“I am not sure how to use the Framework for Information Literacy. I haven’t really had time to look at it.” These were the words of an instruction librarian. I was at a poster session at ALA Annual in Orlando, and I had a great conversation with this librarian about her poster. Now, the conversation was turning toward the Framework. She said, “each year, we use the Information Literacy Standards to assess our program. I do not really understand how I would do this with the Framework.” She seemed concerned that the Framework forced her to undergo some undefined process. […]
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I just returned from ALA Annual in Orlando this week, and since we were in Orlando, I couldn’t escape the reach of the Harry Potter marketing machine and the equally as pervasive reach (all across the conference) of the Harry Potter fandom. (For the uninitiated, please note that these are very different things.) Over drinks, conversation turned the world of Harry Potter, which often started with identifying one’s Hogwarts’ House. Of course, I was not aware that I was a member of a Hogwarts’ House. This was quickly remedied by taking the test at the Pottermore website and going through the […]
Today, I was fortunate to speak at a webinar as part of NILRC’s professional development series for librarians. I discussed our library cultural programming that we use to engage our college curricula. Here’s the video from the webinar: Engaging the Curriculum Through Public Programming: Planning for Public Events in Libraries —————————– Troy A. Swanson is Department Chair and Teaching & Learning Librarian at Moraine Valley Community College. He is the co-editor of the recent book from ACRL, Not Just Where to Click: Teaching Students How to Think About Information. You can follow him on Twitter at @t_swanson.
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 […]
“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 […]
Keynote from the 15th Annual Information Literacy Summit, hosted by DePaul University Libraries and Moraine Valley Community College Library (http://informationliteracysummit.org). Critical Pedagogy in a Time of Compliance | Information Literacy Keynote, Emily Drabinski —————– Troy A. Swanson is Department Chair and Teaching & Learning Librarian at Moraine Valley Community College. He is the co-editor of the recent book from ACRL, Not Just Where to Click: Teaching Students How to Think About Information. You can follow him on Twitter at @t_swanson.
Greetings all – I am working with students from the SJSU School of Information on various advanced WordPress type experiences. One of them is an overhaul of this blog, which has grown in all sorts of ways over the last 13 years. Things will be changing a bit – theme, etc — over the next few weeks, so please pardon our dust.
For reference purposes it is important to note that this book review and supplemental video were originally completed as a Book Context Assignment for Michael’s The Hyperlinked Library course, taught in the Fall of 2015 at San Jose State University. Socially Isolated Addicted young people Few real-life social ties These are just a few of the phrases used to describe the traditional “lonely gamer” in the article The “lonely gamer” revisited by Diane Schiano, Bonnie Nardi, Thomas Debeauvais, Nicolas Ducheneaut, and Nicholas Yee. This has been the stereotype of the traditional gamer for the past two decades. However, Jane McGonigal, […]
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, […]
Since Heather Jagman and I co-edited our book Not Just Where to Click: Teaching Students How to Thing About Information, I have enjoyed several email exchanges with librarians around the country focusing on topics of the book. The larger theme of these conversations center on the larger concepts around information literacy beyond the mechanics of searching. It seems that our profession has long recognized that information literacy is more than using a library, and it is more than just searching Google. But, we are just now entering a time of broader discussion about the dispositions, modes of thinking, and levels of understanding […]