Administrators face two conundrums with Web 2.0 tools. David Weinberger called the first a “conundrum of control” in his book Everything is Miscellaneous. This conundrum states that organizational leaders have an important interest in ensuring that 2.0 tools are used to further the organization’s mission. However, the more controls that they put in place (such as approval processes for blog posts) the less useful the 2.0 tools become. The second conundrum is what I call a conundrum of adaptibility. This conundrum states that organizations with looser controls allow for more experimentation by individuals as they work to solve problems. However, organizations […]
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There are costs to maintaining and fully supporting technologies. For every dollar of software or hardware that is purchased, there are additional dollars that must be committed to implementation and ongoing support. Most organizations have lists of “supported” technologies and much longer lists of “unsupported” technologies. Yet, we continue to innovate. We continue to utilize new tools to solve problems. I stumbled upon this blog post from Rosabeth Moss Kante about innovation in health care, which I think is applicable to innovation in general and libraries specifically: “Innovations always sound good in retrospect, after they’ve worked, and in isolation, when […]
Dr. Troy Swanson has agreed to share with TTW readers a series of four guest posts. I blogged about Troy’s research here: https://tametheweb.com/2011/02/22/interview-with-dr-try-swanson-community-college-blogging-research/ The first post – The Underground Economy of Innovation – will go up today! Troy A. Swanson is Teaching & Learning Librarian at Moraine Valley Community College, where he teaches information literacy and coordinates the library’s online presence. Troy’s research interests include the epistemology of college students, Web site usability, and technology management. Troy’s PhD is in Community College leadership from Old Dominion University where he studied the management of 2.0 technologies. He holds a Master’s Degree in Library […]
Via Gordon’s Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) Blog comes this interview with Dr. Troy Swanson: http://ictcenter.blogspot.com/2011/02/community-college-blogging-podcast.html I’ve know Troy for sometime and was very pleased to watch his research unfold. Here are some details from the post: On Thursday I had the pleasure of talking with Dr Troy Swanson, an Associate Professor / Teaching and Learning Librarian at Moraine Valley Community College in Palos Hills, IL. In December Troy completed his PhD in Community College Leadership at Old Dominion University. His dissertation is titled The Administration of Community College Blogs: Considering Control and Adaptability in Loosely Coupled Systems. In the podcast, Troy […]
Edited by Nicole Pagowsky & Miriam Rigby Published by ACRL Publications “…why, in spite of evolving efforts, does racial and ethnic diversity among librarians remain virtually unchanged within academic libraries?” The chapter, “Unpacking Identity: Racial, Ethnic, and Professional Identity and Academic Librarians of Color,” written by Isabel Gonzalez-Smith, Azusa Tanaka, and Juleah Swanson, can be found in the recently published book The Librarian Stereotype: Deconstructing Presentations and Perceptions of Information Work.
The concept of “evaluating” information runs throughout the existing ACRL Information Literacy Standards for Higher Education. They highlight the different ways we teach students about information at different points in the research process. Here are the primary points: Standard one: The information literate student determines the nature and extent of the information needed. Performance indicator 2: The information literate student identifies a variety of types and formats of potential sources for information. Outcome C: Identifies the value and differences of potential resources in a variety of formats (e.g., multimedia, database, web site, data set, audio=visual, book). Outcome D: Identifies the purpose and audience of […]
In the last three months, I’ve been interviewed about information literacy by two students. One was working on her MLIS and taking her first instruction course. The other was working on a dissertation, and I was a participant in her study on information literacy programs. These interviews started me thinking about what I’d tell new librarians interested in information literacy instruction. Here’s my advice for new instruction librarians entering the profession: At least 50% of being a librarian is building connections with people. Instruction librarians thrive by connecting with faculty members and recognizing how they can help faculty members reach […]
Dr. Troy Swanson’s post this morning has resonated with me. I have an assignment in the Hyperlinked Library course on creating a emerging technology plan or social media guidelines statement. Troy’s ideas fit well but also make me realize that so much is tied up in organizational mindset. Things move and change according to the climate at hand. Maybe part of the assignment should focus on less-tangible, less-predictible things. How can we plan for what we do not know to plan for? This passage is the heart of Troy’s well-reasoned argument: This isn’t to say that effective use of social […]
Failure to Innovate, a photo by mstephens7 on Flickr. In honor of Dr. Troy Swanson’s post: https://tametheweb.com/2012/12/11/your-library-does-not-need-a-social-media-plan/
When I finished library school around the year 2000, the shift from print to online was well underway. OPACs were common place, CD towers had already migrated to online databases, and teaching search strategies to students was seen (by librarians and faculty member alike) as an essential piece to teaching the research paper. Yet, even as the changes were happening around us, the mental models used by our students were not moving as quickly. The essential information literacy problem we faced was that students tended to believe almost anything they found on the web, especially if a website had a […]