Information Literacy in the Curriculum

With a plethora of data filling our heads, one must have an understanding of the sources of information, the manipulation of information, and the gathering and use of information in this digital age. Our students must learn to evaluate information critically to become responsible citizens and contributors to the knowledge economy. What does this mean to educators in practical terms?

The core subject areas with which we grew up in our schooling in the twentieth century are no longer adequate for 21st century students. Thus, we hear the touting of Makerspaces and flipped classrooms for encouraging students to propel their own learning and develop their own knowledge. Yet, there is also murmuring about  how we are raising children on the Internet, but we are not teaching them how to use it properly. There are concerns about teens and cell phone use. There are discussions about the implications of social media related to bullying and self-esteem. There is talk of "fake facts" and the "lying media." Concerns about how we learn, our sources of information, and our evaluation of it are non-stop.

With all this in mind, I propose that students should have complete semester classes in Information Literacy. I will return to this idea many time in this blog. BUT, stand-alone classes in information literacy are not likely to pervade American education any time soon. So, we must consider alternate ways to teach our young people how people generate and organize information. Information literacy lessons must be tied into our core subject areas.

I began as an annoying fly on the wall of the high school where I have now been employed for six years. I'd fly in and out of rows in our library's computer lab, looking over students' shoulders.  I noted how students were researching and what online tools they used for sharing information they found. Soon I would land. I'd inquire about the kids' assignments, sometimes making unwelcome suggestions. ("Go away lady, I'd just like to get this done!") I'd seek out teachers to ask more questions. Some grudgingly responded and seemed to wonder why the librarian was so nosy. Many others responded with enthusiasm, perhaps eager to size up the new librarian, perhaps just friendly enough to humor me.

I soon began making suggestions to teachers. "Did you know that this database would help your
students with this lesson?" I began proactively helping.  "I saw your kids struggling to find information on that subject so I ordered a book on it. Within months, I targeted a freshman research project for collaboration. Before my high school work, I wrote a book on collaboration among cultural heritage institutions and was eager to transfer this approach to a school setting. I was lucky to find true partners among the grade 9 English teachers and together we took an extant lesson to develop our first school Assured Learning Experience in information literacy.

I have set up five such lessons/projects to date. My posts over the next several weeks will discuss these, how they were implemented collaboratively, and how they influence teen learning.  Information literacy can become embedded in education and all students, regardless of future plans and interests, will benefit in the long term from exposure to its concepts.

The Compassion Economy

The New Year is always a good time for reflection on yourself and the world around you. I have been thinking a lot over the past few years about my work, its meaning to me, to those around me, and to the world. Today I address the role of, and try to assign new meaning to, being a librarian, archivist, or museum professional in 2016.

Information and cultural heritage professionals have been grappling for about a decade now over what it means to be part of the following:

• the knowledge economy
• the information economy
• the creative economy (See bottom of page for definitions of each)

I propose that there is another economic role for professionals in our line of work. We are part of the "compassion economy." My idea of this economy is one in which we aim to help others with the effect of helping ourselves. (I was struck by a recent TED radio hour talk that dovetails nicely with this idea.)

As a fourth year teacher-librarian in a public high school, who is also working to attain a post-grad degree in education, I have recently learned a lot about the process of learning. There are few jobs that I know of that require the kind of compassion that one must muster to be surrounded by 1200 teenage students day in and out. We deal with hormones, insecurities, family problems, socio-economic issues, and feelings of confinement with a burgeoning desire for adult freedom. ("I can do whatever I want! I'm 18 now you know!!) As a librarian, I do not usually assign grades. I (mostly) do not have a set curriculum to teach. My job centers around compassion and I would like to suggest that if you are a librarian of any sort, an archivist, or if you work in a museum, your job centers around this too.

Not the school where I teach, but a nice one nonetheless

We live in a time when information is exploding. As information professionals, we help others gather the data they need in this information economy. We have knowledge about how to get more knowledge, and we have collections at our disposal to help us impart that knowledge to others. These same collections help young entrepreneurs change our world in creative ways, taking old ideas and giving them new life. Furthermore, our newly developed understanding of the need to supply makerspaces for patrons and museum-goers, and our resolve to design exhibits and programs that encourage questioning, relate to the role we play in the creative economy. Whereas in the past we cared for collections, steered users to catalogs, and left them taking away what they would, today we encourage discussion right in our institutions. We look for feedback on social media. We want our patrons to be part of our institutional family and not merely visitors to our professional worlds.

Despite all this, I have begun thinking that we librarians, archivists, and curators can see ourselves as a hub for compassion above and beyond all else.

• We give people the learning tools that they need to make the world a better place (economically and socially) - the knowledge and know-how.
• We can also give people the emotional tools they need to make the world a better place - the can-do attitude and sense of place and belonging necessary for personal and professional betterment.
• We are part of an individual's support team, helping them grow, assisting them in numerous ways to help them reach their full potential.

Students work in our library Makerspace

But we do this job not for  purely altruistic reasons as the moniker "compassion economy" might suggest. Our work is also self-seeking. Museums, libraries, and archives make this world a better place because of our collections, know-how, and ability to reflect the success and failures of our past. Society needs to have access to these things so that humanity may pick itself up by its boot straps, as it were, and propel itself to greater things. We understand that the intellectually designed artifacts created by human beings are improved from diversity and our sensitivity to it. Understanding of individual achievement leads members of civilization to build on the work of others. As professionals, by supporting creation and by showing "compassion" for all people who have potential to build upon old ideas, librarians, archivists, and museum professionals are helping to build the future.

***

For the knowledge economy See:  (http://web.stanford.edu/group/song/papers/powell_snellman.pdf)

For the information economy see (http://www.asis.org/Bulletin/Dec-94/branscom.html)

For the creative economy see the always very interesting Richard Florida http://www.huffingtonpost.com/richard-florida/creativity-is-the-new-eco_b_1608363.html

See also:

Debjani Kanjilal, Azam M. Bejou & David Bejou. (2012). “Compassion: The Missing Link in Economics and Management.” Journal of Relationship Marketing.

TED Radio Hour.  Just a Little Nicer. NPR.  (podcast) December 4, 2015.

Wuthnow, Robert. (1991) Acts of Compassion: Caring for Others and Helping Ourselves. NJ: Princeton University Press.

Walking the Path of Learning

"Coach?" I asked as he was walking off the tennis court. "How is my daughter doing at this?"

After some nice words, coach told me that he is using my daughter's nine years of dance experience to explain how to properly hit a tennis ball. "You may have heard me," he said. She can use the grace she has gained from ballet to do that four stage swing I'm showing them. It will help her tremendously. I aim to show the students that all the sports activities they've done in the past relate." I was tremendously impressed with his wisdom and that got me thinking about how different life experiences relate and should be used to keep building wisdom, no matter what the subject.

1. When we understand that we can relate new experiences to old, we achieve a higher form of learning that has the potential to lead to remarkable things. This can mean advanced thinking (or just a better game of tennis.)

Earlier this week, I visited my school office after a week away. There was a message from a former teacher who asked if I would like some old yearbooks and other items for our new school archives. I returned her call and said that I would certainly love to take the historical items off her hands. What we can't use in our archives, I can help find an appropriate home in the community. "Please do tell your friends that we are seeking a wide-variety of items that have historical merit to tell our school story. All of these materials relate and can help build our historical collection."

2. When we understand that our experiences relate to those of others, we can build great things together, strengthen communities, and advance our knowledge of the world around us as a group.

My daughter is doing a big clean up of her room as a summer goal. She and I are both big collectors of books. As a tween, she is ready to clear out some of her things. I ordered her a new grown-up bookshelf. "Mom, some of these things I don't want, but there are some things that I don't read anymore that I do want." She's read them, has strong fond memories of them, and recognizes that they are special to her. They are her foundation books - ones that turned on her love for reading. I encouraged her to store them and to get rid of those that don't have meaning to her.

3. When we understand how we learn, the knowledge we have accumulated and how we gained it can take on a special meaning all its own.

It is important to acknowledge our own unique learning experiences and to appreciate the path we took to develop our expertise in any given area. As an information specialist, I encourage people to recognize the gathering and building of the information in our brains. I encourage people to recognize the role that others have played in their understanding of themselves. The experience of learning is as important as the knowledge we gain. The experience allows us to piece everything together so when we travel new learning paths, we can look back and better decide how to move on.

A Fork in the Road: A Career Path is Not a Straight Line

You may (or may not) have noticed that I've been quiet on the blogosphere this past week and relatively quiet on Twitter. I've hit a fork in the road that I am now ready to reveal.

It was quite interesting when a few weeks ago I was asked to chair a panel at the New England Archivists Autumn meeting on alternate career paths for archivists. I've accepted the role for the conference, but I'm not sure if it will come to full fruition...in any case, at the time I was asked, I had just accepted a job as a high school information specialist / librarian. Strange roll for an archivist / former public librarian? Indeed, NOT!

With a strong focus on archives helping to build communities, this new position gives me a unique opportunity to help build a sense of place from the inside out. I plan to make the library a community oriented space that reaches out to the rest of our town and shows the value of strong cultural institutions and libraries to boost culture and education. One of my goals in this library is to build a high school archives from scratch and to explain the difference between primary and secondary sources and show how each can help boost our identity while supporting our knowledge of the world around us.

Throughout my career, I have been working hard to show the value of librarians, archivists, and museum professionals working together to promote the work that we do. I think that I am now in a unique position to tie the work of cultural heritage and information professionals to education. Sharing my work with teachers will help them use information sources to better support their curricula. Learning about their needs will better help me teach the value of libraries, archives and museums. I look forward to sharing a love for learning and information with young adults. While I plan to continue consulting, writing, and public speaking in my spare time, I look forward to truly being part of building community identity from the inside out; instead of continually boosting community as a consultant from the outside in. After 12 years as a full-time consultant, I look forward to being part of a community and helping to build it, rather than giving some direction and leaving others behind to follow through (or not.)

I am lucky to have a unique opportunity to re-design the role of the library while building upon what are already very strong traditional library services in this high school setting. With this new path for me is coming new library carpeting. I've spent the past week organizing a method for boxing 18,000 books so that new carpeting can be installed in our beautiful space. All the books have been moved. Those consulting / space planning skills have already come in handy! In fact, I am taking pictures of the moving and installation process and these will be the first addition / collection in our school archives.

I look forward to continuing to share my adventures in cultural heritage with you and hope to have some new ideas to add to the dialogue on the ArchivesInfo blog. Stay tuned for blog posts about my new exhibit on Mind Mapping to build communities, Steampunk in the Archives World, using avatars to make connections to kids, using social media for education, and much, much more!

The Heart of the Community. The Library.

The library has always been the heart of my community and the grounding place for my sense of self. This is its past and its potential for the future.

As a child, my mother brought me to the library once or twice a week. We did not have a large free library in our "hamlet" and were required to pay for membership at the larger town libraries, which were free to residents of areas outlying my own. (I never quite understood the geographical and legal limitations of  the hamlet, but I don't think that matters. All I know is that our taxes did not go toward library services and we paid at the library for our cards.)  Mom taught me that a library was something worth paying for, directly if necessary. We were lucky that we could afford the fee and that we didn't have to travel too far get there. The library was a destination. It was a building filled with knowledge and a place where my imagination could run wild. I could borrow books, and posters, and records and think of them as my own for a short while because I was part of a special community of library patrons.

The right to be part of a "special" community that provides a physical space where one can have a figurative key to a bigger world heightens empathy. The library allowed me to see and explore commonalities among diverse peoples all over the world, so I could better understand my own place and those of others. I believe everyone should have free access to such a place.

I have a memory of sitting in my elementary school library. Mom was meeting with my teacher and I was lovingly parked in front of a display of Dr. Seuss books. The round carousel in the middle of the room held "Green Eggs and Ham," "The Cat in the Hat," "One Fish Two Fish..." Mom was away  long enough for me to read every single book on exhibit. I had such a feeling of accomplishment. I felt warm and cozy inside and always identified that space as a piece of me; it was a place from which I took a memory that was partly responsible for making me an enthusiastic reader.

Reading library books gave me a safe way to explore who I am. It gave me confidence to define my personal identity and acknowledge my uniqueness.

In college, I spent a lot of time at the library.  The building was old. The spaces with my favorite collections were dark. The seating was not comfortable. It didn't matter to me at the time. The library was an old friend - a relative of my home town library. I went there not only for the books that I needed, but also for its welcoming arms that allowed me to feel the pulse of my education and to feel "home." (Some people seek familiar food when in a foreign place. I seek the familiarity of a library.) Computers at the library became a new key to my community. The computers allowed me easier access to the knowledge and creativity embodied in my favorite building on campus.

The realization that I could develop my brain as others had done in that building helped me better understand what education could do for me.

Libraries are changing. They began their biggest change in 100 years during my time in college. Computers brought into libraries were yet to reach very far out when I was an undergraduate student. Few people had them in their homes. There was little information available on them.  Things are so different today, two decades later, that many people feel we don't need libraries anymore. They believe that so much information is available through computers in our homes and in our pockets that libraries are obsolete. I am a big Internet user. I spend much of my day getting my information from remote machines and connecting to other people and worlds through them but I still actively use the library. Libraries have never just been about the books or even the information they provide.

Libraries give knowledge some tangible structure, providing a contained place and some authority to learn to evaluate information. Libraries attach local support and familiarity to large bodies of human ideas that are often different from our own.

The library in the Town in which I settled as an adult has provided me with reading material and a comforting place to do my writing and research. As a young mother, it was a haven where I could meet with other young mothers finding their way. It allowed me to hand my daughter a key to knowledge and assisted me with helping to instill a love of learning and curiosity. My library has remote access to reading materials and databases. It provides a place for local artists to display works, for community groups to meet, for people to discuss big ideas in a neutral space.  My town has even been working for the past few years to build an outdoor gathering area near our library. There is a gazebo with plans to have outdoor concerts. They will even be putting in a skate pond. My fellow townspeople seem to feel as I do - that the library is our local heart that can serve as a grounding point for our shared activities, the growth of ideas, and the building of a better future.

A library gives us a heightened sense of place that embodies civic pride. It allows us to discover, articulate and even show off who we are and who we want to be.

A library building and the human support within is a monument to civilization. It shows us all bound together with our dreams and our potential represented in one building. That is where libraries stand in my opinion. That is where they will always stand - reminding us from where we came while pointing us toward where we are going. Libraries will change, but they always have the potential to be the heart of every small community and a thread from one community to the next.