Context Book Assignment: Net Smart: How to Thrive Online Critics of modern social media and our emerging hyperlinked culture are abundant. So are cheerleaders and utopians, who praise the potential of new media and our always-on, always-connected, society. Critics warn us that Google might be “making us stupid,” as Nicholas Carr put it. They wonder, as Sherry Turkle has, “Why do we expect more from technology and less from each other?” They worry that we are becoming overloaded with information, unable to focus on sustained chains of reasoning, and “driven to distraction.” They express concern at the tendency for Facebook […]
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http://chattlibrary.org/events/night-out-kids-tweens-and-teens-2nd-floor I’m very excited to share our new NIGHT OUT program that we’ll be running next month at the Chattanooga Public Library. It’s a simple idea, but it is one of the best library programs I’ve put together. Why? Let me tell you. Basically it goes like this: while parents and guardians enjoy an evening at our June 5th event featuring New York Times Bestselling Author Jeff Shaara on The 4th Floor of the Chattanooga Public Library, their kids, tweens, and teens can hang out on the 2nd Floor (without their parents/guardians) and enjoy all that the 2nd Floor of the Chattanooga Public Library has to offer. Parents and […]
On April 25th, we held our 13th annual Information Literacy Summit in Illinois. This event is a partnership between Moraine Valley Community College Library and DePaul University Libraries. We are excited to share the keynote address on metaliteracy, information literacy, MOOCs, and threshold concepts featuring Trudi Jacobson and Tom Mackey. Changing Models, Changing Emphases: The Evolution of Information Literacy featuring Trudi Jacobson & Tom Mackey ————————– Troy A. Swanson is Department Chair and Teaching & Learning Librarian at Moraine Valley Community College. He is the author of the book,Managing Social Media in Libraries. You can follow him on Twitter at @t_swanson.
[I have posted on the new (draft) Information Literacy Framework from ACRL here, and you can also read the thoughts of others here.] As we approach the upcoming ALA Annual Conference in Las Vegas (in June) where our task force will unveil a more complete draft, I wanted to offer some thoughts on how this Framework connects to undergrads with a special nod toward my community college colleagues. (I do not speak for the Task Force in this post.) As the Task Force has acknowledged, we are basing our work on the groundbreaking work of Lori Townsend, Korey Burnetti, and Amy R. […]
We are very excited about our upcoming Graphic Novel Symposium, which will be in September of 2014. Check out our website, http://www.morainevalley.edu/comicculture. We are aiming to create an academic event that can be utilized by our faculty members in the arts and humanities (and maybe other areas of the curriculum). We’ll be featuring faculty lectures, local comic shops, a gaming event, and a cosplay event. We’ve been working on the marketing for this , and we recruited one one of our awesome catalogers, Brenda Lozano, as our model for our images. Yes, it’s true. When Brenda is not cataloging our […]
Last week, I had the pleasure of attending the Texas Library Association Conference in San Antonio. While there, I had the opportunity to talk with Justin Hoenke (among many folks) who is also a contributor to this blog. We discussed his work at the Chattanooga Public Library and, specifically about the use of their 3D printer. Listening to him talk, it really struck me that at the basic level Justin does not really care about the 3D printer. The 3D printer is all well and good, but the thing that he is really after is the learning, the creativity, that […]
I have a decent understanding of copyright and the process of determining fair use, but I didn’t have a good understanding of how YouTube enforces and adjudicates copyright disputes. I’ll own up to my naiveté, but even after acknowledging this, I am still troubled by YouTube’s approach to copyright enforcement. I thought about titling this post, “I Fought the Law and the Law Won,” but the problem is that this whole thing isn’t really about the law at all. In YouTube Land, it doesn’t really matter if your use of copyrighted material falls under fair use or not. What matters […]
Here’s one of the neat little things we’re testing out on The 2nd Floor of the Chattanooga Public Library: using an Apple TV/Projector/iPad/blank wall combination to stream random things while the library is open. This morning, we used our streaming service Hoopla to show folks just how awesome your library card can be. Then we listened to some Daft Punk for a bit and finally switched it over to a complete walk through of The Legend of Zelda which is running as we speak. Why are we doing this? We’ve got a lot of wall space on The 2nd Floor and […]
Are you my mentor? An exploration of the intersection of Twitter & mentoring relationships. In the real world mentors are usually organic relationships without specific titles, goals, or responsibilities. Mentors are simply experienced people you get to know and look to for advice, informally and organically. They’re people you go to coffee with, people you ask for guidance, and people you call when there’s a big decision to make. (Barr, 2013, para. 14) Ideas about mentors and mentoring have changed a lot over the years, particularly with the advent of social media. As an avid Twitter user, I was curious […]
Today, the first draft of a new Framework for Information Literacy has been released for comment. ACRL’s Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education Task Force has been charged with revising the info lit standards. (For the record, I am a member of this committee but I do not speak on behalf of the committee here.) The task force’s work address the recommendations made by a previous review group . The task force is working on a product that I believe will be qualitatively different than the existing standards. The “Old” Standards The current (old) ACRL Information Literacy Standards were […]