Not So Distant Future

Thanks to Kathy Ishizuka on Twitter, I found out about the creative Library-Lovin challenge, which is a wonderful way to raise money for libraries.   This great idea began with Jennifer Hubbard, and challenges a group of library bloggers to pledge monetary donations to their local libraries based on blog comments they receive!  So if you follow the links to the blogs above and add comments, they will donate even more!

I’d like to join, but since I’m a tad financially constrained, I’ve decided to issue the same challenge but do it a little different vein.

For every comment on this blog post,  instead of directly donating money, I’m promising to click on the Literacy Site.  For each daily click, the Literacy Site donates money to Room to Read, a fund which establishes libraries, and to First Book, which provides free books to disadvantaged children.  So if I get 20 comments, I’ll click on the LIteracy Site twenty days in a row, donating 20 times; 30 comments, 30 times, etc.

I hope you’ll consider adding a comment here and above at the other library blogs in support of reading and libraries, and spread a little good reading karma out into the blogosphere! 

A tweet from Chris Craft just caught my eye this morning and triggered all sorts of thoughts.

crafty184 “I really would like to figure out something I’d need to ask a reference librarian because Google can’t provide the answer.”

I jokingly responded a question Google probably can’t answer: “Where is the pencil sharpener?”

But there’s a point to my joke. Maybe a library is more than just questions we ask a reference librarian?

In any case, I think for our profession, there is both a shift, and not a shift, needed.

What do our patrons want from us as librarians? It’s different for public libraries than school libraries, obviously.

For one thing, in a school, the library serves as a sort of social hub for learning, no matter what that learning looks like. It has areas where large groups of students can gather, lots of computers and other equipment, books for leisure reading or research, etc. And it’s a place to just hang out, which most school buildings don’t have enough of. So maybe one thing they want is an inviting and friendly place with books and tables and chairs and a staff that is fine with them gathering there.

I think the offline dimension to library use is important.

So what else is our role? Does it also become an increasingly online one? Perhaps. As we encounter students on Facebook, our blogs, email, websites, etc.–we do find additional ways to reach out and interact with students.

Chris also tweeted — wondering if librarians just Google the answers and give them to patrons. Yes, sometimes we do because perhaps we know how to find something more effectively, or how to use the advanced search, which not every customer does

There is also somewhat of a presumption in the techno-literate world that students or teachers (or just the general public) knows how to find everything online.

They don’t. Many people do–but many don’t. And I’m not just saying this in defense of librarians.

Sometimes we know to use other tools–like we also know to go to a database for a back-dated magazine article, or we know what book has an incredible day by day timeline of the 1960’s, or we know that to upload a music file to Photostory it has to be an mp3.

It’s one of those things where you start out with a certain expertise, but because it’s what you do all day long, you build this knowledge bank of your own–a skillset of “how-tos’ and a mindset of how to find things the most efficient way.

At a school, our role is also that of educator. We don’t just need to find the information for the patron(student or teacher), but our goal is to help model for them how we found it, and how we think about finding it, so that they can become more independent researchers with more skills of their own.

One example I have is that recently we have been working on our Vietnam Wall project, where sometimes students are trying to piece together information about a soldier’s life with not too much data to go on, since they lived “pre-Internet.” So it’s my job to help them develop detective skills–like using their powers of deduction to figure out where the soldier went to high school, and then trying to locate yearbooks there so someone can scan a picture for the student’s memorial. Or using their powers of deduction to locate a county Veteran’s museum which might have information that could be sent to them.

Because most students just haven’t been through this sort of real research process, they don’t necessarily have the insights into ways to locate the information. So my role is to coach and encourage them to get creative in their research rather than “just” relying on googling the soldier’s name.

When we as librarians help students think, that is a true measure of our success.

Now, does this really answer Chris’s tweet above? Maybe not. But I like to think of reference librarians as the tweet-osphere for non-Tweeters. Throw out a question and you will get an answer from the great library collaborative. Questions that you need help with may be few and far between, but when you need to know, just like Twitter, the “great collaborative” of reference librarians is there, whether in person or virtually.

I take his point though. The world of information is changing very rapidly, allowing more do-it-yourself research. And we do need to be clear on who we are in that world, what our value-added is, and how to tell our story effectively.

Photo Credit:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cpchen/489108760/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/yukali/2764611639/

On her blog, TechnoTuesday, Cathy Nelson shared a dilemma many librarians (and tech staff) face.

How do we keep from getting demoralized when we are truly attempting to raise the caliber of an assignment and teachers feel they are too busy or too concerned with an upcoming standardized test or just reluctant about accepting our feedback?

Part of the problem, I think is that we aren’t partners with teachers in these sorts of situations.  Much too often, it feels as though we(both tech and library staff) are add-ons, support staff, rather than collaborators.  We want to be partners, but perhaps we aren’t perceived that way.

How do we change that paradigm?  It is hard hard work, especially on a large staff, with teachers coming and going annually.   Headway can be gained, but then lost when teachers run out of time for planning or a particular year is very busy.  But to me that is a symptom that the paradigm hasn’t really changed–that teachers don’t want to bother you, or don’t perceive your role as one of collaborator.

Is that about you?  Well, sometimes, it is.  Sometimes it can be about your approach, true.  But it’s also about teacher training and teacher paradigms.  Teachers are soooo used to being independent entities(especially at the secondary level).  You close the door and teach your own class–and for many, it is rare to truly collaborate in instruction.  It’s just not the paradigm that the campus functions within, in general.

So is it any surprise that teachers wouldn’t be accustomed to having instructional partners?

Consequently, part of our job becomes p.r.–being invitational, doing workshops, attending committee meetings, going to departments.  And even with doing all that, sometimes the paradigm still doesn’t shift for a majority of teachers.

So it can be very frustrating.

Let’s say we could redo things from scratch.  What would be an ideal way to improve the environment for collaboration for teachers?

–Leadership–how can the principal create an environment where teacher collaboration is the norm, not the exception?  How can department chairs encourage this as well?

–Technology use–What technologies could be used to encourage collaboration?  Always a good question since sometimes teachers are reluctant to try things outside their “route”, so to speak.

–College level teacher training–How could the student teaching experience change so that collaboration is an expected part of the process, and valued?   It still seems the process is to place a student teacher with one cooperating teacher, to work basically only with that person, and little training is given in terms of how the roles of other staff help a teacher.  Why not train student teachers on how to work with librarians, tech staff, counselors?  And share with them in their college programs how those staff members could be helpful?

–Our own approach–Our own approach has to be respectful of classroom priorities, both the theoretical and the practical ones.   We have to find inroads that meet teachers where they live.  We have to continue to share our message and our vision for our school and for our students.

Cathy shares an excellent description of engaged learning:

Students love assignments that call for creativity, collaboration, choice, authenticity, and excitement. They don’t even realize the assignments are standards-based and that they are learning.

How do we share that message with teachers effectively, in a manner that it gets heard?

One of the things that makes this task so difficult is that it is ongoing.  There’s never a point at which you think–oh, the entire campus gets it.  Teachers come and go, pressures change, leadership changes, and so it seems like it is an ongoing, evolving effort that one makes.

At times like this, I think again of Anne Lamott’s wise words–how do we change things?  “Bird by bird.  Bird by bird.”

Ideas?  How do we work towards changing the paradigm?

Photo credits:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mikebaird/2181766735/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/myeye/155660631/

I just finished an interesting article in Fortune Magazine(the print version, I might add) about the e-reader technologies for magazines.

There are several ventures considering various types of e-readers that would download magazines onto tablets or paper-thin devices.

The article raises several questions, with which I concur, such as whether or not readers would want to purchase another separate device just to read magazines.  Seems like it would be a much more reliable business venture to create magazines readable on the Kindle or iPhone.

As the article also questions, I wonder if consumers would actually pay for an e-magazine in the first place, when currently you can get so much magazine content online for free, which makes me wonder how periodicals would change their financial paradigm.

After reading the article, though I love all things tech, I realized I would really miss magazines that you can touch, hold, and browse through.  E-reading seems so much more purposeful than the way I read magazines.   A page loads one at a time , and its not something you can “flip” through, or tear a page out and post it on your bulletin board, or read by the pool and get the pages wet.  For purposeful journal reading, such a device might work well–but for magazine “browsing” that many readers do, it seems ill-suited.

All of which brought to mind a very prescient speech I heard Molly Ivins give at the University of Texas.  She described the real difficulties facing print newspapers and wondered how they could remain financially viable, and the perils for our society if they do not.

I think in this economic market we are going to see some real shifts, and we really do need to consider how to support those media that are significant and important to education and our society.

The economy may be the tipping point that Malcolm Gladwell writes about that will finally drive changes from print to online.   It’s interesting that e-readers have taken so long to appear on the scene, actually.  I recall hearing about these from Jenny Levine at Internet Librarian a number of years ago. It seems economic issues are accelerating these technologies.

But my question is–is this tipping point really what is best for our democracy?

If we lose print newspapers and/or magazines due to economic pressures, what have we lost?  I’m all for e-reporting and blogs, but excellent newspapers and magazines really do unfold a story in a different way–both with their investigative abilities and the abilities of good print journalists to pull a story together well.

I have to wonder how this will evolve?  And how will we as a society will respond?  Will we continue to have side by side technologies for a long time?  (like printed books which show no sign of having sales slow down alongside e-readers?  Print magazines alongside electronic ones?  What will the world feel like when/if everything is on a screen rather than on paper?   Will our students notice?

During  dinner last night with some of my Twitter colleagues who were in town for the COSN conference, I was pondering a question I really am curious about.

A teacher and I  were talking yesterday about Facebook and work he is doing with a science organization for college students and  professors.  The organization had a blog which was completely unutilized.  So he decided to set up a Facebook page instead.  After one day, the page already had 40 followers.

It led me to really do some “wondering” about how to better meet both our students and our teachers where they live.  Blogs are not where either of them “live” online per se.

I love blogs, love reading them for the inspiration they provide, and love writing on my own. And I’m not suggesting that blogs don’t have tremendous value, because I believe they do.

But after quite a bit of time struggling with encouraging teachers to engage with blogging at my own campus, I’m just wondering what means of communication might work at a more innate level for our staff. Because I really think there would be value for them in connecting with the ideas that I find so inspiring in the blogosphere.

So I was wondering aloud at dinner last night–would video(videoblogging) be another avenue to connect with classroom teachers?   Or would something like Facebook be a way to connect with them better than Ning, since a lot of them are already on Facebook?  (After all, I can create a Facebook page for our library, which I did today,  and share blog links and links for tools there.)

I guess my point is, instead of trying to encourage teachers to come where “I am” or where the blogosphere is, how can I bring it to them where they “live”?

When I saw this poster via a link on Twitter, I laughed and then knew I had to write about it.

Change is such a frustrating process sometimes because it is so very gradual.  We can’t always perceive it when it is happening because sometimes it seems so glacial.  Those of us who are impatient for change(count me as one of those) sometimes feel like we are butting our heads against a brick wall.

But sometimes, all of a sudden, we look back and we can see what has changed while we weren’t even looking.  An interview I did with Laura Barack for SLJ yesterday reminded me of this.

And maybe there is an evolutionary reason for change to be very gradual.

When change isn’t gradual, it can sometimes be almost startling and disconcerting, unsettling as we try to get our bearings and make sense of it.  Nongradual change, especially that imposed upon us, startles our sense of ourselves in the world.

Of course, it’s about how we adapt to change, both gradual and sudden.  Do we buckle our seatbelts and forge on? Do we cling onto the past?   Do we feel excited about the change?  Do we focus on the positives about it?  Do we have curiosity about it?   Do we fear that it will alter us?  Do we embrace it as part of life, as Zen tradition would have it?   We can see the gamut of these reactions in the students and teachers that we work with every day.   We can see it in the culture of the schools where we work.   We can see it in culture in general.

And of course we can see it in ourselves.   It’s not so simple to define either–some people may be professionally very embracing of change, but personally very nervous about it.  Some people may embrace it in their personal lives, but fear what it means for them professionally.

This brings up all sorts of questions for me, ones I often ponder.  In terms of the culture of our own school, how does change happen well, and what do we do with all the possible approaches to change that our staff might have?   In terms of us personally, how do we refine our own approach to change?

But this post is more about what we are missing when we  judge our success only by dramatic and transformative change.

We miss all the daily changes.

We miss seeing the victories in gradual growth.

Our impatience colors our perception of what is happening because it focuses on our own frustration with not being able to rapidly effect change that we feel is so critical.   And it colors us in terms of our interactions and understandings of those we work with, who are bound to see our impatience as arrogance or negativity, or as judgmental of their way of doing things.

But most of all, we miss the positives that celebrating the small changes can bring to our own lives and our own enjoyment of our work and our lives.  We miss the forest for the trees, so to speak.

(As kismet would have it, just as I was writing this, a very apropos quote was posted in Twitter by SurrendrDorothy.  “Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.” Leo Tolstoy (1828 – 1910)

So although this poster is satirical, it’s an excellent reminder to us to believe and trust in gradual change. Not only gradual change but VERY gradual change.   We can trust that it is happening even when we can’t see it.   We can trust that everything we do leads to it.  And if we can have that kind of faith in it, what could we accomplish?

Photo credit: Mike Rosulek     http://www.mikero.com/blog/2009/02/20/more-darwin

(Postscript:  This design is available for sale, and I want to give full credit to the artist because the profits are going to the National Center for Science Education.)

A few days ago I wrote a post trying to get attention of database designers to a few things, namely making searching more convenient and fun for students so they would use the databases more frequently.

One particular thing I mentioned was embeddable search widgets.  After investigating and some legwork on my part, I discovered that some of our database companies do now provide widget search boxes:  EBSCO, GALE, and Facts on File.    The jury is out on a couple of companies, and a few have indicated they do not currently provide this service(include Lexis Nexis which surprised me!)

In any case, although the designs are not hip, it’s heartening to see that this option is now available.

Also, I do have to say Kudos to World Book for their new design, which is much more user friendly!

Now this is stuff only a librarian could probably love, but in the interest of fairness, I had to correct myself!

Photo credit:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/jasmeet/2440466050/

I’m going to be blunt in this post.  Databases are dead.  (Okay, maybe that is a bit dramatic.)  And who would mourn their loss?  What value do they add to our internet experience?

Both Joyce Valenza and I (and I’m sure scores of other librarians) have probably written similar posts in the past asking database vendors to improve their wares.

Now, don’t get me wrong.  I personally think databases are very helpful to students–obviously getting good sources of information that are accurate and current and informative is a good thing.  They make one stop shopping easier for students.

However, unless database companies make some changes the writing is on the wall in this era of shrinking budgets….

1.  Databases are dead unless they develop an interface like this:

instead of this:

Students and teachers alike just want to search.  They don’t care which particular database has the article. They’ll winnow their choices out once they get results.

And If they really care which source they are using, which on occasion they do, they can use something called “Advanced search.”  (or the librarian can help them use it)–which can be a simple button on the toolbar.

2. Databases are dead unless they get more “hip.” Databases aren’t hip for high school students.  Facebook is hip, texting is hip, Deviant Art is hip, but databases, nope.  Why can’t portals to research be fun and hip?  Why don’t they look more fun?  

Ebsco Kids search is called “Searchasaurus” and has a island with clickable icons;  Newsbank’s Kid search has a hounddog sniffing out the facts.   But the high school search pages?  Text, and more text, too many menu choices, and clutter.

3. Databases are dead unless they can have a box like this on the toolbar.  (or as Joyce Valenza says, are a widget you can embed on your own webpage.)

No one wants to wade through three or four screens just to begin a search.

4.  Databases are dead unless they realize that Google (and other sites) are beating them at their own game.

At the college level, perhaps this is  a different matter.  But if you are talking 9-12, the database companies need to get with the program.  The more offerings on Google, the more database companies need to really focus on promoting their value–promoting it via fun advertising pitched at k-12 students, promoting it via clever and witty interfaces–promoting the creativity of research.

The market is getting tougher as the economy worsens and school districts are having to make tough choices.   Will that drive changes in the database market?