The pulse and the flow So what do people want from us? They want help doing things, rather than finding things. – Brian Kenney, “Where Reference Fits in the Modern Library” Infinite learning. Infinite learning. This is actually a really hard topic for me to write about, because it’s so personal, so close to my heart. I don’t know where to start. It’s like talking about breathing. Infinite learning is more than lifelong learning. Lifelong learning is where the mainstream core of the profession is now: “….All purposeful learning activity, whether formal or informal, undertaken on an ongoing basis with the […]
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Grounded, but with one eye on the horizon “When you press the pause button on a machine, it stops. But when you press the pause button on human beings they start… You start to reflect, you start to rethink your assumptions, you start to reimagine what is possible…” And it is not just knowledge that is improved by pausing. So too, is the ability to build trust, “to form deeper and better connections, not just fast ones, with other human beings.” – Thomas Friedman (2017, pp 3-4), quoting Dov Seidman I just finished reading two thought-provoking books, made all […]
To outsiders it may appear that I have risen very quickly to my current role as an administrative director in my academic library, but for me it has seemed a much slower process filled with many failures and personal lessons. Some of these failures were visible to others, but many were only internally known. In reading TTW Contributor Justin Hoenke’s Tales From the Library Trenches Part 4: Within You Without You article in the September 2017 issue of Information Today, I felt an instant connection to him, although I’ve never personally met Justin. So much of this article resonates with […]
Boundaries, Connections, and Transformation [B]oth ends act as anchors and as targets… – from the Wikipedia definition for hyperlink I didn’t set out in this class to keep coming back to a single a cohesive and overarching metaphor in my reflection posts about the deeply personal emotional experience of librarianship within the communities we traverse and occupy; but, always, the themes emerge in the course of the writing. I’m thinking this week about hyperlinked environments, and hyperlinks and environments and where those two concepts intersect and inform each other, which leads to information ecology, which leads to social geography, to GIS and big data in community advocacy, to the […]
Love makes a community When I lived in Seattle right after library school I was an AmeriCorps volunteer at Seattle Public Library and helped start the Wired for Learning program which taught tech skills to folks who needed them. In Seattle that was mostly low income folks, new immigrants and people with cognitive or physical disabilities. My feeling was that I’d do that for a few years, then everyone would have learned the stuff and then we could move on to more sophisticated topics […] Then I moved to the east coast which was a bit behind the west coast and […]
About a week after I got the offer for my current job, and ten days or so before I started, I went to my future workplace and walked in the front door. I did not tell anyone who I was or why I was there. I just puttered around, getting a sense of the place and how it felt to be a patron there, how intuitive it was, how welcoming. Where people clustered, and for what purposes. What self-services were available, and how navigational information was arranged, and how readily staff made themselves visible and available to help. What I saw […]
As libraries anticipate and explore new possibilities for the future, there are three areas that should be focused on for a successful transition; people, places, and objects. Libraries have always desired to reach out to their users, but in the past this involved library buildings that had to be visited in person which were filled with row after row of books and little space left for anything other than reading. With advances in technology libraries have the opportunity to meet user needs in interesting and varied ways. People Technology has and will continue to transform people’s lives. Libraries have a […]
Confession: I have neglected my duty as a library leader. With more than 10 years of experience working in three different types of libraries, and a multitude of specialized training under belt, I have neglected to strategically bring my library support staff into the conversation and up to speed on today’s public library services scene. I am running circulation similarly to that of a grocer: smile, scan, and say goodbye. As a supervisor I must find ways to open the conversation and empower my staff to be a part of the ever-changing library community. How much more empowering would it […]
Note from Michael: Here’s an example of student work from this past school year. This post got lost in TTW drafts – Sorry Red! 🙂 Megan Bergeron, or Red as she prefers to be called, currently works in retail and is working on her Master’s degree in Library Science at San José State University. She loves anything to do with technology, learning, and fandom and is currently trying to specialize in digital services and emerging technologies. She lives in Connecticut with her husband and two cats, Flynn and Archer.
I come to this blog post with some concern in my heart. Deep in my heart I have a profound love and respect for public libraries. They are an essential part of any democracy. Access to libraries has increased over the history of democracies, and some who might not have had access in the past are now welcome. The maturity of civilization always seems to reveal itself as we become more inclusive through the growth of acceptance, the growth of respect, and the increasing understanding of the value of all human beings. Everything I’ve learned recently supports my devotion to […]