“Librarians must create new nostalgia,” urges Palfrey, former director of the Harvard Law School library and one of the planners behind the Digital Public Library of America. Though people still have a positive attitude towards libraries, Palfrey says this is based on nostalgia for the old model of libraries as places that collect and provide access to print materials. This nostalgia is dangerous because such a model cannot be sustained as more and more information goes online. The book presents Palfrey’s vision for the role of libraries in a brave new digital world. First, Palfrey thinks the physical library will […]
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Or whatever other dystopic future you can conjure up. Author Cory Doctorow, no stranger to the dystopic future, writes: “Public libraries have always been places where skilled information professionals assisted the general public with the eternal quest to understand the world.” Well, imagine the world you wished you understood up and vanishes one day – alien invasion, plague, zombie apocalypse… Perhaps these all sound like the unhinged ravings of someone who has consumed too much YA SciFi or bing watched the new X-Files. You would probably be right. But, let’s just imagine that world for a moment and how the libraries of […]
I was slightly embarrassed when I read Professor Stephens’ article “Stuck in the Past,” and his students’ responses when asked why they wanted to be librarians. When I decided to go to library school, it seemed like a logical choice, because (like those students) “I like books.” This is actually a bit of an understatement for me. I’ve always thought of myself as a book nerd and considered this a vital part of my identity. It is why I “followed my passion” and majored in English as an undergraduate. I got to read lots and lots of books, then write […]
I have been taking part in a leadership program for IT personnel within our university system. It’s a 9-month program, with 2-day workshops and on-the-job activities sprinkled throughout. One of the very first things we discussed was reflective practice: how it can be used to promote personal growth and how personal growth can benefit your relationships of all types. Have you ever done something and thought “man, I could have done that so much better”, or “next time I need to remember to do ‘x’”? Do you forget to actually follow-up on your own advice? Reflective practice help! The reflective […]
In recent years, the tiny house movement has gained momentum as more and more people are making the shift toward smaller spaces with fewer belongings. While purging clutter can be a freeing experience, learning to live without can also pose some challenges. Fortunately, mobile information environments and new models of library service mean that living small no longer has to mean going without. I’ve been a part of the tiny house movement since 2007. My boyfriend, our 4-pound Chihuahua, and I first downsized from a 600-square foot apartment to a 19-foot camper, then back and forth between a 33-foot sailboat and a […]
One of the big themes running through my life as a student this semester is connecting, mainly through connecting to others in the profession through the Internet. When I recently read the quote from the New Yorker about “some of our closest friends and most significant professional connections are people we’ve only ever met on the Internet,” my heart jumped and my ears opened to listen a little closer–in other words it really resonated with me. As an English speaking, budding librarian living in Hungary, my ‘in-person’ professional network, at least with other librarians, equals zero, which means that all of […]
My Context Book report for INFO 287 is a Keynote presentation that I have uploaded to YouTube. Want to learn more about the events going on at the Burton Barr Central Library in Arizona? Click here. ———————————————————————————- 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 […]
Back in 2012 I had watched Susan Cain‘s TED Talk on how introverts can share ideas, a talk otherwise known as “The power of introverts” (video below). I purchased her book, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can’t Stop Talking… And it sat on my (virtual ebook) shelf for long time — a very bookish, very librarian, guilty habit. Until now. After several years in the MLIS program, listening to and conversing with classmates, this report became an opportune assignment! As I read Cain’s book, I found myself reflecting on creativity and motivation, the diversity of personalities we […]
Librarianship has long been informed by ideas outside of the profession that are then brought into it. One of the intersections that has always interested me is libraries and film. Some areas of this overlap have been well documented, while others represent very new terrain. The portrayals of libraries and librarians in movies, and more broadly librarian stereotypes, as the recent title The Librarian Stereotype addresses, has been of continued interest to the profession–entire books and films have examined the topic. These representations have interesting things to tell us about how others conceive of librarians and what that means for our work (see, […]
As part of Michael Stephens’ Hyperlinked Library course offered through San Jose State University, I reported on the book Now you see it: How the brain science of attention will transform the way we live, work, and learn, by Cathy N. Davidson. We were encouraged to use creative means to convey our reports, so I took the book’s central theme to heart and utilized several free and available web tools to comment across platforms. Part 1: TameTheWeb – “Introduction” The main thrust of this book is the notion that we are using outdated criteria to measure our educational progress. This […]