What does it mean to be Mindful and Reflective?
M.I.N.D.F.U.L
Mistakes: “By not making mistakes, by not taking responsible risks, by waiting until someone else makes it perfect before we can adopt it, we miss an opportunity to benefit from any success of the project now.”
Interact: “Connect and interact as an individual with your patrons as a human being. Treat them as humans and not as members of an anonymous crowd. Share your knowledge and stories with them, join the conversation.”
Neat Things: Try neat things and see if they stick.
Done: Find ways to overcome the “have always done it that way” attitude.
Failures: Show your successes, failures, and the road you took to get there.
Usable: Ask yourself – Is the Library usable?
Learn: Encourage people to learn and be curious, to show them how things work, and show them how to find their way.
R.E.F.L.E.C.T.I.V.E.
Respond: Find the voice and the content it takes to get users to respond to and share your posts on social media.
Explore: Get students to explore, play, experiment, and figure things out for themselves.
F3 (Feasible, Flexible, and Focused): The institution’s vision should not be so farfetched that it appears unfeasible. The institution’s vision should be focusedenough to provide a clear direction to work towards. The institution’s vision should be flexible enough to allow for the environment to change and the organization to adapt to it while remaining focused on the vision’s goals.
Laugh: Bring in speakers who will get your users to laugh at and learn from their talks.
Elevator Pitch: It’s a good exercise for information professionals to consider what their elevator spiel might be.
Capital Stock: “To reflect is to look back on what has been done to extract the meanings which are the capital stock for dealing with further experience” (p. 108).
Thoughtful: Be thoughtful about the decisions you make.
Input: There are people in our community who use our libraries who are much better at certain things, and their input and observations on our library processes and trials can help build better services.
Viewpoints: Recognize and experiment with alternative viewpoints (p. 104).
Evangelize: This is a call to action for all staff to become evangelists for the library.
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Tracie is the High School Librarian and Technology Integrationist as well as the the International Baccalaureate Extended Essay Coordinator at the American Community School at Beirut. After spending twenty years teaching History and Theory of Knowledge to high school students in a number of international schools around the world, her passion for helping students find information, evaluate it, and construct knowledge combined with a desire to leverage technological tools to enhance that process led her to pursue a degree in information science. Tracie is currently completing her MLIS at San Jose State University where she has focused on Information Instruction and Emerging Technology.