Week 13: Final Post!

Since our last class was mostly dedicated to working on the webinars, it makes sense to discuss them now. I participated in five webinars in the past week and a half, all of which were great learning experiences for me. All of the webinars I watched were on the “Serving the Underserved” topic, and all of the presenters did a great job selecting relevant topics and creating a welcome online environment for participants. One of the webinars I attended included some face time with the webcam, which I thought was actually quite helpful for staying engaged and feeling free to ask questions. While I personally don’t like the idea of being on camera, I liked that I was able to see who was talking to me and who I could be asking questions of. The webinars also had clever ideas for interacting with participants and for displaying content.  Putting on a webinar with my group was definitely more challenging than I had initially anticipated. Thinking about the outcome of our webinar along with what I learned watching other examples have given me a lot of good ideas and strategies for what I would do differently next time to improve my own webinar.

The Fontichiaro article discusses how librarians (particularly school media specialists) can encourage professional development through structured experimentation. By using a training module that can be accessed at a self-driven pace, the librarian is responsible for the content and the learning, but the time/geography constraints of typical learning are not present. What is interesting is how this model developed in response to issues with the original way of supporting professional development in school libraries—just-in-time instruction. It certainly seems like the different learning tasks within the training module would allow for a better overall learning experience. Having someone to walk you step-by-step through a computer problem is always helpful, but figuring the problem out on your own is clearly the best solution. Additionally, the learning module seems like it would probably limit the number of future problems a teacher would encounter, as he or she would have learned above and beyond what was necessary. This model of learning would apply well to other library settings and users, as well.

Similarly, the article by Blowers and Reed offers a lot of interesting concepts and strategies for teaching professional development in the library setting. Like the Fontichiaro article, the emphasis seems to be on learning a few relevant computing competencies through self-paced efforts. The article focuses on the idea of “constant change” being a driving factor in the library-technology world. To keep up with all this changing, librarians are encouraged to learn about the four core computing competencies, which all build on one another. What I found most relevant to libraries and professional development was the learning methodologies at work here. Specifically, I liked that the authors advocated “playing” and experimentation as effective learning techniques. The methodology also seems to balance individual-paced learning with group learning, which would allow learners of various comfort levels to interact with the material in the most useful way to them.

I found the Semadeni article interesting in a number of ways—the flexibility allowed to teachers seems smart.  The Fusion model, as it’s called, encourages professional development to occur through interaction among teachers who all have individual strengths. In this way, teachers can both be mentors and learners to one another. This just seems like such a good (and intuitive) idea: encourage leaders in one area to instruct others. I also appreciated the author’s inclusion of how this type of learning environment actually works in the real world.

What I found most encouraging about all of the articles this week was the degree of interactivity and self-awareness that the learning models promote. For librarians engaged in professional development, it seems worthwhile to keep in mind that learning comes in various forms, but the learner should always be at the center of the instructional method. Librarians, as lifelong learners, also need to be aware of how they best learn.

Week 11: Class Reflections & Twitter

Paul Courant, Dean of Libraries, joined us this past week in 643 class to talk and answer questions on DPLA, HCOD, the Google Books decision, and other 21^st century-library-related issues. Mr. Courant did a great job giving thoughtful answers to a whole host of questions. I really appreciated his insight into the future of librarianship, and I thought he made a number of interesting points:

• The Espresso Book Machine may be the answer to some of book (especially academic) publishing’s problems. Low demand, no problem! Just print when necessary.

• In the future, eBooks may be bundled together as yearly subscriptions, negating the current HCOD debate. 

• Finally, be optimistic in whatever endeavors you choose or nothing will get accomplished. I think this is important for librarians to keep in mind as they try to embrace new technologies and new ideas.

Mr. Courant also noted the difference between the aims of public versus academic libraries, which I thought was interesting. For the former, their collection is meant to be read; for the latter, to be known. In this way, the HCOD issues are not as dramatic for university and college libraries since circulation is comparatively lower. 

The rest of class was filled with discussion of embedded librarianship and webinars. Talking within my blog cohort about what embedded librarianship is and how it can be used in different settings was really interesting and thought-provoking. Issues of relevance, trust, and applicability were brought up, and I think all of these concerns are important to consider.

This week’s readings were a bit less traditional. Rather than reading a few professional articles, we were assigned to immerse ourselves in the world of Twitter. More specifically our job was to create a professional network of librarians and professionals.  While I created a Twitter account a few months ago in anticipation of someday needing it, I never did anything with it. This past week, then, I’ve pretty much started from scratch.

Reading the various tweets from professionals in the library world has been both entertaining and informative. Scrolling through my Twitter feed, I have found a lot of interesting library-related tweets and links. At the same time, I’ve noticed a lot of tweetin’ about personal/non-library/everyday type stuff. For instance, one of the bloggers I’ve followed (Meredith Farkas, Information Wants to Be Free) is moving across country this week to her new job in Oregon. I know this from her blog, and now from her Twitter updates, I know many more details of her trip. As I grow more accustomed to using Twitter, I’m still trying to decide how I feel about the overall usefulness of it. That being said, I’m curious to learn more about how Twitter and other forms of social media can be used in library settings—for self-promotion, networking, communication, etc. Because I don’t know much about this topic, I am excited about the possibilities, which I hope we might talk about in class tomorrow.

As a final note, I am excited to tune into some of my classmates’ webinars this week! Watching Bobbi Newman’s webinar a few weeks ago and the IMLS webinar last week has piqued my interest, and I am looking forward to learning more about copyright and serving the underserved!

Week 10: Workshop Reflection, Embedded Librarianship, & Webinars

Building on what we learned in our book clubs, this week groups had the opportunity to further hone their presentation skills through one-shot workshops. As with the book clubs, I found this to be an enjoyable and educational experience. For one, all of the topics the book clubs chose were really interesting and diverse—from library spaces to Netflix to QR codes. On top of that, all of the group presenters had creative and engaging ways for instructing on their topics. Since the chosen topics were all focused around librarian ethics, the workshops provided a great forum for discussing the moral obligations of today’s librarian. From an individual standpoint, working with my team members to develop our workshop allowed me to think more about strategies for teaching and how to select informative yet interesting topics. Also, having only a short period in which to conduct the workshop presented another challenge to plan around.

This week’s set of readings focused on the idea of embedded librarianship, which is the concept of having the librarian more fully immersed and connected with their patrons through meaningful participation in academic courses or increased collaboration with their departments (and associated faculty/staff).  Not surprisingly, the readings seemed most relevant to academic librarians, particularly the subject liaison breed. Still, both articles contained a lot of valuable information and made some interesting points: 

• ·         embedded librarianship is a great way to promote the services of the librarian
• ·         with so many college-aged users online now, librarians should strive to use technology to embed themselves (email, mobile text reference, website chat services, etc.)
• ·         librarians can take on an integral role in classroom learning—for example, by becoming an assistant instructor
• ·         embedded librarians can become members of the academic community they are trying to support, through online presence or physical presence
• ·         and finally, but perhaps most importantly, be where your users are

When I first started reading Chapter 7 of How People Learn, I hadn’t made the connection between this text and the other two articles. Soon, though, I realized that the authors are discussing the unique challenges presented by different subject areas. Or, as the authors simply put it “Different disciplines are organized differently and have different approaches to inquiry.” This, I think, explains well why embedded librarianship is important in the first place. And, in retrospect, it probably would have served me well to have read this before the other two articles (and judging by the list on the syllabus, I was probably supposed to). Still, reading it afterward gave me kind of an a-ha moment where I realized why I think librarians should ever be embedding themselves anywhere. Initially, I thought embedded librarianship was just a way for subject liaisons to better liaise with their users or an opportunity for regular librarians to use technology to reach more patrons.  

How People Learn along with the Montgomery and Matos et al. articles helped me understand that academic disciplines not only differ in the content they require from a library (i.e. books, journals and other resources) but in the type of services they receive. That is, as librarians, we cannot expect users from agriculture and music to approach the library in the same way. Because different disciplines require different information, the way in which users interact with information also varies dramatically. For this reason, we can’t afford to simply sit at the reference desk, expecting to dole out a one-size-fits-all assistance. Instead, we should look at what makes our users unique from others and respond to their information needs accordingly.

Finally, for the webinar viewing I chose “Using Social Media to tell Your Collections’ Stories” from the IMLS Connecting to Collections webinars. The webinar uses Adobe Connect, and I like the interface and features the software provides—chat sessions, polling feature and screen images. I was especially fond of the ability to poll live participants, as this capability allowed users to collectively introduce themselves (where they were from; what type of institution they represented, etc.)  On a content-related note, I thought the topic of the webinar was quite neat, and it seemed like the Connecting to Collections series contains a number of interesting webinars.

Week 9: Workshops and an Intro to Webinars

Last week’s class gave us the opportunity to discuss HCOD & librarian ethics as well as learn more about the logistics for the one-shot workshops that we will be presenting in class tomorrow. A few of the important points I took away from the lesson on workshops: stress why the workshop is taking place (having a clear motive helps participants engage more with the learning process); try to get to know participants through scenarios and discussion questions; and try to relate what is being taught in the workshop to knowledge the participants may already possess (transferability, prior knowledge, etc.). Additionally, I think including an icebreaker in this activity will be beneficial. My group did not have an icebreaker for the book club, and I feel this omission really affected the overall trajectory of our discussion. Hopefully, tomorrow’s activity will be an opportunity to put what we learned by doing the book club exercise into practice (formative assessment!).

We also had the opportunity to hear a webinar given by Bobbi Newman (aka Librarian by Day) who spoke more about the controversial new HarperCollins/OverDrive’s eBook policy. The webinar, as someone pointed out in class, really was a great opportunity to (1) hear from and talk to a professional librarian about her opinions on a relevant library issue; and (2) observe a real-life webinar! Being a novice to the field of webinars, I was a tad disappointed that the webinar did not include a screen showing the speaker of the presentation (although I think this may have been an option…?). At the same time, the lack of visual stimulation did make me focus that much more on the audio component of the webinar. I also feel my own experience with the audio/visual aspects of the talk will be useful when it comes time to create my own webinar.

Because we have no readings for this week, I will talk briefly about my one-shot workshop for tomorrow. Our group is presenting on the subject of collection bias within libraries. We are interested in exploring how librarians can best serve their patrons by creating diverse, representative collections that adhere to their patron base. In terms of the workshop itself, I am most concerned about the time limit and effectively fitting what we want to say into the 20 minutes. I am also hopeful that the activities and talking points we have planned will be appropriate for our subject and we can all learn something together!