Where do we go from here?

I don't know if anyone beyond my class cohort has been following this blog, but if anyone was/still is following me I would like to provide a brief update.

I graduated in early May and am currently in the midst of job hunting, for a position as an academic librarian.  I had considered blogging about my job search experience, but I'm not sure I would be able to do that in such a way that readers would not be able to tell where I am applying/interviewing, and I felt that could violate some professional boundaries.  Thus, I have placed blogging on hold for the time being.

That said I hope to return to blogging at some point in the near future, hopefully once I have been offered a job.  At which point I would like to return to blogging by discussing the job search tactics I employed and then re-frame this blog as a place to share my insights and experiences as a new professional (to the extent that I feel it is appropriate).

Final Readings / Final thoughts

The semester is drawing to a close and so too my blogging for SI643 Professional Practices.  We closed out our readings for the semester with three readings about fostering a professional development community within one's organization.  I thought this was a really nice way to end the semester because we had discussed education and professional development all semester long, that is after all what the class is about.  But these final readings capped off the semester nicely, but turning the lens inward to what individual organizations can do to build positive incentivised learning environments for their staff.

The first article we read was about how one school district in Wyoming implemented an incentivised, voluntary, peer led professional development program.  Although this particular program was built for K-12 educators I can easily see how their approach could be applied to libraries of all kinds.  The main keys to their program's success seem to be first allowing teachers to choose whether or not they want to participate, and providing support for teachers who choose to get their professional development in other ways.  This is really important because it eliminates any resistance you might get from people who feel resentful of being forced to participate in a program.  It also ensures that those who choose not to participate have the support that they need to continue their professional development and aren't singled out or made to feel bad for choosing to go another way.

Another important element that the school district implemented was that this program would take place during school hours and on the clock. This meant that teachers didn't have to sacrifice more of their scarce free time to participate in professional development.  The program is also peer led and there are incentives for leading learning sessions and participating.

Overall I think is a really great approach to ensuring that one's staff can stay up to day on their professional development without asking them to output tons of time and money that they don't have to continue learning elsewhere.  I also liked the way in which it clearly fostered a strong learning community among the teachers at the school.

Our other two readings looked at a similar kind of program being implemented in public libraries. These programs involved more independent learning options, but still resulted in staff members teaming up to help each other out.  Again a big component of this program I liked was the flexibility it gave participants, particularly for how and when to work on their assignments. 


I think that finding ways to provide professional development in libraries, that provide flexibility, choice, and freedom to library staff members is so important.  We all need to keep our current skills sharp and continue to add to our toolkit as we move forward professionally, but this can be difficult to do when working a full time job and trying to juggle a personal life at the same time.  Providing time for professional development during the normal work day is a great solution to this, and it would likely make staff feel more appreciated and supported as the strive to develop new skills, which will ultimately benefit their institution.

I don't know a lot of the details about the program, but I know that MLibrary does have some professional development type programs in place for their staff.  I know they have professional development days where staff attend talks and workshops during normal working hours, and they also have a shadowing program where staff members can spend a week shadowing other staff members to learn about the kind of work they do. After doing the readings for this week I think I need to find out more information about this program so I can be better educated about how professional development can work in academic library settings.

 

Webinar Reflections

I've participated as an audience member in a few webinars in the past, but being a moderator was a rather surreal and at times unsettling experience.  I recognize the usefulness of webinars as a medium though which people who are far apart geographically can come together for a shared learning experience, but I have to say that I personally don't enjoy the experience very much as an audience member or a presenter.

Ultimately presenting the webinar with my group wasn't so bad, it went fairly smoothly and people seemed to be fairly engaged with our content, but I didn't like how disconnected I was from my audience.  I have a background in theatre and I love teaching, sure I get nervous for presentations just like everyone else, but once I get going I love creating a connection with my audience or class.  As a performer and an educator I see one of my greatest strengths as being able to read my audience or class and respond to the cues they are giving me.  Being able to connect with my audience mean I can adjust my style and approach based on how my audience/class is reacting and in this way hopefully keep them engaged and alert. 

With a webinar where not only can you not see your audience, but they could be anywhere being distracted by anything, this same kind of connection isn't possible. I can however see how this could be a huge advantage for individuals who get anxious and nervous about presenting in front of groups.

As an audience member I find it hard to participate effectively in webinars.  If I am paying attention to the presenter and the slides, I can't pay attention to the discussion going on in chat, and if I participate in chat I miss much of what the presenter is saying.  I actually prefer to watch pre-recorded webinars for this very reason, which lets face it isn't the point of webinars.


As far as the technology goes, it isn't exactly the most user friendly experience, but it isn't prohibitive either.  Once my group worked with it a little bit, it really wasn't that bad and we got through our webinar without any issues.


My overall verdict?  I don't really care for webinars, but I'm glad that I now have the skills to create and moderate one should I ever be called upon to do so.

Tweeting in Library-Land

So in case people hadn't already noticed I'm sure this weeks twitter related assignment made it very clear that librarians love them some twitter.  I've been on twitter for some years now and have always had mixed feelings about it. This is partly due to the fact that I do not have a smart phone, and don't really see myself getting one anytime soon due to very prohibitive pricing on data plans. 

 What I don't like about twitter:
If you don't have a smart phone you have to access twitter on your computer and that's not really how twitter was made to be used.  I've noticed that a lot of library and archives related conferences are big on using hash tags for communication throughout conference events, and this is totally a great idea, if you have a smart phone.  If you don't have a smart phone and you're at a conference where you know there is going to be a lot of tweeting going on you're basically doomed to lug your laptop around the whole time, which is a total bummer.  So in a why twitter pretty effectively excludes anyone who has chosen not to get a smart phone, or (as is the case for me) can't afford one.  I find this very frustrating, but I realize that there isn't anything I can do about it.

What I do like about twitter:
As I said before I've been on twitter for a few years now, I started it quite a while ago simply out of curiosity, and then pretty much ignored my account until coming to SI.  When I arrived at SI I started thinking about how I might effectively use twitter even without a smartphone, or tablet device. I decided to use it as a kind of news aggregator for my two areas of professional interest, libraries (specifically academic special collection libraries), and early modern scholarship (specifically Shakespeare). 

Using twitter in this way has been useful to me.  I can't check up to the minute news, but I can scan through my feed in the morning over coffee or in the evening when I'm sitting at home watching TV.  I have found it to be a useful way to stay up to date on what is going on in the professional areas that I am interested in, find new articles, and even to interact with / ask questions of professionals who's work I'm interested in.  I even contacted one of the professional librarians I follow on twitter to ask her for suggestions for blogs to follow for this class. 

Finally I have also been using twitter a lot lately to follow a few library job posting sites, to get up to dates info on the latest jobs being posted in the field.

Conclusions:
Overall I guess I would have to conclude that I have found a useful way to use twitter, and it is the best way to get professional news on a variety of topics all in one place.   However, I still think that when libraries and other professional organizations place a big focus on it for conferences or other events they should think long and hard about who they are excluding and what this means.

To embed or not to embed?

Today in class we talked about the concept of embedded librarians in relation to our readings for this week.  I was glad for the opportunity to go over this concept more in class because I felt that the readings had some clarity issues, which I don't think are necessarily their fault, but rather that the subject has some foggy areas. 

One of my classmates shared that she had found it difficult to distinguish between what exactly defined someone as an embedded librarian versus just having a well organized and integrated library system. I have to say that I identified a lot with this feeling because it seems that in many instances the differences are not clear.  I think that overall I am okay with a certain amount of uncertainty around this subject because I suspect that part of it is that whether embedded or not a librarian's job description is going to vary by institution and therefore what may be defined as an embedded librarian at one institution may be defined differently as another.  While this may make it somewhat hard to talk about, I think that so long as each given library is clear as to what is expected of their librarians, it is okay.

Another thing we talked about was the fact that most of us have never utilized our own librarian at SI.  I can't speak for the rest of my class, but for me it is part a matter of accessibility and part a matter necessity.  My days are very full (as I'm sure are those of my peers), and I don't really have time to specifically go by someone's office hours, not to mention the fact that I work during hers. The other is that while I have written research papers, all be it fairly minor ones, while at SI I haven't felt that I needed help finding resources.

In my previous grad program in English I had a very different experience, and regularly sought out our librarians for assistance.  There were however a few very big differences. For one we had a small subject specific reference library where we as grad students were each given a shelf for our books, but we were not allowed to remove the books from the library.  The library was literally connected to the building we had classes in. Finally there were two main librarians whom we got to know very well through simply being in the library and through the research skills class, which they taught, and which we were all required to take in our first term.  All of these elements combined to give us as students a very strong connection to our library, its staff, and the resources it contained.  Out side of the physical properties of the library and our familiarity with the staff we were also writing much more in depth and lengthy research papers.

Although I have worked in and around Hatcher since I arrived as SI, my relationship with the building is no where near as intimate as it was at my former graduate program. This is partly just due to the size of the library and its staff.  I do however wonder if having SI's librarian somehow participate in our 501 or 500 class, preferably 501 since it is our first big class at SI that everyone is required to take, might have fostered a stronger relationship between her and the students simply by raising our awareness of her.

Approaches to Teaching & Webinars

This week to delved further into approaches to teaching through our textbook and an article that addressed some of these issues in relation to librarianship.  We also start to learn about webinars and picked a webinar to watch in preparation for creating our own in a couple of weeks.

I really enjoyed the readings for this week about teaching in our text "How People Learn."  I think that people far too often take teaching for granted and don't realize that it is actually incredibly hard to do it and do it well.  Our book focuses more on K-12 teaching, while I tend to think more in terms of post-secondary education. However, I think that all of the issues discussed in the book can easily be applied to college and university settings as well as K-12.  

Although our reading in "How People Learn" is focused more on on-going course instruction, rather than the one-off or one-shot instruction style that most of us will be using as librarians I think that the principles and ideas are still very useful.  This reading continued to focus on the idea that strong subject knowledge and the ability to engage with students ideas and interests is a huge asset to teaching.  It also continued with the idea that we have seen repeatedly this semester that if students can learn to connect ideas and concepts and think about the bigger pictures questions of "why?" and "how?" rather than memorizing, the "where?" "when?" and "who?" they will be far better equipped to understand and use that information in meaningful ways in their course work and in the future.

I think that librarians can make use of these teaching tactics by being as well educated about their collections as possible and by creating educational materials that seek to engage their audiences with those collections.   One way to do this that we have discussed before is to tailor teaching sessions to specific classes where the information being taught can be applied directly to that class that the students are in. 

If as a librarian you find yourself teaching to a general grouping of students who are not in the same class, it could be useful to instead try to identify what they do have in common beyond being students at the same university.  Are they all incoming freshmen or outgoing seniors? Or did they elect to take the session based on its topic.  The answers may provide a broader scope than a specific course would, but they are a starting point for what you can start to think about as you plan the session and try to think of meaningful ways to engage your audience.

I'd like to wrap up this post with some of my thoughts on webinars. I have attended a few webinars in the past as well as watched a couple recordings of them.  I find them interesting because they always feel far less polished to me, as compared to prerecorded presentations.  This isn’t surprising really, but it does always feel a little weird.  I have also NEVER seen a webinar that didn’t deal with some technical difficulty during the webinar, this always results in a couple of minutes of stalled time to figure out the problem.

Keeping this in mind as I begin to think in terms of having to create a webinar with a team, I think that the main things I am going to want to remember are that a webinar isn't going to be as polished as a presentation might be, or even flow as smoothly as an in person workshop might because the technology will likely cause some minor disruptions along the way.


Another thing that I think will be important to keep in mind is to make sure that and images used whether slides, screen captures, etc. are very clear and easy to read/see.  Something about webinars can make them a little more difficult to follow than in person presentations. I think it is simply the inability to see the speaker.  When you watch an online tutorial you often don't see the presenter, but you're also not expected to be interacting with them, it is a one way instruction. With webinars though, you are expected to interact and it is a little strange to do this when a) you can't see the instructor and thus are unable to use visual cues to know when it is a good time to ask a question or even to get the instructors attention and b) you know that there are a number of other people also attending the webinar and participating, whom again you cannot visualize.

From a presenters point of view I have a feeling the webinar format is going to feel strange.   I have a background in theatre, and I have given workshops and presentations on numerous occasions.  However, in all of these situations you are standing in front of your audience and can see how they are reacting to what you are saying.  I know that I rely heavily on visual cues from my audience in all of these situations.  When giving a presentation or a workshop I rely on visual cues to tell me when the audience is bored, engaged, or confused. I then may choose to go faster or slower through a section based on how my audience appears to be reacting, or I may provide further detail that I had not initially planned on discussing if my audience seems confused.  Furthermore I use lots of visual cues myself to interact with my audience. These range from smiling and other facial expressions to hand gestures, and other body language to emphasize a point, or make it clear when I am making a joke.  Due to all of this I expect doing a webinar to present a unique challenge from any presenting experiences I have had before, and I am very interested to see how it turns out.

Workshop Reflections

Now that the workshop is over I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.  I still wish we had had more time to prepare them, but over all I think it went well.  Areas that I felt our probably could have been stronger were pacing and perhaps some of the content.  I would have liked to boil things down a bit more so that we wouldn't have had to move through our content so quickly to fit it all in. 

I really enjoyed getting to see what everyone else chose to do as well.  Some things I noticed we that while a visual presentation to go along with your workshop does help, it isn't necessary.  One other group aside from us used a visual presentation aid (Powerpoint), they did a really great job using the visuals as an aid, but not as a crutch and I felt that their presentation was very well done.  The other two workshops didn't make use of any visuals, but they were still well organized and were able to make their points clearly.

The biggest issue I noticed with the workshops in our group was that you have to be really careful to manage time and expectations when asking your audience for feedback.  The two groups not using presentation software both had a section of their workshop where they asked the audience to read over some materials and respond to them.  Both groups did a very nice job and I think that having this exercise was a good idea however, I noticed that with one of the groups we were asked to review a much longer piece of material and the framing for the response we were asked to give was much less focused. This isn't necessarily a bad thing I think by it's nature that workshop needed the broader scope, but I found it a little difficult to focus in on anything.  Having had this experience I think that if I am in that kind of situation in the future I might ask each group to look at a section of the materials and respond to that.  Smaller pieces are easier to digest and form opinions on when given a limited amount of time, and acting as a participant helped me to see that in a way I hadn't before.

Preparing for a One-Shot Workshop

This week we will be working in the same pairs and groups that we worked in for our book clubs to do one-shot workshops. 

I have done group presentations in class before and I have even developed and given a full two hour workshop based on the research I did last summer for my internship.  However I found this experience to be somehow more challenging than any of my past experiences. I think this may in part be due to the time frame that we had to work with. 

We had a bit of an initial block when it came to coming up with topics, but once we got going there were a number of topics that my partner and I were interested in exploring. However, we didn't feel that we would have enough time to properly research and produce a workshop on some of our topic ideas, so we had to work to narrow our choices down to something we felt we would be able to research and develop a workshop on in a week.

When it came to pulling the actual workshop together we chose a topic and then used google docs to develop an outline and estimate how long each section would be.  The biggest challenge was  finding a flow of information that felt like it worked and that still touched on the topics we felt were important to cover.

After we had our outline divided up we developed the visual portion of our presentation using Prezi.com. We chose Prezi over power point because we like the way that it allows an audience to visualize the sequence of a presentation from the start.

Ethics in the Library

So I was excited to do the reading this week when I saw that the topic to be covered was ethics, I think that ethical issues as they related to libraries and archives are very interesting. In many of my archives classes we have discussed the issue of ethical decisions at length and I have always found these discussions very engaging. So I was surprised to see that we only had two readings this week the ALA Code of Ethics from 2008, and an article titled Dangerous Questions the Reference Desk: A Virtue Ethics Approach, by Mark Lenker, also written in 2008. 

What's more I was extremely disappointed and quite frankly deeply annoyed with the Lenker reading.  While Lenker provided what I believe he felt were realistic hypothetical case studies I found them to be ridiculous and utterly unhelpful. Let me say that I am not saying that patrons may not ask the very questions that Lenker's fictional patrons ask, in fact I'm quite sure they do. However, I found the entire premise of the article and the lack of conclusions drawn to be frustratingly simple minded and hyperbolic.

The range of what he lists as "dangerous questions" is problematic in and of itself, to group in reference desk questions about building a bomb with questions about growing pot doesn't even make sense.  If you're going to make ethical judgments about these, and I'm not saying that one should, but if you were, a bomb could physically hurt a lot of people, some teenager asking about growing pot is probably pretty harmless, but right there a LOT of potentially very unfair assumptions are being made. Really the main thing that both of these reference questions have in common is that patrons are asking for information, information which presumably already exists in the library. They are not purchasing C4 and fertilizer, or a hydroponics. Reading about something or even researching it does not imply any form of action on the part of the reader beyond READING, and while it is always important to use ones judgement in any situation, I think that the judgmental assumptions made in this article about the questions themselves are extremely problematic.

So clearly I was upset about this article, but if I didn't find the issues it discussed to be a worthwhile discussion of ethics then what would I have preferred?

What I was expecting from this week and in fact hoping for would be questions about censorship, collection development decisions,  perhaps even funding and financial issues etc.

For example:

Censorship: What does one do when faced with a community or even just a single parent who is upset about a book held in your collection? What if part of you agrees with the patron's concerns, but you feel that it is more important not to censor than to remove a book simply because it makes you uncomfortable? What if you don't agree with the patron's concerns, but still have to deal with them in a professional manner? What if your library makes a decisions to censor part of the collection and you don't agree with this decision?

Collection Development: What if you work in a special collection library and weeding of the collection needs to be done, how do you make choices about what to get rid of (considering that much of your collection is unique)? What if you work in a library that holds archival material and what if some of the information contained in those archives is not viewable to the public for a certain number of years to protect individuals mentioned in those documents? What if (this is a true story) your library holds academic records of a presidential candidate because he went to school there, and what if a request to deliver those records to the government has been made and approved, because there are things in them that they don't want getting out. What if you don't like the candidate and you could easily photocopy the documents and leak them, but you know this would jeopardize  not only your own career, but that of your colleagues, and the reputation of your institution?

Financial: What if your library needs funds and you are offered money by an organization whose beliefs are fundamentally opposed to your own, or might cause some of your patrons to feel alienated if they knew you had taken the money from that organization?  What if you are offered a donation, but only if you use it for certain things? What if selling a part of your collection would bring in much needed funds?

Reflection on overcoming personal challanges

I had anticipated that I would write in this reflection more generally about the book club experience. However, as I started trying to put down some of my thoughts in response to our ADDIE planning sheet I found the one question in particular elicited a very long and personal response, and I thought I would share that here. 

Describe your biggest challenges and how you overcame them:

One thing that I personally found to be a major challenge that I was expected to overcome was not to give my opinions too much. I am really torn about this because I have participated in several book clubs and the organizers were never expected to keep their opinions to themselves and always fully participated in the discussions, which I always liked and felt comfortable with. 

I felt like with this book club there was an expectation that we wouldn’t share too many of our own opinions, which I found to be extremely difficult and uncomfortable.  I think I did a fairly good job, but we did receive some feedback that we could have, as moderators, talked less. And one of them did pick me out in particular “Sarah talks a lot! Her opinions are interesting and I could tell she was trying to hold back. Something to keep practicing.”*  This feedback didn't upset me, except that it shows me that as hard as I try to hold back I have to try even harder.  I am always conscious of the fact that I tend to talk a LOT, in fact I am incredibly self conscious about it and I worry a lot that teachers will get annoyed with me. Believe it or not for every time I talk in class there is a time when I force myself to be quiet because I am very worried about overpowering a conversation, or being perceived as overly pushy.  So I’m kind of torn about this observation, it is something about myself that I am highly aware of.  I think I do an okay job controlling it, but I know I could do better and it is something I have to be constantly conscious of.  On the other hand I don’t know if I agree with the book club model in which the person who organized it is more of a passive observer and simply feeds the group questions. I think that if the book club is for teens or younger readers the impartiality of the organizer is probably more important, but for a general adult group I actually think it is a little awkward.

In retrospect I also think that picking a story that I was really excited about made the process, in some ways, a greater challenge.  It was great because I was excited to hear what others had to say and coming up with questions was fun. On the other hand I desperately wanted to be more a part of the discussion and it was torturous having to moderate, and trying to hold back on commenting.

 I have a few overall take aways from this expereince:

1.  I don't EVER EVER EVER want to run a book club where I can't fully participate in discussions. This probably won't be too difficult since the kind of jobs I want aren't very likely to require me to run book clubs.
2.  Even though I probably won't be running anymore book clubs in the near future, I need to stay ever vigilant about mitigating the extent of my own input when I am supposed to be acting as an impartial moderator. 
3. Overall and in spite of some of the personal frustrations expressed above I really enjoyed this experience, it was fun to get to talk about fiction for a change. 


* As a side note the same person who gave the feedback about me talking a lot also gave one of my very favorite feedback comments in response to the question about what strengths the book club had: "There was no judgement. This was a complex work and I felt safe to say that it took me a few readings to understand it."  This made me feel really good because we knew we were picking a somewhat more complex story, and it was really important to us that we create an atmosphere where people would feel comfortable talking about what the struggled with as well as what they enjoyed.  We didn't want anyone to feel intimidated or uncomfortable and our feedback indicates that we succeeded in this. 

 

Book Club Week

Reading for this week was a lot of fun because this week we are doing book clubs.  Each of us picked a partner and then the class split into 3 groups.  For each group their are 4 to 5 pairs and we're reading short stories or poems picked by the other pairs in our group.

The readings picked by the pairs in my grouping are:

"The Crime," by Victor Hugo: http://books.google.com/books?id=9LvTAAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false

"The Queen of Hearts": http://www.loc.gov/rr/rarebook/digitalcoll/digitalcoll-children.html

“The Street That Got Mislaid,” by Patrick Waddington: http://www.classicshorts.com/stories/mislaid.html

“A Haunted House,” by Virginia Woolf: http://www.feedbooks.com/book/1388/a-haunted-house

The final one is the reading that my partner and I picked and I will write about that for my class reflection blog post. 

As a general observation I found it really interesting that two of the readings chosen for this week felt very thematically tied to SI.

"The Crime" is a poem in which an individual has burned down a library and is being admonished for doing so. The voice which speaks for the majority of the poem exclaims "O most unheard-of crime!/ Crime, wretch, which you upon yourself/ commit!"The speaker goes on to explain that the library was the arsonist's own "treasure, fortune, heritage" that he has burned down this precious treasure that belonged to everyone and had the power to set minds and spirits free.  His speech is lengthy and moving and touches upon nearly every argument that those of us at SI would likely come up with to convince someone of the virtues of libraries.  (SPOILERS beyond this point) But there is a twist because at the very end the speaker says "Knowledge, and duty, virtue, progress, right,/ and reason scattering hence delirious dreams./ and you destroy this, you!" and the man who has burnt down the library replies simply "I cannot read."  What I loved about this is the way in which it brings all of our lofty ideas about libraries crashing to the ground. This poem was written in a very different time from our own, but in spite of the years that separate it and us one thing is still true and far too often overlooked. Literacy is a sign of privilege, it is not a given, and assuming that it is makes invisible a vast number of people.

I enjoyed this poem because of the way it managed to upturn some very universal assumptions, and make me consider things from s different perspective.

"The Street That Got Mislaid" is the other reading that I felt was thematically appropriate for SI because it is about a man who works in the filing section (ARM anyone?) of the city hall's engineering department, sometime in mid 20th century.  This man's job is not glamorous or exciting, and he seems to live a fairly quite, rather lonely life. Yet he is clearly passionate about his job, sees the importance of it in keeping order.  He tries to explain why the records he provides diligent stewardship for are important to a neighbor:

 "You live here on Oven Street because it says so in my filing cabinet at city hall. The post office sends you mail because my card index tells it to. If my cards didn't say so, you wouldn't exist and Oven Street wouldn't either. That, my friend, is the triumph of bureaucracy."

The order and care for the documentation are beautiful and yet, also so utterly ridiculous.

The one day quite by accident, he discovers an index card jammed into the top of a filing drawer. He discovers a lost street, a street that has been mislaid.

I think in many ways this story is about letting go of the rigidity and structure we impose on our daily lives and finding peace in the simple joy of living and enjoying the company of others.  Yet the ARM student in me couldn't help but love the thrill of discovering a lost and forgotten record, and the decisions that come along with such a discovery.

"The Queen of Hearts"is a poem or nursery rhyme that pretty much everyone knows, and could probably even recite from memory.

The Queen of Hearts

She made some tarts,

    All on a summer's day;

The Knave of Hearts

He stole those tarts,

    And took them clean away.

The King of Hearts

Called for the tarts,

    And beat the knave full sore;

The Knave of Hearts

Brought back the tarts,

    And vowed he'd steal no more.

So what's so interesting about it? For one I enjoyed the version we were given to read, it is from a classic book of nursery rhymes and the illustrations were really enjoyable. The illustrations were in the same style as the nursery rhyme book I remember having when I was much younger, so it gave me warm fuzzy nostalgic feelings.

However, because it was so simple and because I simply can't let things be I did a little research and discovered some interesting facts.  Everyone is familiar with the above rhyme and the Queen of Hearts from f Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, but what I did not realize or even really think about until reading it is that the poem was actually written after Carroll's classic story.  The poem also originally had verses about the king and queen of the 3 other suits as well, but those were never very popular and eventually disappeared from the poem all together.

Book Clubs

Please forgive any lapses in coherence in this post, I'm still very much in the fog of a head cold that I just can't seem to shake.

Today's class was interesting because reading and discussing what I have read are two of my favorite things, but at the same time I don't really have any interest in working in public libraries or in a position where I would be likely to run the kind of book club that we were discussing today.  Thus I felt both engaged on a personal level and somewhat distant on a professional level.

This is not to say that I don't see the value in learning about and discussing different methods and approaches to book clubs. We never know where our lives or careers will take us and I'd rather be overly informed about areas that I may be less likely to work in than under informed and under-prepared.  The hardest part was I had to keep reminding myself that the book club list of dos and don'ts were making applied to those leading the book club rather than the attendees. I kept thinking how bland a discussion would be with we didn't offer our opinions or only stuck to generalities, but no I'd have to remind myself this is for the facilitator and in that case it makes sense.  I'm so used to being a book club attendee that making the mental switch is a little tough, I have lead book discussions in classroom settings before so the concept isn't totally foreign to me, but I had to keep reminding myself of what my role in the whole thing would be.

As far as applicability to my own career interests go I think that talking about the huge variety of different book clubs is an interesting way into applying the general book club model to unlikely situations.  For example I want to work in a special collections library, not exactly a place you'd expect to have a book club. However, I could see implementing the thematic book club and or the online style book club within a special collections library.  Perhaps focusing on themes related to the different collections each month, or reading books related to the primary materials held in the collection depending on what the collection is.  The librarian in charge of the book club could bring a few things from special collection to each meeting to help facilitate discussion or could perhaps prepare some information on how the theme relates to the collection and let people go from there.  It would be a bit trickier, but it could be a really interesting way to engage people with special collections.

Books clubs and discussions

I enjoyed this week's readings because most of them covered the basic ideas behind book clubs and book discussions.  I found the different approaches to book clubs very interesting. Many of them I have heard of and non of them were particularly revolutionary, but what they all had in common and what comes across through almost all of the readings is that the goal is to engage readers.

The institutional goals behind the readings varied in that some were attempting to engage readers with their local libraries or their communities, while other were clearly trying to engage students with required reading materials in a more powerful and meaningful way.  One of the big ways in which there different approaches tried to speak to their audiences was through allowing their audience in some ways self select.  Most libraries don't have just one standard book club anymore, they have teen book clubs and adult book clubs and book clubs for science fiction, fantasy, non-fiction and the list goes on and on.  What this means is that individuals can pick the club that works best for them, appeals the most to them. 

I have some personal experience with this.  A few years ago I moved back home after spending two years living in England working towards my first masters degree.  Most of the friends that I used to have in my hometown had moved elsewhere or we had simply drifted apart, and I was bored and lonely.  I'm not one to just go out to bars or clubs and I don't particularly like approaching or being approached by strangers, so I was having a hard time figuring out how to meet new people without the social structures of school that I was used to.  I decided that joining a book club would be perfect because it would ensure a common area of interest and provide initial topics for conversation. The problem was finding the right book club, many of the book clubs I found were the Oprah-esque book clubs that were designed to attract a more middle aged group of people. I also found a number of book clubs clearly aimed at moms needing a break from their kids and so on.  But I wanted something that would attract younger, childless, people like myself.  I ended up stumbling upon a brand new group being started by my local library, that held what they termed "book parties" at a local bar, your library card got you your first drink for free and all were welcome.  I guess the point I'm trying to make here in my currently cold-medicine addled state is that a big part of engaging people with books, or their local library is providing them with the option that is right for them. 

What I liked about today's readings was the way in which they acknowledged the flexibility and diversity needed in book clubs and the way in which taking slightly different approaches can create more lively and active discussions. 









 

Blogging and Blogging Personas

In class today we discussed some of the issues and trends that we noticed in the blogs that we're following (see previous post).  One of issue came up that I found particularly interesting and a little odd that it was actually seen as a negative by a fair number of people, was librarian bloggers as celebrities.   That is bloggers whose "about me" sections or just the content of their blog posts cause them to come off as self important self promoters. 

Initially I thought, "okay, I can see how that might bother some readers," but the more I thought about it the more I began to wonder about this perceived issue.  First from my own observations of blogs I have followed in the past and currently follow, a blogger needs to develop a distinct persona or form of "celebrity personality" in order to bring in and keep readers.  Second it was only a couple of weeks ago that we were talking about the need for librarians to be better self promoters both for their own sake and for that of the institutions that they work for. 

So are we asking librarians to do the impossible? To self promote, but not over self promote? Is this a case of never being able to be happy? either librarians need to be more vocal and make more of an effort to let people know what they are doing or they need to real it in a bit and not get too full or themselves. Or could some bloggers actually stand to real it in a bit? I suspect that there is a little of both at work here, but it would be my guess that for every reader that finds one blogger's persona off-putting there will be at least one other reader fist-pumping along in agreement with the blogger.

Now the issue of the relevance of blogs as a whole also came up and I'm not going to go into that here because that is a whole other can of worms.  That said my classmates' and even my own reactions to certain blogs and bloggers during our discussion in class today made me think about what it means to be a blogger and how the way we choose to present ourselves on the internet may cause people who have never met us before to form very strong opinions about us.  Don't get me wrong it wasn't a revaluation to me that people have strong opinions about the things that they read on the internet, but it did make me consider just how much of a risk bloggers are taking when choosing to blog about their professional lives. 

I guess for me I would err on the side of cutting bloggers some slack. I may not always agree with what they have to say or even like the way that they choose to present themselves on the web, but I'm willing to accept that they represent at any time a certain percentage of my professional peer group. Thus I probably shouldn't totally write off what they have to say just because I don't like the way they say it.

Transferably learning in libraries

This week's readings focused on the importance of being able to transfer learned knowledge from one year to the next, from the classroom to the real world, and from one situation to another.  One of the biggest issues inherent in the educational system is that students are far too often taught to memorize rather than participate in the kind of learning that teaches transfer skills.  The readings mainly focus on high school aged learners and different methods and strategies for creating an educational environment that can meet the demands of preparing students for standardized tests, while also going beyond memorization to transfer and real understanding.

This is all fine and well, but the question is, how does it apply to us as librarians? Many of the examples given deal with teaching semester or even year long courses, while most librarians only get one chance, whether in an informal reference setting or in a one-off workshop or seminar. I believe that the answer is that although the approach may be somewhat different the principles behind creating a learning environment in which students learn transferable information and understand how to make that transfer it is just as important if not more so. 

There is very little that we as librarians can about a person's education prior to their arrival in the library, some may have experienced learning environments where they acquired strong transfer skills and others may have had their educations focused on memorization for tests.  What we as librarians and educators have to do is find a way to introduce the information we are providing in a way that will step beyond memorizing the steps one takes to search for a book or article in the library database. We have to allow students to see the connections between what we are teaching them and how they can apply those concepts to things outside of a single basic task.

For me this really goes back to some of the ideas I encountered two weeks ago when we got to choose our own readings.  One article in particular discussed teaching students about secondary source materials and searching for journal articles by first introducing them to the idea of primary source materials.  Rather than just explaining what primary sources are they actually brought in materials from special collections to show students, and allowed them to handle the materials.  Later when the instructors did a search in JSTOR for secondary source materials they showed the students a journal that actually sited one of the primary source materials they had just been handling in class.  I loved this approach because it literally shows students the connection between primary and secondary sources in a very real and tangible way, but it also provides them with transferable information. 

Because primary sources weren't just talked about but were actually shown to the students, and because it was made clear to them where in the physical library the primary sources had come from students could then transfer that understanding and realize that there would likely be other primary sources in special collections that might be useful to them.  It would also provide transfer for them when they read articles in the future, allowing them to be able to better understand the concept of citation and why citations in article might be of interest to them or lead them to further information.

It is easy enough to show a student a journal article and explain to them that if one article is of interest to them then they might find other useful articles by checking the citations, but it is so much more powerful to show them.  Showing them also helps to illustrate the difference between citing primary sources and other secondary sources and will help students to really understand the difference between the two.

I think as we approach teaching in libraries we need to always consider how the skills and concepts we are teaching can be transferred and utilized in other ways both in the library and elsewhere.  When we are teaching someone to search within our library database we should think about it in terms of teaching them to search in any similarly structured database, and where possible use examples that allow them to transfer prior knowledge to their learning experience in a library. 

The Blog on Blogs

The contents of this blog is in part copied from and expands upon one of my earlier posts "On Tough Decisions: picking blogs to follow."


For class we had to pick four library related blogs to follow. Two by people or on topics directly related to our future career goals in libraries, for me that would be special collection libraries, and even more specifically special collection libraries specializing in early modern books and manuscripts, Shakespeare, and or English history.  The other two, by people or on topics that are not directly related to our career goals, and perhaps even a little out of our comfort zone. 

 Blogs Selected

For the two related to my personal interests I chose:

1. WYNKEN DE WORDE, by Sarah Werner. 
2. NIU Rare Books and Special Collections Blog, by Lynne M. Thomas .

For the two stepping outside my comfort zone I chose:

1. Librarian.net, by Jessamyn West.
2. Librarian By Day, by Bobbi Newman.  

Blogs Selected: the details

WYNKEN DE WORDE, by Sarah Werner.

Sarah is the Undergraduate Program Director at the Folger Shakespeare Library, Associate Editor of Shakespeare Quarterly, and Editor of The Collation, a blog about scholarship at the Folger (which I also be follow. I actually wrote a guest post for The Collation last year about my Alternative Spring Break at the Folger).

Areas of Interest:  

• Shakespeare and modern performances of Renaissance drama. 
• Scholarly publications and digital media.
• Teaching/education in Special Collections.
• The way in which rare book libraries might act as classrooms, and how "the materiality of special collections might work in conjunction with (or sometimes wrestle against) the new tools of digital humanities scholarship."
  
  

NIU Rare Books and Special Collections Blog, by Lynne M. Thomas  

Lynne is the Curator of Rare Books and Special Collections at Northern Illinois University.  Lynne is also one of the Hugo Award-winning editors of Chicks Dig Time Lords, and the Editor-in-Chief of Apex Magazine (Apex Magazine is an online prose and poetry magazine of science fiction, fantasy, horror, and mash-ups of all three).

Areas of Interest:

• Web 2.0 tech for cultural heritage collections. 
• Teaching/education in Special Collections.
• Issues related to the NIU Special Collections Library.
• Information about items held by the NIU Special Collections Library.
• Information about items related to the collection held by the NIU Special Collections Library.
  
  

Librarian.net, by Jessamyn West

Jessamyn is a public librarian, a self described "library technologist," and a "sometimes librarian, sometimes writer, sometimes blogger, and sometimes technology instructor/consultant" living in Vermont. She also states that to the best of her knowledge hers is the first single-editor library-oriented weblog. When looking at her "about" section I found this statement particularly intriguing - "I am not currently a member of ALA though I was elected to be an ALA Councilor in 2004. I feel the double-edged sword of participating in a flawed system versus sitting out and not participating at all." I don't think I've ever heard anyone say anything but good things about ALA, and this made me curious to hear more of her thoughts and opinions as expressed through her blog. 

Areas of Interest:

• "library-oriented things."
• Preservation of "what is special about libraries"-Libraries as the manifestation of the public sphere in the United States.
• User oriented services
• Activism for libraries
• The intersection of libraries, technology, and politics.
  
  

Librarian By Day, by Bobbi Newman.  

Bobbi is a blogger, a Tweeter and an international public speaker. Bobbi is an ALA Councilor-at-Large, a member of the OITP Advisory Committee, and a serves on the advisory board for the Pew Internet & American Life research on Libraries in the Digital Age. I thought Newman would be interesting person to follow as a contrast to West of Librarian.net makes a point to say that she is not a member of ALA.  

Areas of Interest:

• The challenge of continuing to offer equal access to information and equal opportunity to all regardless of economic standing, physical location, or technological platform in the 21st century library. 
• Implementing digitally- and technologically- based services.
• Bridging the digital divide.
• "Improving existing services through expanding traditional methods while creating innovative new practices."
  
  

Trends

The biggest overall trend that I noticed in every single one of the blogs I selected, as well as the numerous other blogs I considered following, is an interest in and focus on technology.  Whether it is - the implementation of  digital technologies in special collections libraries, user interaction with technologies, user education and technologies, copyright issues in digital technologies, or the challenges and opportunities provided by new technologies - technologies, digital humanities and their use in libraries is a huge issue that continuously pop up across all of these blogs.  

With the two blogs in my particular area of interest, special collections, there is a trend towards talking about technologies and how they can interact with special collections.  Including education, digital publications, and preservation in special collections.

In the two non special collections blogs I am following the issues related to technologies vary a bit more widely.  Jessamyn of Librarian.net seems interested in the issues of digital rights and authority posed by digital technologies such as open source journals and wikis. While Bobbi of Librarian by Day seems interested in the implementation of technologies in libraries and using technologist to provide greater access to users and user services.

 Takeaways

I think one of the most interesting observations I have made thus far from following these blogs is just some of the subtle and not so subtle ways in which special collections librarians talk and think about libraries, users, and technologies as compared to public and even non special collections academic librarians.  I believe that all of the blogs I follow have similar goals, which at the most basic level speak to the need for assisting users and providing access. However, both of the blogs that I follow written by individuals working in special collections zero in a lot more on their specific collections and educating and engaging people with special collections and the materials they hold.  Sarah's blog is her personal blog, while Lynne's is the official NIU special collections blog, but both at their heart deal with much of the same issues.

The other two blogs I follow Jessamyn's and Bobbi's so far seem to be tackling what I suppose I would call more general or overarching issues dealing with libraries and information professionals.  This is not to say that this information is any more or less focused or useful. I simply point it out because it seems that as non special collections librarians they seem to feel a bit freer to tackle a wider range of issues dealing with the library community as a whole. 

Assessing ourselves and our students.

We talked in class today a lot about the different approaches to assessment of ourselves as presenters and educators, and of the varying kinds of students we may encounter.  I think one of the most important concepts to take away from these discussions is that as educators and presenters we need to be very self aware of not only how we are presenting information, but of why we are presenting it, why we are presenting it in a specific format, why anyone might want to learn it, and who that audience might be.  Being aware of these factors will in turn help us to assess not only our own performance, but those of the individuals we are teaching or presenting information to. 

I think one very powerful way to approach our roles as educators is to be aware that we are also always students.  As educators we are tasked with teaching others and it can be easy to focus on that, but if we also take the time to learn from those students about ourselves as educators we can strengthen our methods, discard that which doesn't work, and add in things that we observe to be more effective. 

We can get formative feedback as educators simply by being tuned into the reactions of our students, do they appear to be engaged or are they bored or frustrated? We can then adjust our approach to communicating ideas with them accordingly, if something seems to be working we can employ that method more often, if something isn't working we can switch gears. We can also get summative feedback more formally by creating questionnaires and surveys to solicit feedback from our students. Although this second form of feedback may appear on the surface to be more straightforward today's class made it very clear that format and wording can play a big role in how useful the feedback you receive is.   


I personally have some experience with requesting feedback after doing a workshop, and I know that deciding what to ask and how to ask it can be really tricky.  I found it very useful to use someone who was familiar with my presentation as a sounding board, asking them if they felt the questions were appropriate and if there was anything that they would add.  Having feedback from a peer helped me to weed out some unnecessary questions and zero in on things which weren't obvious to me because I was so familiar with the information that it hasn't occurred to me to ask others how they felt about it. 

Assessment in Education

This week for class we read about different approaches to teaching and assessment.  I found this weeks readings really difficult to get through, not because the content itself was difficult to grasp, but because I felt like I was treading extremely familiar and well-worn ground. I don't have a formal background in education, but I have taught in many capacities over the years and my mother was a teacher.  Maybe because of this these concepts of teachings students to go beyond memorization to actual learning and understanding are just old hat to me. 

Don't get me wrong, I think that these concepts are important for educators, parents, and administrators to understand. But I guess to an extent I get frustrated reading about them, because it seems that the same conclusions are always drawn, and yet we're still stuck in a kind of catch-22 when it comes to education and testing, specifically standardized testing. Teachers to a degree have to teach to the tests because students need to be able to pass them, but to a huge extent standardized tests are still heavily based on memorization skills.  The problem is they are the most efficient way for universities to screen incoming students.  I would argue that course grades, writing samples, and portfolios will provide a much better view of a students abilities than any standardized test, but admissions councilors can't spend that much time on every single application that comes in, so standardized tests are still used if nothing else to weed people out. I don't want to go on too much about this because I feel to a large extent this is a futile argument, so instead I will switch gears to close out this post.

One thing I did find interesting in our readings was the mention of how different cultures view grades and assessment differently.  A while ago I read an article that talked about the difference between education in North American mainstream culture and in East Asian cultures. The article pointed out pluses and minuses in both cultures and basically concluded that both sides could learn a lot from each other. However, there was one point that really stood out to me in their discussion of achievement and drive within students. The article said that within East Asian cultures the act of "struggling" to learn or achieve something is seen as a positive thing and that a students ability to preserver until they succeed is highly valued.  While in North American school culture struggle is seen as a weakness and students who do not immediately succeed at a task are not praised as highly as those who do.  I'm over simplifying this to an extent, but I think this concept of our culture being one desiring instant gratification is interesting and a real challenge to overcome in any educational setting.

Beware of Librarian!

Introvert vs. Extrovert in the world of libraries

This past weekend I attended Quasi-Con a conference hosted by the University of Michigan's ALA student chapter, and I found myself in a discussion on this very topic.  I had the opportunity to spend the lunch break chatting with Colleen Theisen, an SI grad who now works at the University of Iowa in special collections.   I wanted to talk to her because she and I seem to have very similar career goals, and one thing she pointed out is this issue of introvert vs. extrovert particularly in special collections.  She said that being an extrovert helped her to get her job, but also sometimes makes her director nervous because typically people who work in special collections are not very outgoing.  She said that she thinks this trend may be changing, but that it is a slow process.  We discussed how people coming into the field like ourselves really need to make an effort to reach out to patrons and potential patrons, to show them that they are welcome, and that the librarians won't bite. 

It is interesting because I've never really thought of myself as an extrovert, I'm certainly not the peppy rainbows and puppies Type-A kind of person that one might find in, oh say the SI career services office (they are wonderful people, don't get me wrong, there is just no way I could be that positive all the time).  I guess I always thought of "extroverts" as people who like to go to parties and make friends with total strangers in coffee shops, and that has never been me.  But what I've come to realize is that in the world of academic libraries, and especially special collections libraries I am about as extroverted as it gets.  

Now to be fair, no one would ever accuse me of being shy or quiet. So maybe it is less about being extroverted or introverted and more about self confidence and a feeling comfortable talking to and in front of other people.  I may not have any interest in striking up a conversation with a stranger at a bar or coffee shop, but if someone walks into my place of work I'm more than happy to approach them to find out what they're looking for and whether or not I can help.  I'm self confident and comfortable talking to other people and having done years of theatre I'm also very confident and comfortable in front of large groups of people. 

I know that my personality and my background give me a distinct advantage in this area, but it got me thinking about whether library schools are doing enough to prepare students to go out into the world and be able to confidently express themselves.  This class is a big step in the right direction as far as presentational skills are concerned, but I sometimes wonder if there shouldn't be a class or a half credit class devoted to public speaking.  During the "unconference" morning session at Quasi-Con I was part of a discussion about jobs and interviewing and a couple of people who have been on hiring committees for libraries really emphasized the point that if a job candidate looked great on paper, but was a mess when giving a presentation 9 times of 10 they won't get the job.  

We get plenty of experience giving presentations at SI, but rarely do we get constructive feedback on our preservation style let alone a chance to work on our style and try again.  What happens is the students who are good at presenting do well, and the ones who are less skilled public speakers just struggle through, but aren't given the chance to grow or improve.  Maybe instead of saying that librarians need to be better self promoters, we need to start training them while they are still in school to be better communicators, public speakers, and presenters. 

Week 3: Choose your own adventure

This week we were tasked with choosing out own readings. The criteria we were given was to select 3 readings on or related to the subject of information literacy, in the field of librarianship that we are most interested in. What follows are summaries and commentary on the 3 articles I chose.  I should also not that all 3 of the articles I ended up choosing came from The Journal of Academic Librarianship, this wasn't intentional and I considered articles from several other journals, but these are the 3 that in the end of found to be the most interesting to me in relation to the topic we were given.

Sutten, S. &Knight, L. (2006). Beyond the reading room: integrating primary and secondary sources into the library classroom. The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 32(3), 320-325.

Although this article is nearly 7 years old, it deals directly with issues that are still very present in academic libraries and special collections today. The issues of 1) student awareness of how to find and use primary and secondary sources and their relationship, 2) student awareness of special collections, and 3) finding better ways for libraries and librarians to educate students about special collections and the materials available to them there.

The article proposes that providing students with instruction on primary source materials will increase their ability to analyze and synthesize information, and grow their understanding of the structural framework of information in scholarly works.  Furthermore it can serve as a force to break down barriers and students' perceptions of special collections libraries as places where they do not belong.

The article suggests teaching about primary sources along side teaching of secondary source materials, and showing students the connection between primary and secondary sources.  The methodology for this study broke a teaching session down so that 1/3 was focused on primary sources and 2/3 to secondary sources. When learning about primary sources students were provided with a guide to using special collection and finding sources, examples of primary source documents from special collections, and a testimonial by their professor.  Emphasis is placed on items being shown that are sturdy enough for handling so that students can physically interact with the materials rather than being made to feel as though special collections materials are museum artifacts to be looked at but not touched.  Librarians also made a point to use examples of primary and secondary source materials directly related to the subject of the course that students were currently in, this helped to further connect students to the materials they were being taught about at the library.

I found this article very interesting because getting students into special collections to use primary source materials is still a huge issue for special collection libraries.  Many students do not know the their library even has a special collection library, and those that do often either do not believe they would be welcome there, or are not aware of the kind of materials held in special collection or how they would use them. 

The approaches to teaching about primary sources, secondary source, and special collections discussed in this article are great because they are simple, straightforward, and can be integrated into already existing library instruction courses.  What this means is that implementation is fairly easy, additionally providing students with access to this information does not involve asking students or professors to spend more time attending instructional sessions than they already would, which means that professors were more likely to opt for a session which included discussion of primary source materials than one that did not. 

Furthermore although corporation between instructional librarians and special collections librarians is required for this format to work, no additional technologies, or space is required for this kind of instruction, which means that little to no strain will be put on library resources to implement these instructional changes.   

Little, G. (2012). "A place of connection more than repository": using technology in special collections. The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 38(3) 172-174

Initially I wasn't sure if this article was a good fit for our prompt to find article about information literacy because I was thinking along the lines of instruction of patrons. However, as I read the article it occurred to me that the concept of information literacy for libraries and librarian is a vital first step and easily taken for-granted.  Studies seem to focus on the information literacy of patrons, but libraries and librarians must themselves achieve a certain level of expertise and understanding in the subjects because they can even begin to worry about teaching others.

This article discusses the increasing move towards the use of new and innovative technologies in special collections libraries to allow users to gain better access and connections to the collections. There is a focus on the need for special collections libraries to be able to understand these technologies and identify which ones will best meet their needs and the needs of their users, while also keeping the reality of their budgets and other practical constraints in mind.

For example: some important questions that special collections libraries moving towards digitizing some of their collection need to ask themselves are:

• What kinds of processes, procedures, and workflows are you going to create to digitize material from your collection? 
• What do you need to know about copyright and other rights management or licensing issues before you start digitizing (likely a lot)?
• How concerned are you about metadata or the ability to house and curate sound files and moving images?
• What about long-term preservation? 

In addition to more traditional means of creating awareness and serving patrons, libraries are turning more and more to webinars, screencasts, and all manner of finding aids, collection guides, and exhibits that live in cyberspace and are accessible through the library website.  But while libraries seek out better ways to connect to their patrons they also need to make sure they are educating themselves about how best to utilize the technological advances available to them. 

Shiao-Feng, S. & Huo, J. (2010). Design and development of web-based information literacy tutorials.  The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 36(4), 320-328. 

 This article starts out by providing a definition of information literacy as defined by the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL): “a set of abilities requiring individuals to recognize when information is needed and have the ability to locate, evaluate, and use effectively the needed information.” This article works from the assumption that developing information literacy in university students is vital, but that due to time constraints of library staff and students, possible staffing insufficiency, etc. providing the enough educational opportunities for learning information literacy can be a challenge for libraries. In answer to this problem, this article focuses on the potential for web-based information literacy training. 

By exploring web- based information literacy tutorials in a peer-reviewed database, PRIMO. The ACRL-PRIMO this article attempts to provide suggestions on how best to provide this kind of web-based learning. 

The article ultimately concludes that "a full-scale tutorial cannot only successfully supplement a class but actually supplant a face-to-face class for off campus students or for those who prefer web-based instruction." However, most of the examples given are one off instructional web tutorials, and do not appear to be designed to serve as a supplement to a semester long course. Rather they address what the article calls "need" learning, teaching a specific skill, resource, or technology.  

What I think this article does well is to point out all of the interactive and innovative ways that libraries and educators can use web-based learning to provide students with more options and easy access to learning information literacy skills.  For example the article points out the versatility of web-based learning tools to link to additional resources, allow for re-watching and pausing as need by the student, and easy access without appointment.  

What the article doesn't really discuss is the flip-side of this coin, where web-based instruction may not be enough, or simply may not be in the best interests of the library.  For instance in the first article I discussed bringing students into the library and allowing them to handle special collections materials was a vital part of not only providing them with an understanding of those materials, but developing in them and interest in and curiosity about those materials.   To be fair this may simply be beyond the scope of the article, and the article does not directly attack face-to-face instruction.  

I am personally a fan of web-based tutorials for assisting users, especially when it comes to teaching them how to use specific technologies or databases. I only bring these potential shortcomings because I think it is very important as information professionals not to get too attached to one way of providing instruction to users.  Rather I believe we need to remain dynamic incorporating as many different instructional strategies as we can into our bag of tricks.