The Buddhist Hour Radio Broadcast Archives

1.0 Approaching others to involve them in higher skills to lend a helping hand.

We involve persons by Buddha procedures. These procedures have some parallel to modern Western thought that has emerged this century.

However, note the fit is not unequivocal.

Consider the debate that was held in September 1956 between Professor B.F. Skinner and Professor Carl R. Rogers at the American Psychological Association.

The tone was of the "either-or" variety. Behavioral science, was in the process of becoming an "if-then" science.

For example, it is known how to predict which members of an organisation will be trouble makers and/or delinquent.

Rogers (1961) listed three associated processes for psychological safety.

1. Accepting the individual as of unconditional worth.
2. Providing a climate in which external evaluation is absent.
3. Understanding empathically.

To help change the culture and raise both awareness and perceived value of the library collection, the author chaired a "Library Sub-Committee" operating on these three ideas about 1982.

For the first year, meetings of interested Members were held for about 3 hours every Sunday morning.

During the first year, conditions were set up to get agreement that internal evaluation was to be strived for.

During the second year, the meeting was divided into two parts, the second part being coaching in written English by a series of professionally qualified English teachers.

During the third year, having established more psychological freedom there was more openness, which Rogers describes in terms of the playful and spontaneous juggling of precepts, concepts, and meanings, which is part of creativity.

Permission to be free is not softness or indulgence or encouragement, it also means that one is responsible.

In the fourth year, these popular meetings were concluded because the Members lacked deference to the volunteer English teachers.

Over two years, many Members repeatedly ignored their English Teacher's advice to practice and study what was learnt at home.

In all, this refusal to undertake homework became an issue which demoralised four different volunteer English Teachers who left over three years.

From our Dhamma Teacher's viewpoint, the issue was not about literacy or even about conveying information, it was about having a captive audience who were polite enough to laugh at the superior English jokes and hear from a series of persons who designed their courses in a rational, logical manner based on the precepts of good instructional design referred to by Popham and Baker (1970).

Passivity of students has long been well recognised in Australia (H.E. Stanton 1975).

As many students have said, their main task in lectures is to find out precisely what the lecturer believes to be true and then feed him or her with this at examination time.

Van Den Berghe (1970) puts it neatly when he says:

"The two hostile classes, professors and students, meet physically in the lecture hall, but their minds and their emotions remain poles apart.

The student wants small curds of easily digestible knowledge, which, in the manner of ruminants, he (or she) can regurgitate at examinations".

Combs (1971) gave a definition that we favour.

He wrote: " Learning is the discovery of meaning. The problem of learning, modern psychologists tell us, always involves two aspects: one is the acquisition of new knowledge or experience, the other has to do with the individual's personal discovery of the meaning of information for him (or her)".

The provision of information can be controlled by an outsider with or without the co-operation of the learner. It can be done by mechanical means which do not require a person at all.

The discovery of meaning can only take place in persons and cannot occur without the involvement of the person. This is the human side of learning.

We do not go all the way with "humanistic educators" but the listener will, no doubt, make his or her evaluation as to our success in operationalizing some of Roger's elements from what is thought to written in this section.

The emphasis on personal meaning guided them to awake to the low level of cognitive skills they had acquired from their prior education.

For Buddha Dhamma success, persons need to display better than average attention to their thought processes.

The premise is that students should take responsibility for their own learning, rather than simply accepting what was handled out to them in lectures. Factors facilitating learning must include a decent reference library. Our Teacher is the "Shower of the Way" and it is the Teacher who provides the resources.

But, the Students must want to learn and request to be taught.

The teaching achieves meaning when the majority of persons who attended decided they were "uneducated" in the Oxford Dictionary meaning of words.

Many decided to undertake part time technical or university studies at their own expense leading which lead them to Diploma or Degree qualifications to help with cognitive thought.

During these Library sessions, a set of professional terms was learnt to study the tradition of many libraries.

They explored the social importance of libraries at different times. The history of notable collections of Buddha Dhamma was explored to inspire listeners.

Difference in culture between approaches for the use of sila when caring for Buddhist books was explained in minute detail.

Staff would to enter the library holding the traditional five morality precepts. This meant there would be no killing of insects, such as silverfish. They ought be placed outside the site.

At that time, our Teacher specified what we wanted as our information architecture.

To do this, he did not intend we constrain ourselves to existing software or hardware of that time because it was clear which way IT was being designed and our current technology has actualised to date in line with what we predicted.

This was like a mandala.

Also, we wrote cornerstone statements to cover "all-time" basics and ten explored what karmic result would be likely.

In time, we were confident enough to write a manifesto of what we desired to happen to the good information we had in the library.

Quite a simple manifesto was drafted - to preserve the Buddha Dhamma so it lasts in useable form for at least 500 years.

Later, we came up with the idea it stay at our Upwey site.

We do not plan for our books be put in a sealed vault as terma.

2.0 Methods of drafting our new Performance Indicators.

We drafted a intelligible set of performance indicators (PI).

Our assumption was that "star wars" response times would be rapid by a factor of at least 1000 on what present software could deliver. We felt sure that one day in the future, this "super" software being written would trickle down for business use.

Accordingly, we put our Class 1 definition at a high level.

We supposed the eye could probably recognise data or an icon in context in 0.1 second. So we set up a definition of a first class library such that it could respond to 95% of queries in 1 second;

* a second class library responds to 90% of queries in 10 seconds;
* a third rate library responds to 85% of queries in 100 seconds;
* a fourth rate responds to 80% of queries in 1000 seconds;
* a fifth rate library responds to 75% of queries in 10 000 seconds ( 2.8 hours); and
* a sixth rate library responds to 70% in 100 000 (28 hours), and so on.

At that time we rated ourselves as a seventh rate library on our P.I. scale.

It had the major advantage that we did not have to compare ourselves with others to know where we were.

We like specified self-rating models for ease of practical use.

Because of our long term plans for our library script, we could not find a local equivalent to what we said we would do.

Since we found no other group in Australia were competing in rivalry with this function of our Buddhist group, we could not find bench mark comparison figures.

Rating models which are extensions of the simple logistic model to items with more than two ordered categories provides important relationships to the Guttman scale.

For example, if there are three ordered categories reflecting the degrees of difficulty of some task, the format may be depicted as:

EASIER EQUAL HARDER

where the respondent is asked to check one category.

Rasch, (1961) listed requirements of the comparison between two stimuli should be independent of which particular individuals were instrumental for the comparison and it should also be independent of which other stimuli within the considered class were or might also have been compared.

Rasch's specifications were expressed in terms of the most elementary example of quantification, that of a comparison.

Such sets of comparisons he termed specifically objective - objective because of their independence of any other parameters, specifically objective because these relationships had to be established within some specified frame of reference.

This frame of reference included a definition of the class of persons, the class of items, and any other relevant conditions that would ensure that the objective relationships were maintained.

No distributional assumptions were made for either persons or items, however. Indeed they were deliberately excluded. (Andrich D., 1985)

3.0 Determination to form an andragogy culture.

In 1994, we decided to the library ORGANISATION must be UP-TO-DATE.

We have the will to do the "harder" parts (best practice) of Library culture for Buddhists.

In 1994, we decided we wanted AN ANDRAGOGY CULTURE.

Andragogy, as a professional perspective of adult educators, must be defined as an organised and sustained effort to assist adults to learn IN A WAY THAT ENHANCES THEIR CAPABILITY TO FUNCTION AS SELF-DIRECTED LEARNERS HAVING A PATH TO SCHOLARSHIP.

It is almost universally recognised, at least in theory, that central to the adult educator's function is a GOAL AND METHOD OF SELF-DIRECTED LEARNING.( J. Mezirow 1981)

At that time, we targeted library USERS to align with and track S2 culture ; (A culture which writes things down).

Then, the organisation had the written data of what was being done and could track a move to S3 culture or better.

4.0 The concept that users pay.

Our Library fee of $20.00 p.a. was introduced in about 1991.

In 1999, it is now $30.00 p.a.

Our promotional rationale to sell "user pays" for Buddhists was:

If spending somewhere between AUST.$100 to $500 per year buying Buddhist books for their personal libraries is normal for Buddhists and these books are read by their owners about once per year, an online LAN information abstracting service base provides better value for money.

More and more of our Members now accept a Library USER PAYS culture.

By June 1995, 22 Members had become financial Members of our Centre's Library at a fee of $20 p.a.

Prior to this time, borrowing books had been free of fees. To raise awareness of value, an annual library fee was levied.

After two years, this $10 annual charge was raised to $30 per year.

About this time, one Member who had retired decided to devote three days a week to cataloguing.

She attending to the library with good will and we arranged for her to be trained in computer cataloguing of books.

We paid her petrol money. This was agreed and accepted as fair by a vote of Members.

Advocates of the extension of the use of information frequently argue that the problems of the world relate to lack of information.

5.0 Our interest in comparable librarianship.

In our present library, the level of our interest in this topic may be judged by our holdings of about 600 reference books and about 200 journals on libraries in different countries.

To revolutionise thinking to embrace the future, the next stage of the project was introduced by a notion of the "LIBRARY WITHOUT WALLS". This meant accessibility to the John D. Hughes Collection must be deliverable off-site and have computer search engines.

Interest in comparative librarianship did not arise until after World War 2.

Louis Shores (1966) claimed that comparative librarianship can uncover " neglected approaches to important technical problems" and, furthermore, that: "it can suggest a new critical role for librarianship".

Comparative librarianship lead us to our general model for inquiry used at the Buddhist Discussion Centre (Upwey) Ltd.

Dutton (1987) posits that information technology is further confusing decision making by the use of computer models in policy analysis, forecasting and planning decisions.

However, Postman (1994) argues that current technologies are adequate for communication and information needs, and that the preoccupation with improving the technology diverts thinking away from the causes of problems.

Bhikku P. A. Payutto, who was awarded the 1994 UNESCO Peace Prize For Peace Education noted that as the world has been made smaller through the development of information technology, it facilitates the spread of terrorism.

The Venerable explained that "high technology" means greed and hatred have acquired much more effective tools.

Active greed can drive a trader to track a particular currency or set of stocks which show small variation and enter up to 20 buy and sell instructions a day to make profits by influencing, creating and exploiting economic discontinuities.

For that period, the world of the person becomes the trading screen. Greed and hatred would be much easier to control if it were not for the influence of a third condition which in Buddha Dhamma Pali we call "ditthi ", meaning views and beliefs.

Whenever greed, anger and hatred are reinforced with beliefs and social values, they acquire a cleaner direction, an impetus which channels them into much more destructive activities.

Adherence to different technologies is similar to adherence to different ideologies and social values, be it conscious or otherwise, becomes kamma (karma) on a social scale, which is of far-reaching effect, extending over long periods of time.

6.0 Returning to the opening question.

If the answer to the question is yes, the nature of our action research conducted over many years may be of help to other organisations who will find the linking mechanism to end-users remains problematical.

We try to simplify the jargon of technical debates so that more Members and Friends can understand and participate.

How could we plan to answer queries from these new persons?

We had to automate, because we saw the other option to upgrade service delivery to a sixth rate library or better be to find ten to a hundred times more volunteer library staff and train them.

We could not see this other option as our path.

To appreciate the conviction with which our organisation holds its existing culture; we must remember NEVER to fall back to the poor culture of the three untimely attempts made at to operate the cataloguing our collection.

7.0 Are our plans believed by most Members?

Yes. The four task units can follow them.

The organisation does see a third rate library.

Lately, Members do believe that our time frame for success being tracked of the year 2000 A.D. will happen.

8.0 The search model (pre-eminent for end-users) that will be used in our library enterprise.

After considerable effort, we selected a search model suitable for our purposes and within the scope of our current technology.

The general non linear search model we recommend includes a consequent series of reiterative reviews.

Our general model for the scientific method of inquiry, developed by Charles H. Busha and Stephan P. Harter in 1980. Details of our model is found in their text Research Methods in Librarianship Techniques and Interpretation, published by Academic Press Inc. ISBN 0-12-147550- 6.

Inspection of a flowchart of our general model reveals considerable demands are placed on the end-user of this model because it requires eight essential work skills or aptitudes.

However, by next year, we will have a help desk with a team of eight persons available 30 hours per week to be called on.

The flow chart of our general model shows 8 cell elements.

1. State General Problem ---
2. Conduct Literature Search ---
3. State Specific Problem ---
4. Design Methodology ---
5. Gather Data ---
6. Analyse Data ---
7. Report Results ---
8. Polish and Ramify Hypothesis ---

NOTE. (If it is desired to rerun the search process using the polished hypothesis go back to cell 2 to conduct a second literature search.)

May all beings be well and happy.

This script was written and edited by John D. Hughes and Leanne Eames.

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