My Maverick Bar: A Search for Identity and the “Real Work” of Librarianship | In the Library with the Lead Pipe.

My colleague Kim has written a great reflective piece on what it is to be an academic librarian today. Her personal take is to connect libraries with Knowledge. Yes, Knowledge with a capital “K”.

“I see no work in librarianship more real than the collection, protection, and dissemination of Knowledge, and the empowerment of others in means to acquire it”

For me, I feel that librarians would fine great value in undertaking more deep reflection like this. I have heard more often then I would like to hear that there is no need for theory in librarianship… that there is no such thing as a philosophy of librarianship. I think to some degree we, as a profession,  have lost sight of what it means to be a librarian and what it means to do the work of a library. Instead of simply the management of resources, personnel, access points and budgets as the constraining influences which provide the direction a library should take, we definitely should dig deep and figure out what the purpose of library is, and should be, even if this goes against the prevailing thought of “keeping up appearances” or “return on investment”. Not only should we make libraries relevant… or perhaps Relevant (with capital “R”), we also need to make libraries meaningful… er… Meaningful.  This Meaning is not only to the individual patron, but to the community, society at large, as well as the profession and discipline of librarianship. One of the only ways I know to tap into that is to be reflective and truly philosophical in order to provide the truest insight into the direction of a library and the meaningfulness of the work and activities that occur within its purview.

Kudos to Kim for a great post.

See my work in here!

Since this a blog about me, I mind as well start publicizing my accomplishments (as if I haven’t already). So with that mind,  I have recently had an article published in Library Student Journal. But you might be saying to yourself, “But L1brar1an, you aren’t a library student!”  – True, friend true. I am no longer a library student but I am student of libraries (ha!). So we (myself and my co-author) specifically chose this journal for two reasons. First, this was an audience that would benefit most from the subject of our article (Poster Sessions). Two, this is an open access journal available freely via the internet so anybody can find this and read this. In this case, instead of targeting a journal specifically because it was peer-reviewed, we actually wanted people to access and read this article. Now I won’t say my article  is the best article in the world (far from it). Actually, I think there is a really good article on making a poster session out there already but that article is buried in an obscure journal nobody but a librarian would find (and it ain’t in a librarian journal). Just as libraries are trying to meet the user where they are, it would be great if librarians (and others) would publish where the appropriate readers are.

So here is my article:

A pathway to professional success: a step-by-step guide for creating poster sessions in library and information studies for MLIS students and new librarians - LIBRARY STUDENT JOURNAL – Volume 5 – 2010

If you want to see more of my work (including posters from poster sessions) click here.

from the great blog – www.l1brar1an.com – of course!

Attending: ‘Using Technology to Reach More Students in Tough Times’ which has 5 semesters of data regarding teaching information literacy online.

Bibliographic instruction sessions (aka the one-shot) has some challenges. For example, too much info in too little time, what impact does it really have, etc.

At WSU like BSU the only place students are guaranteed to attend one of these is in their early Eng 101/102 courses.

If one-shots are flawed can they act as a doorway to information literacy not necessarily the whole piece.

Wow, WSU has used at least 4 different course management systems (i.e. blackboard). Currently, using Angel. Didn’t know you universities could flipflop around like that with course management systems.

Beginning to talk about using Angel to reach students with info lit information BEFORE they get into the one-shot.

WSU has an Information Literacy Education Learning Environment (ILE) which is homegrown. They used students to code it for them. (Students can build cool stuff like this if we let them) It is not simply a tutorial but a space where students take quizzes/essays after watching particular online materials. ILE flips the script. Instead of building assignments from the content of tutorials, they select tutorials from the web (or elsewhere) to support the class assignment. As you connect tutorials for the assignment it pulls from banks of questions which assess information literacy. (Hopefully I am explaining this correctly).

Pretty cool stuff.