The wonderful world of Wiki

If only I were so eloquent:

And this is why digital literacy is so crucial for educational institutions: we do a fundamental disservice to our students if we continue to propagate old methods of knowledge creation and archivization without also teaching them how these structures are changing, and, more importantly, how they will relate to knowledge creation and dissemination in a fundamentally different way. No longer is an encyclopedia a static collection of facts and figures (although some of its features might be relatively so); it is an organic entity. To educational and policy institutions which, for a substantial portion of history, have maintained control over static codex centered archives—think not only academic libraries, but national ones as well—the shift to an organic structure which they no longer control or solely influence represents a crisis indeed. But to train students in old literacy seems to me to be fundamentally the wrong approach. --David Parry in Wikipedia and the New Curriculum Digital Literacy Is Knowing How We Store What We Know

As a librarian who has the opportunity to teach college students "information literacy" skills in classroom and one on one settings I am constantly forced into a real life awareness of the changing types and retrieval styles of today's learners. How well am I preparing the undergraduate with whom I have contact for life and further academic endeavors if I do not recognize these changes? What I appreciate so much about Professor Parry's opinion is a recognition of and respect for this changing culture.

In regards to his comments, what I get excited about is my opportunity to help students learn and navigate these changing avenues of information dissemination more confidently and more critically. The hard part of the whole endeavor, however, is finding the wise balance between acknowledging these new opportunities available for information creation and dissemination while at the same time conveying an clear and academically necessary need for restraint. I have no answers, only the commitment to continually evaluate where I am as a librarian and aid to our students.

Good advice to keep in mind

It can be very exciting to expose oneself to all of the 2.0 tools available. It is even more inspiring when they are, for the most part, so easy to use as so FREE! This said, I find Michael Stephen's advice in "Web 2.0 and You" in December 2007's American Libraries both encouraging and grounding.

Breifly, he encourages libraries to use these tools in a selective and thoughtful manner. Do not use the tool simply for the sake of using it; be sure to think about the purpose of the project and determine the best execution. The work should be well done and fit seamlessly into the existing structure rather than slap dash and messy.

All said, he encourages us to do exactly what we are doing right now in conjunction with 23 Things on a Stick: "Discover. Play. Participate."

Thing Seven, Webinar Thought of the Day

I have been interested in course specific student portals created and maintained by the academic library since I was a MLIS student, so I was pleasantly surprised to come across a webinar entitled "Students, Faculty and Librarians: Making Connections through Course Pages" After watching the broadcast I printed off the recommended article: Portals for Undergraduate Subject Searching: Are They Worth It? by Jane Nichols and Margaret Mellinger. It was a clear read that touched on most if not all of the questions I had kicking around in my mind after the presentation. Ultimately, I found two ideas particularly interesting.

One, a "librarian's" concept of type of resource (book, article, video) is more and more difficult for the traditional undergraduate to understand; "The task force concluded that OSU Libraries’ arrangement by type (database, journal, catalog) hindered users ability to find subject specific information (486)." Rather than looking for type, a student is looking for information on their topic.

I see this idea played out more and more as student work through the library portion of our required Researching and Writing Course. Even though we try to create clear lines between reference books, news, journals, books, and web pages in the assignment tasks student continually return resource lists that pay no attention to the type of resources but rather concentrate on the content. I have been wondering for some time now if the fact of the matter was that TYPE means little to students and it was encouraging to read that this is not a shortcoming of our teaching technique but rather a result of a conceptual difference.

Second and more applicable to this 23 Things exercise was the comment on a surprising find; users were not that interested in expending their time and energy on customizing their own library page or portal. This was a helpful reminder; while the tools and possibilities are ever-expanding; when we as a library create for our users we cannot expect the user to want to expend excessive amounts of time or energy. Yes, tools are great; yes, visuals are interesting; but we need to do the work and customization so that the user can easily and quickly meet their need.

Stumbling upon a thought...

The opportunity to blog, the very fact that I am being more intentional about my professional reading and processing the information so that I can eventually reflect in this format, is going to be very valuable to my growth as a librarian. While I will not be so vain as to entertain the idea that someone may actually be interested in my thoughts, I do assert that it will improve my ability to provide service; people do care about that.

Now, onto the actual reflection. While reading "Reinventing the OPAC" I bumped into an ACRL article, "Changing Roles of Academic and Research Libraries," that says it better than I could:Library staffs in general must become more agile, more highly attuned to, and more aggressive in proclaiming just how different the world of knowledge has already become.

I find it very exciting to be in this profession right now because there is so much change. It is exciting, and stretching, to realize that I have to stay current because current is constantly changing. The intentionality this brings to my work can at times be intimidating, but it is opportunities like 23 Things on a Stick that provide a chance to mindfully further my understanding of the opportunities available to help me provide better service to the students, faculty, and staff I serve.

If I acknowledge that the world of information is changing I am also acknowledging the fact that the students with whom I work may very well approach the research process in a way foreign to me. That said, I should expose myself to the tools they are using all the while thinking about ways they may be integrated into the searching process. It doesn't sound feasible to me at first blush, but could an image in Flickr jump start an answer to a reference query? I'll never know unless I try the product and stay open to the possibilities!