This is the third installment from the ILEAD U Project. Click here or on the category hyperlink to read more about it. – Mick Jacobsen Team Pandora was comprised of three libraries in the Springfield area- the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library (Jan Perone), Illinois State Library (Debra Aggertt, Sandra Fritz and Beth Paoli) and University of Illinois Springfield-Brookens Library (Pamela Salela). After a few meetings a final decision was reached by the group to try to improve services to Illinois State government agencies particularly those that had lost or did not have an agency library. Team Pandora had a major […]
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This is the second installment from the ILEAD U Project. Click here or on the category hyperlink to read more about it. – Mick Jacobsen Team Springfield Big Read includes Amanda Binder and Janelle Gurnsey from University of Illinois Springfield, Brookens Library; Julie Wullner from Lincoln Library, The Public Library of Springfield, Illinois; Amy Ihnen from Chatham Public Library District; and Sarah Garley from Rochester Public Library. Together we represent four of the 14 partners of The Big Read in Central Illinois. The Big Read is an initiative of the National Endowment for the Arts in partnership with the Institute […]
Who are the Lincoln Lawgers? Team Lincoln Lawgs – Maribel Nash from Chicago-Kent College of Law, Jamie Sommer & Jessica de Perio Wittman from John Marshall Law School, Patricia Scott from Loyola University Chicago School of Law, and Valerie Krasnoff from Northwestern University School of Law, along with supermentor Pat Boze — began the ILEAD U process by forming a team to collaborate to create an online legal research community specifically for Illinois law students. In sad news, we learned in July that Valerie had accepted a new position at Northwestern outside of the library and that she would no […]
Over the next couple months I will proudly be presenting the ILEAD U (hear I lead you) Class of 2010. ILEAD U (Illinois Libraries Explore, Apply, and Discover… not sure what the U stands for) is an ongoing program developed by the super-cool Illinois State Library funded by a grant from the Laura Bush Foundation. Its main stated goal is “To help library staff develop leadership skills necessary to address local community needs (e.g., job creation, education) through innovative applications of participatory technology tools” Or “create awesome librarians” (my version). This took place over 3 3 days sessions in lovely […]
I’m not a library director. Heck, who knows if I’ll ever be a library director. But spend some time working in a public library and you’ll see a common theme: most employees and the public have no clue what a library director does. There’s this belief that the library director is some person way high up in the sky making all these decisions and pulling all these strings to make the library work. With such little information known about the day to day happenings of a library director, employees and patrons end up getting confused about the direction of the […]
TTW Contributor Justin Hoenke serves up a mighty fine guest post at Heather McCormack’s blog: http://heathermccormack.wordpress.com/2010/10/25/guest-post-three-punk-rock-lessons-for-surviving-21st-century-library-hell/ For an example, I’m going to turn to Twitter. Just two years ago, I was a librarian in South Jersey tinkering with tweets, not knowing at all what I was doing. I took it upon myself to understand the strange little-big world of hyperlinks and handles. There were days when I didn’t get it and tweeted too much or avoided it out of a lack of confidence. But I kept pushing and experimenting. What finally happened reveals the true beauty of the DIY concept: […]
Kurt Fischer noted (in passing, at a Mind, Brain, Education Institute) that the Conduit Metaphor of Learning is defunct. This is the idea that education is essentially a kind of pipe whereby knowledge travels from the mouth or mind of a more- to a less-learned person. That the learner is a receptacle to be filled with knowledge. Learning, it ends up, is actually much more complex. And knowledge is apparently not a paper package of data tied with string moving across the meat counter. Which is just as well, because the Conduit Metaphor taken to the extreme leads to students thinking […]
Thought you may be interested in this article in The Age newspaper today – Melbourne’s main newspaper. http://www.theage.com.au/national/education/library-specialists-being-shelved-20100806-11o9t.html?rand=1281079644026 The Australian government’s response to the Global Financial Crisis included a massive infrastructure rebuilding program for government and non-government schools, with particular emphasis on creating new school halls, community spaces and YES – school libraries! Many of these libraries are about to open or have already opened – my school library is a couple of months away from completion! Whilst there has been some criticism of budget mismanagement for some of these libraries, the one that I have visited so far was fabulous! The Building the Education Revolution program has […]
I stumbled across an old presentation (December 2009) and I liked it, so I thought I’d share. It’s called “Butting In” (click here for the PPT). “Butting in” is the idea that we in the Library and IT world are in what I call the “Cloutterdammerung,” or the Twilight of our Clout. We have a little window of time to use this clout to get ourselves inculcated into the places in our schools where the futures of teaching, learning, and research will be decided (or to help create these places if they do not already exist). Our advantages: people mostly like […]
How to Raise Boys Who Read (Hint: Not with gross-out books and video-game bribes) I think what I hate seeing in these types of articles is the general “GAMES BAD BOOKS GOOD” thing (for the full effect, imagine The Incredible Hulk saying that). Perhaps I’m only seeing this because of my interest in gaming (I am one of the co-founders of 8BitLibrary.com). I don’t know. I try to read articles like that from the approach of my parents, who are middle class, everyday blue collar folks who have their high school diploma. What would they think? I think they’d come […]