Monthly Archives: January 2016

4 posts

Open Conversation: Ranganathan Revisited

Jan: In your inspiring Hyperlinked Service slides you start with a Ranganathan update. Shiyali Ranganathan ‘made’ his Five Laws of Libary Science in 19312. What makes these ve library laws look so incredibly up-do-date af- ter almost eighty years? e laws speak about connecting with users, about turning your library into a human growing organism, about facilitating and empowering the user. How did libraries apply these laws in the years after 1931? Michael: Let’s print them here for our readers. Sometimes it’s good to be reminded of Ranganathan’s insights. The laws are: books are for use; every reader his (or […]

Do Search Engines Make us Feel Smarter Than We Are? by TTW Contributor Troy Swanson

I have always been interested in the cognitive side of information literacy. How does our existing knowledge, personal beliefs, worldview, and experience intertwine into a decision-making process? How can we understand this process and use it to improve the teaching of information literacy skills? That being said, I really enjoyed David McRaney’s interview with Yale University’s Matthew Fisher as they considered how the online context impacted self-perceptions of knowledge. Here’s a description from the You Are Not so Smart Podcast page: The latest research suggest that though technology probably doesn’t make us stupid, it can, however, cause us to believe […]

Project Info Lit: Grads Challenged by All They Need to Learn After College

Note from Michael. I was honored to serve on this project’s advisory board. I wrote about it in “Office Hours” here: http://lj.libraryjournal.com/2015/10/opinion/michael-stephens/the-livelong-day-office-hours/ Most of today’s college students who think they only need to land a good job once they graduate are blindsided by all they don’t know about life skills and surviving in the workplace once they’re out of college, according to a new national research report released today. “Clearly, a wide gap exists between the life skills grads have and the ones they still need to learn, ” said Alison J. Head, a principal research scientist at the University […]