Redhaired Future Librarian

A Teen Comments on the Library

One of the things I want to study more is the interaction between kids and the libraries at their schools. I have some suspicions that this relationship can be flawed, but I need to observe more places. I don’t have enough data yet. But I have suspicions that in some places, teens are inadvertently made to feel unwelcome at their libraries.

Here is the comment of a library user: “Hmmm… I have a stupid geography assignment on Bali dued soon… T_T really - why Bali? I really hate going online - most, if not all, of the information online is bogus! And libraries - i don’t do libraries! I hate how its all quiet.. the atmosphere in most libraries feel weird =/ (maybe i’m just weird haha) I HATE THE LIBRARIANS! rude and obnoxious bitches! Gosh i swear they sit there on their fat asses talking on the DAMN phone!! When you need their bloody service they give you the biggest dirty! Man i’d love punch them in the face x_X they all deserve black eyes!” (Found via The Annoyed Librarian) (I agree with Linnypooh– why Bali, except that it’s a big vacation spot for Australians.) It’s not clear if Linnypooh is including her school library in the dismissal, but it is clear that her information need is not being met. (I’m very glad she’s skeptical of online content, though.)

I’m going to start looking for more comments about libraries and librarians from kids and teens. It seems like Linnypooh’s observations fit in with some of the things I have already observed. One of the things that bothers me is that here is a person with an information need, and she feels excluded in the library.

At the beginning of my library school adventure, I read a great article in VOYA about what kind of library service makes teens comfortable with a library. It’s different than what adults want. (For the life of me, I can’t find it, but I will post the citation as soon as I find it.) The most important thing was that teens want to be ACKNOWLEDGED as humans and treated as if their information needs are important. A slight that an adult might brush off can really hurt a teen. I remember being a teen. I was probably more thin-skinned than most, but even the toughest kids were vulnerable sometimes.

Commenting

John at Library Clips posted a link to CoComment, a way to track your comments on other sites. So, I signed up. There is a box on my sidebar that might eventually get filled with comments. I’ve been using Furl to track my comments, but that’s not the intent of Furl. I hope this works better. It might be a good start as far as bringing conversation back to blogging.

Blogs and Discourse

Are blogs really good for two-way communication? I’m starting to suspect no.

I belong to a forum of people who have only one thing in common. We represent a wide range of political beliefs, religious beliefs, ethnicities, and gender identities. Somehow, on this forum, we are able to have real discussions, including disagreements. People still generally respect each other while engaging in dialogue.

I used to blog a long time ago, when Blogger was still brand new. It seems that people were willing to disagree with each other, while respecting each other’s rights to have an opinion. Two things changed the whole environment. The 2000 election and September 11 and its aftermath. (Some might argue the Iraq invasion, but the shift started long before that, I believe.) I quit blogging a few months after September 11 because of the hostile atmosphere.

I don’t see discourse any more in blogs. With a few exceptions, the blogs I have come across tend to have commenters who always agree with the main post. Commenters who do not agree are ignored, dismissed, or treated as if they’re attacking the original poster. (Ignored is more common.) That’s if a person who disagrees even bothers to post a comment. There seems to be an intolerance for people with different opinions and priorities.

Is it the medium that leads to this kind of environment? Much like how Power Point is often blamed for poor presentations? Or is it people who like to pontificate and be agreed with are drawn to blogging? Or am I altogether wrong?

How does this seeming lack of tolerance for differing opinions and priorities translate to real-life librarian work? Again, how does it represent our profession? If a non-librarian were to come across some of our posts, what would he or she think of librarians? Librarians are, of course, people, entitled to their own opinions. But we also represent a profession, one that people are increasingly finding to be irrelevant (whether true or not, the perception matters.) If we are presenting an image that makes some people uncomfortable with “asking a librarian,” what does that do to us?

Can blogs be used for true two-way communication?

Comments

By the way, I just realized that comments are for logged in users only and registration is disabled and I can’t figure out how to get them right again. I don’t mean to shut down conversation! I’m trying to figure out exactly where it is that I can allow user self-registration. (Unfortunately, because of spammers, I can’t totally open comments– since I loathe captchas, they are not an option for me.)

Edited: I found it. It was under general, rather than discussion, in options. For now, I have enabled people to comment without registering, but commenters must have at least one approved comment before comments will appear automatically. At least, that’s how I hope it will work!

LISRadio: Jim Nelson

This week’s LISRadio showcase audio file is an interview with history author James Nelson, who happens to be a friend of the interviewer, Professor Seavey. The Professor interviewed Mr. Nelson during the ALA Annual conference in New Orleans. He had an interesting take on the difference between history writing and fiction writing. It sounds like they had a lot of fun together!

21st Century Librarian

Meredith Farkas of Information Wants to be Free posts an interesting follow-up to her previous post Skills for the 21st Century Librarian.

Librarian education is in such a state of flux right now that it’s hard to identify which problems in education are endemic and which are caused by the rapid changes that we’ve seen recently. Library schools can certainly do more to integrate technology into classes, though. I’m not really in favor of stand-alone html (or insert your favorite technological hobby-horse here) classes, but I am in favor of having students develop a website throughout their library school education that can act as a portfolio and depository. I’m in favor of reference classes having students work a semester for the Internet Public Library or similar digital reference source. I’m in favor of integrating something like a wiki into a library history class. I do not want to see more stand-alone classes built around specific technologies, because technologies change. Technology should be built in in a fluid manner. And some schools are trying. In the two and a half years I have been attending my school, we’ve experimented with four different class management systems and we’ve used blogs and wikis. We’ve also launched a series of podcasts discussing both integration of technology in education and just plain reading. We’ve used podcasts in distance classes. This is all new, and in some ways, we’re still fumbling along. But there are library educators who are trying to get it right.

I would argue that there are places where a low-tech approach is appropriate. Several people have complained about learning how to catalog using a paper copy of a MARC record. I believe this is a good thing for several reasons. First, all libraries don’t use the same cataloging software. That’s not as important as the second reason, which is that it gives a big picture view of the MARC record and has the tactile hand-brain connection going for it as well. The corrected records can be useful to look over because you will start to see patterns in your mistakes. (Note, I am pro-cataloging and pro-MARC, so this comes from that viewpoint.) When I started cataloging at my work, I had my corrected records by me so I could make sure I didn’t keep making the same mistake. Doing cataloging on a computer from the beginning doesn’t give you that record of corrected mistakes.

I supposed I’ve been fortunate in library school because I’ve been in the school librarian program. There has been a technological component in almost every class I’ve taken. My classmates will not enter a school completely unprepared. In fact, I think the biggest shocks are going to be a step-back in technology and the strict filtering most school districts use.

I’m also lucky because, really, our faculty is interested in such a variety of topics. Some students are not happy about the theory-heavy courses, but really, there is a justification for so much theory. Every library is different. If a new librarian has a good grounding in theory (and goes to work at a library where such theory is considered), the details that are unique to the new library will come quickly.
Like Meredith and Simon Chamberlain point out, though, some of the most important skills a 21st librarian needs cannot be taught. Especially, embracing change and a willingness to engage in lifelong learning are personal qualities that one either possesses or does not. While it may be possible to educate librarians out of ingrained tendencies to resist change, it may perhaps be better for library schools to attempt to recruit students who already have positive attitudes towards change, and towards continued professional growth and learning. (Valis).

At the same time, library schools are actively recruiting future faculty who have the same qualities. I’m very excited to see how my current classmates turn out as professors.

I’m running out of time here, so this part will be even hastier than the rest of the post. One thing I don’t want to see is the books part of LIS shoved aside. People still read books. There are still things that need to be examined when it comes to good old fashioned off-line reading material. Are we providing the best way for people to find what they want? Old-fashioned, face-to-face reader’s advisory, including familiarity with the collection, is still important. Old-fashioned subject headings (even on fiction!) are still important.

Never Trust a Librarian Over 30

Is librarianship becoming ageist? Has it always been ageist? I’ve always been a library customer, but I’ve been pretty ignorant of what goes in behind the scene. However, I read about a competition in the UK to find bright young librarians under 30 and the ALA’s Emerging Leaders “initiative”*, I begin to wonder what is going on. Maybe if I were in the desired age group, I might not be bothered by the messages these things send. Are there other careers that openly reward people for waiting to be born? I know age discrimination is rampant in Hollywood, but I really haven’t heard of other careers where being young is openly rewarded or sought after. (I’m excluding the military here.)

I’m 34. I’m beginning a second career. I would like to think I have a good 31 years left in me. (I hope I make good enough retirement investments that I can move out gracefully at 65.) Yet librarianship is already trying to make me feel old and dried up and useless. The 16 years of experience I have in another career and in life is not the least bit valuable. I’m not unique in my class, though. Quite a few of us are in our 30s or older.

I detest ageism. I especially detest our society’s obsessive focus on youth. The poisonous 60s ideology of “never trust anyone over 30″ still pervades how we view people. I’m not sure how being born after the magic cut-off year of 1976 makes people brighter and more motivated (unless it’s more of the same Dear Abby nonsense about how Gen X-ers are lazy, unmotivated slackers.) Being old doesn’t keep me from being interested in the same things the “youngsters” are interested in, either. Maybe I don’t have enough tattoos and piercings to be alternative, but I care about the same things they do, when it comes to librarianship.

I’m not the only one who feels this way. I’m also not the only one who is in such a small demographic that we don’t really have any say in this kind of thing. It’s so strange to go from being too young, because everyone important is older than us, to being too old, because everyone important is younger than us.

*I was alerted by a post on Off the Mark that the new requirements for the Emerging Leaders deal are: 2) Young (under 35 years) or new librarians of any age with fewer than 5 years post-MLS experience. So, that’s good.  Maybe it was already that way when I last visited.  If so, I’m sorry.

IMLS Grant

My school just received a new grant to fund the education of future library school faculty. The responses I’ve seen so far are… not exactly a wakeup call… but further signs of a rift between practitioners and academics. I noticed the same rift at the ALA session on teaching cataloging to school librarians.

Librarianship has more going on than what appears on the surface. There are a lot of fascinating questions that can be answered and are being answered by current LIS researchers. It’s true that some research can be found lacking, but the solution to that is to recruit better potential researchers, not to denigrate our profession. Not to decide that library school is just vo-tech and there’s nothing more to learn about the field. It will be inevitable that some people will graduate library school feeling that they haven’t learned anything. There will be others who feel like they just bought a piece of paper that expands their career horizons. That’s inevitable in any field. But we don’t all have to have that attitude.

I know that I need to shore myself up to face contempt from both practicing librarians and from other academics who look down at librarianship much the same way some of our own practitioners do. It’s important to look at these questions, though. If we don’t see ourselves as a profession, with value, worth studying, how on earth can we expect others to value us?

ALA2006: Teaching Cataloging to School Librarians

Finally, my first ALA write-up!  This session was a lot more frustrating to describe than I expected it to be.

Session: Teaching Cataloging to School Library Media Specialists
Education of Library Media Specialists Section
25 June 2006
Room 243, Morial Convention Center, New Orleans

Continue reading ALA2006: Teaching Cataloging to School Librarians…

Write-Up Coming Soon

I’m heading out camping with the family tonight, but if we get home early enough tomorrow, I hope to finish my write-up of the ALA session “Teaching Cataloging to School Library Media Specialists.”