Yearly Archives: 2015

73 posts

The IL Standards and IL Framework Cannot Co-Exist by TTW Contributor Troy Swanson

The ACRL Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education Task Force has completed a final draft of the Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education. This draft is working its way through the infrastructure of ACRL. (I have previously posted about the Framework on this blog: The New Information Literacy Framework and James Madison, Information as a Human Right: A Missing Threshold Concept?, and Using the New IL Framework to Set a Research Agenda. I should note that I am a member of the Task Force but that I do not officially speak officially for the Task Force in this […]

Michael Casey on Harwood Institute’s Innovators Lab for Libraries

Don’t miss Michael Casey’s piece at LJ: http://lj.libraryjournal.com/2015/01/shows-events/inside-the-harwood-institutes-innovators-lab-for-libraries/ The idea of asking people about their aspirations (“what kind of community do you want to live in?”) consumed much of the first day of training. Students participated in exercises designed to help them better understand the powerful responses that result from simply asking somebody about their dreams for the community. These conversations help the library focus outward and better understand the rhythms of the local community, gaining a wealth of public knowledge for the library. In one of the first exercises, students broke off into small groups to examine the “stages […]

Success is Emergent: What Gamers Can Teach us About Collaboration by TTW Contributor Troy Swanson

During my recent commutes to work, I have been enjoying the audio of Jane McGonigal’s 2011 book Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World . This is one of those titles that I have always meant to read, and I am just now getting to it. McGonigal’s general thesis is that the compelling aspects of game-play (especially online gaming) can be applied to many areas of life (social problems, routine tasks, etc) in an effort to make life more engaging. While McGonigal has much to offer the library community, her discussion of collaboration […]