Framework©

For Comments: New Milford, CT 0776 USA
http://globallearningframework.ning.com
.

The Global Learning Framework

How Libraries are Becoming Web-based
Collaborative Community Publishing Houses

A Global Learning Framework - White Paper

December 21, 2009

By Richard C. Close, CEO

The Chrysalis Campaign

Copyright 2009 Chrysalis Campaign, Inc. 1|Page

 Libraries - The Global Learning Framework©
How Libraries are Becoming Web-based Collaborative Community Publishing Houses
December 30, 2009
By Richard C. Close, CEO
The Chrysalis Campaign
13 Geiger Rd., New Milford, CT 06776
rclose@richardclose.info
Abstract
The introduction of the Internet and Web 2.0 into urban and
rural libraries transforms their fundamental purpose into a
Global Learning Framework. First they will evolve from
handling knowledge in an indexed system into a relational
system. Second, libraries are moving from purchasing
knowledge into publishing knowledge. And third, libraries are
already becoming micro learning communities-of-interest.
Key Words
Library, Web 20, Publishing, Global, Learning, Framework
1 Introduction
Once upon a time, when I needed to buy a book, I could stop by
a phone booth, flip up a thick book of the New York Yellow
Pages, open up to the index, and then run my finger down the
pages to find a store. I would then call the store, find the right
department, and ask if they had the item. This is a clean set of
indexed and sequenced processes developed to acquire a book.
Now I talk to my Blackberry, search for related books, see how
others “feel” about them, and order it on Amazon, all while
driving home.
The phone booth, yellow pages book, and even the person on the
other end of the phone are all gone. Stopping is gone, indexing
is gone and the phone wires are gone. The format of the book is
now digitized or print on demand. Sites like Amazon even
remember who I am and what my preferences are.
Fig. 1 Libraries are now collaboratively connected
together as publishing based communities of interest.
[Copyright Chrysalis Campaign 2009]
The library will not go the way of the phone booth. Instead,
libraries have the opportunity of becoming the cultural hubs of
our community’s thirst for working collaboratively with others
and publishing local content. If we can grasp how our
relationship to knowledge has changed, we will envision a future
for our little library that can realize massive growth right along
side its new partner, the global Web.
2 Purpose of This Article
As a learning strategist, I have watched and participated in the
debate on the nature of industrial eLearning strategies,
Knowledge Management and the bypass learning behaviors of
Web 2.0. We have transformed the way we search, explore,
adopt, collaborate and share global knowledge. From a strategic
point of view, we can say that the library’s market is being eaten
away by cyber cafes, Amazon Kindles, Google and even web-
based cell phones. In order to accept this bleak assumption, we
would have to ignore some basic human motivators: we are
social and tribal and all seek some personal significance in this
world. Oddly, the library’s ability to have volumes of
information is no longer of primary strategic importance. The
library’s ability to guide knowledge within the local community
is key in its next phase of massive growth and funding.
The next point is that the library is moving into its second life as
a publishing and community house. Who would have imagined
it? Yet to come to this conclusion, we must understand how the
web has changed a human’s relationship and behaviors with
global knowledge.
This Global Library Framework is a subset of the Global
Learning Framework©. It is the framework of explosive, global
learning and collaboration that we are now experiencing via the
global Web. The small and large urban libraries have an
opportunity to either ride this wave to new shores or drown in its
inevitability.
3 Knowledge Was Indexed
In industrial authoritarian instruction the teacher is at the head of
the class as the king/queen and goes through the indexed
chapters of the curriculum text, to be followed by a test at the
end of the week. Of course, after the test, we can forget about all
what we memorized.
Most of us learned that way. The library was the same indexed-
sequence way of doing research. In this sequence mode of
learning, over the years we have managed large blocks of
information such as books, databases and courses.
The irony of this is that most of what is learned in life is on-
demand and at the moment, such as changing a diaper or a flat
tire. It turns out that the reality is the reverse of how we learned
in school as an educational process. Life-long learning is mostly
starting with a problem… then learning, not learning and then
finding a problem.
3.1 Knowledge is Relational in Nature
On the Web, most learning (with the exception of the eLearning
course) is done on a “Search Learning” basis for small “chunks”
of knowledge to either complete the task at hand or satisfy a
curiosity. We start with a relational search and explore other bits
of information and images that have some type of linked or
tagged relationship, i.e. use Google.
3.2 Web learning is billions of Micro Learning Paths©
Search learning is also taking place at the same time as other
people on a global collaborative basis. We start with a problem,
search, explore other questions and solutions, adopt the best
idea, collaborate with the real world, and if it works, do it or
share it. These over-lapping processes are called Micro Learning
Paths. Each time a person publishes the global knowledge base
changes, this is a profound change in the human condition.
news. Libraries are now global distributers of volumes of
original media. Libraries are global production houses of
original thought. Colonial trickle down has a competitor.
“Can you help me find…?” at the front desk has now evolved
into, “Can you help me publish?”
5 The Book Once Stood Alone
Books neatly separated by categories, stacks, covers and dust sit
in great halls. Exceptional colleges can afford extensive
collections and only those students who can afford expensive
schools will have access to them. Soon everyone will have
access to the same knowledge as wealthy people do. Already,
the courses at MIT are available for free to anyone with a laptop
in any slum and anywhere in the world.
5.1.1 Knowledge is everywhere
While not on shelves, knowledge is being scattered all over the
planet along with people publishing information and the Web
2.0 tools being used to share this knowledge. Our access to
knowledge is much larger than any set of physical library
buildings or data centers, no matter how big the organization or
country. Knowledge is now outside of the building, out of
control.

5.1.2 Knowledge is collaborative

Knowledge on the Web is blurred, blended, sliced, diced and
fused with other bodies of knowledge and communities of
interest. We now pick and choose the key points from “inside”
the book’s pages and from anywhere in the world.
We search by how things are related to one another. Even our
searches run through collaborative algorithms. Often times the
original question of the search is changed with each additional
search from other people resulting in global relational
Fig. 2 Micro Learning Paths integrate both learners and recommendations. Even our questioning is now collaborative.
knowledge in a mosaic of context tags.
Fig. 4 Knowledge that was once on the racks is now
found scattered around the world.
4 Knowledge Was Once a One-Way Street
Library knowledge used to trickle down from great writers,
artists and photographers. The state, school or library would
select what is best in the budget to use in the community. Entire
countries, states and locales dictated what information was to be
placed inside the community’s hearts and minds.
You would never think of arguing with an author, teacher or
librarian. You would not even conceive of writing your own
thoughts inside the pages of an author’s book and then placing it
back on the library shelf, but this is what we now do in blogs.
Writing in the author’s book for the entire world to see is an
outrageous idea, yet it’s exciting, because the author can also
write back to us.
Knowledge is no longer a colonial trickle-down set of dictates; it
is a mosaic flood in every direction. Look in any library with a
PC, and someone is publishing local ideas out into a global
knowledge-base of the world.
This is the huge shift in the purpose of a library and the reason ig. 5 Human collaboration that was one across a desk is
why we go to a library. If you went to the executive board of
your library and asked for printing presses, they would laugh
now scattered across the world.
stating, “That is not our business.” But it is too late. Every PC is
a global printing press. Every picture and video is the evening

Copyright 2009 Chrysalis Campaign, Inc. 2|Page

6 Knowledge is Contextual
Knowledge in large bodies, such as books and courses or small
elements like a pictures, sounds or video , are “tagged” by
keywords. These keywords are the contextual links to how that
piece of knowledge relates to the publisher’s world. Those
pieces are called Knowledge Elements in the eLearning
industry. Now this gets tricky, because the same Knowledge
Element that is tagged one way by the person who published it,
gets tagged again for different reasons by different learners in
different ways and in different places.
The knowledge is still the same, but its context is entirely
different to different communities of interest. Here is the
strategic advantage that libraries have in that they must learn
how to handle, manage and grow the communities of interest.
Context has become as important as the content. This is a huge
change for some libraries and some vibrant ones are already on
the path.
Knowledge and collaboration are now inseparable.
6.1.1 Knowledge is billions of tiny chunks
of Knowledge Elements globally linked to one another
Knowledge on the internet is in quick reads or searches. We
don’t want to read all of Poe, just a few select quotes. We are so
granular in how we search, that we only want a two minute
YouTube of a two hour movie or a PIC from some web page.
6.1.2 The Search for Knowledge Transcends Communities
We search on the TV food channel for a chicken recipe with the
most positive reviews and it transcends hundreds of world class
cooks and thousands of cultures. A task that is impossible in any
library, but now done on a cell phone while walking through a
grocery store. We look for a recipe for an African spicy crab
burger while watching TV at the same time. What we expected
was impossible to do not so long ago is very possible today.
6.1.3 Knowledge is placed in individual and community context
A piece of knowledge being tagged differently by different
communities makes a mess of indexing periodicals. One group
may view Richard Dawson’s work as science, yet another may
tag it under sociological and religious persecution. The Web
allows any group to file anything the way they see it and not
necessarily how the author originally published it or intended it
to be. In a sense, our Dewey Decimal System is a nice start, but
once launched on the collective of the Internet, it is dissected
and tagged in an ever-changing display of communities and
interests. We have lost our authority over knowledge.
It is as if when you hand a book to someone, it comes with an
appendix with everyone’s point of view that has read and rated
it. It also can be found by the many different ways people have
tagged it. Again, this is the information that Amazon has
captured so well.
6.1.4 Learners collaboratively control the global index.
Well there goes our filing system. Unlike separate text books
that can be confined into categories, knowledge and even digital
text books are tagged in relationship to communities of interest
and personal interest. Now searching and tagging knowledge
will reshape how it shows up in other searches along with how
we choose to present ourselves to the outside world. This is a
social networked and social bookmarked library.
7 Library as Micro-Communities
The librarian once catered to physical communities with their
unique needs and traits. However, with the global reach of the
Web, the frequency of the need for knowledge outside the
community will grow with the global expectancy in our
collective experiences in the world around us. Libraries are now
literally collaborative windows to the world.
7.1.1 Communities are collaborative sets of knowledge
Cyber communities are overlapping communities of interest
providing us with access to people throughout the world, in real-
time and for free. In the areas of missions and development, I
meet the authors of books and papers I used to passively read
about a few years ago. Libraries now provide a dynamic
exchange with authors. In one case in Africa, a boy created a
windmill in a remote town using information that he found on
the internet. He is now a part of an international movement. This
is a case of cyber communities infused into global physical
communities via a librarian. See:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arD374MFk4w
8 Knowledge is Fixed
Once upon a time, books were reprinted when grammar or
factual information changed over time. For the most part,
knowledge was fixed and considered factual.
8.1 Facts are harder to define on the Web
Rapid advances in technology and a changing world make many
ideas, formulas and constructs obsolete if not outright incorrect.
None of the marketing text books I read in college have any
information about Internet global marketing, because it did not
exist back then. Cooking schools did not have Teflon or
microwaves, and construction workers did not have to be
certified in laser technology. They do now. Everything that was
fixed is now evolving rapidly, so created a fluid search system.
8.1.1 Local publishing now impacts global change
A small urban village can develop a new farming technique and
the information can be published and shared with the world.
Microeconomics is an idea someone thought was silly, and it is
now a multi-billion dollar industry that saves lives. People in
libraries are currently publishing volumes of this content.
Deception and disinformation can spread just as easily in this
environment. Unless the “ human guides” (librarians and
teachers) ingrain the values of honesty and the skills to vet out
this disinformation, we will be in trouble. Wikipedia has proven
to be a battleground for spin by political groups and pressures
from businesses. Somehow they have managed, with good
academic standards and educated people, to put out an excellent
product. Truth and fiction will be harder and harder to be
defined on the Internet.
9 Colonial Authoritarian Knowledge
In the past, each library had its Britannica, Time and Life
Magazines. Most of the books came from leading publishers. It
trickled down from big publishing houses to little libraries all
over the world in a one-way flow of information. In this model
only the opinion of book critics mattered, however this has also
changed dramatically.
Copyright 2009 Chrysalis Campaign, Inc. 3|Page

Fig. 3 The flow of knowledge is shifting from trickle
down in bottom-up and collaboratively-horizontal
9.1.1 Knowledge is now a globally collaborative event
Every library with people on a PC is not necessarily in research
mode, but possibly in a publishing mode with ideas and
reactions to information. Emails, YouTube, Blogs, Wikis,
Slideshare, Voicethreads and thousands of Web 2.0 applications
are all collaborative printing machines. In the blink of an eye,
libraries have become publishing houses.
10 Can You Help Me?
Has now evolved into:
“Can you locate the global community I belong in?
People no longer come to libraries to be silent and fed. They are
coming to speak out and be part of something. This is the
greatest opportunity the librarian can grasp.
Vibrant libraries seem to be vibrant communities filled with
small groups and events with learning as a common interest. The
opportunity is here for libraries to fully embrace adult learning
and child development programs.
10.1.1 The new library customer
 I want to find people like me
 I want to find people who have solved my problem
 I want to be heard about what I have to say
 I have something to offer
 I want to help other people
 I do not want be alone anymore, I want to work with other
people
 I have something unique to contribute
 I am a significant part of this world
10.1.2 The library as communities of knowledge
 Localized collaborative cultures
 Center for civic organizations and adult learning
 Encourage small groups to work together on a PC
 Allow conversations and small work rooms
 Publish learning events in the local town
 Publish town projects globally
 Bring businesses, schools and communities together
 Become a free community college for small rural settings
 Teach the town how to search, explore, heal and grow with
windmills, wells and farming
 Teach the town how to publish
 Encourage corporations to look at libraries as marketing and
educational channels
 Teach the town how to connect with the world
Copyright 2009 Chrysalis Campaign, Inc. 4|Page
11 Conclusion:
I know a faith-based organization that has over 1,100 small
12 Richard C. Close Bio
groups. They ask the new members what their strengths and Richard Close, CEO, The Chrysalis Campaign. Mr. Close
weaknesses are. Then they start them in a group where their has provided over two decades of strategic, marketing,
strengths will help the group and another where the group’s content development and business development in the
strengths will help the individual. Perhaps the new libraries of corporate training, eLearning and education industries.
the future will blend the strengths and weaknesses of their local As a senior consultant he has developed programs for
communities into new social learning portals all collaboratively companies such as: Microsoft, IBM, Sun Microsystems,
connected around the world. A breath-taking mission.
American Management Association, Graduate School
The success of the library will soon be collections of the USDA, Michigan Virtual University, International Data
people who access the information there and not stacks of Corporation, Oracle, Powersoft/Sybase and Global
paper tuning into dust on the shelves. Knowledge, HCCS, BASCOM.com and various
eLearning Companies.
11.1.1 REFERENCES:
Richard has been a key player in the launching of several
[1] Close, Richard C., “Web 2.0 and the Global Learning eLearning companies and Technology Centers in New
Framework” Distance Learning Association Conference at
Penn State University., Webinar and White paper (Oct.
York. He is a webinar speaker, published learning white
2009) http://tiny.cc/syYEB papers and learning strategies, in the field of Knowledge
Management, Virtual Change Programs, Transformational
[2] Close, Richard C., “Industry Training vs Web Education
Learning-NLP, Healthcare Learning Best Practices and
Global Learning Framework” White Paper, Global
Learning Framework Ning (Nov. 2009) Web Education System strategies. Soon to be published
“The Global Learning Framework”
[3] Close, Richard C., “Hoarding Knowledge” White Paper,
Global Learning Framework Ning (Now. 2009) eMail: rclose@richardclose.info
http://tiny.cc/aPyTv
Web Site: Please join us at:
[4] Close, Richard C., “Hording Knowledge” White Paper, http://globallearningframework.ning.com
Global Learning Framework Ning (Nov. 2009)
http://tiny.cc/aPyTv The Chrysalis Campaign: The Chrysalis Campaign is a
[5] Close, Richard C., “The Global Learning Framework©
for profit organization that donates 1/3 of all profits to
Initiatives” White Paper, Global Learning Framework poverty in US and African programs.
Ning (Oct. 2009) http://tiny.cc/eecmn Chrysalis Campaign
[6] Close, Richard C., “Internet Filtering and Web 2.0. Why 13 Geiger Rd.
Can’t They Get Along?” BASCOM ,Webinar New Milford, Ct 06776
http://tiny.cc/YyQox (Nov. 2007)
[7] Diane Kramer, Ph. D. and Richard C. Close, “The
Revolution in eLearning” White Paper Peakskills Learning
Systems (Feb. 2005)
[8] Close, Richard C., “Best Practices for Nurse Educators”
Decision Critical, Inc.,Webinar http://tiny.cc/JRO7
(Nov. 2007)
[9] Close, Richard C., “Best Practices for Healthcare
Professional” Healthcare Compliance Strategies, Inc.,
Webinar and White paper www.hccs.com (Mar. 2006)
[10] Close, Richard C., and Ellen Julian. 2000. The Ever-
Changing e-Learning Elevator, eLearning 2000 Conference

Copyright 2009 Chrysalis Campaign, Inc. 5|Page