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Tuesday, October 26th, 2010I mentioned in my most recent post that our VPAA (Vice President of Academic Affairs) recently gave me the green light to form an information literacy committee chaired by myself and made up of faculty representatives from each of the six academic Schools and a representative from Academic Computing. It took me a while to [...]
Management, upward mobility and sticking
Tuesday, October 19th, 2010I was really excited when I saw the title of In the Library With the Lead Pipe’s post “Rising through the Ranks: On Upward Mobility in Librarianship” from last month. They always provide a comprehensive and thoughtful treatment of the issues they choose to write about. And this is an issue I think about quite [...]
Inspiring stuff to read, Take 2
Tuesday, September 7th, 2010I was thinking about writing a post reflecting on recent posts about the myth of the graying of the profession (and the coming librarian shortage) and Peter Brantley’s post about involving young’uns in discussing the future of libraries, but Colleen Harris beat me to the punch. And because she really knows how to tell-it-like-it-is, I [...]
What’s the deal, JSTOR?
Tuesday, August 24th, 2010I’ve written some posts in the past about vendors that have done some pretty slimy things in the name of making a profit. At least that makes sense to me. That’s their model — they’re profit-driven. Then there’s JSTOR. JSTOR is not an EBSCO or an Elsevier. JSTOR is a non-profit. JSTOR is a “service [...]
Immersion reflections
Tuesday, August 3rd, 2010Wow, what can I say about Immersion? First of all, you have to be there to really understand what a profound experience it is. My in-laws were visiting when I got back from Immersion and I found it very difficult to explain the experience. What I told them is that it was an intensive program [...]
Numbers vs. meaning
Wednesday, July 21st, 2010Forgive this less-than-well-thought-out post. I’ve been thinking a lot about assessment lately and the librarianly love of numbers in assessment, and I’m a troubled by the way that some academic libraries tend to measure how well they are supporting the academic mission of the institution. Librarians keep a lot of statistics and measure a lot [...]
Computers in Libraries Recap: Day 2
Thursday, April 15th, 2010Day 2 was just as full and wonderful as Day 1. I continued my mostly staying offline during the conference and I think it really helped me to keep focused on what was going on in front of me. While I do like Twitter in a lot of ways and think it’s great for conferences, [...]
Baby steps in promoting information literacy
Sunday, March 28th, 2010In the Fall, I wrote a post about my own thoughts on who should teach information literacy in academic libraries. In theory, I don’t care who teaches information literacy as long as it’s taught by someone (faculty member, librarian, etc.). In practice, I still struggle with this in my own mind, mainly because of how [...]
Who should teach library instruction?
Thursday, October 1st, 2009Don’t worry, Walt, I won’t apologize for being away and I won’t promise that I’m going to post more often (though I have a lot of ideas for posts, something has been preventing me from getting them out of my head and onto the screen). Wayne Bivens-Tatum recently wrote a very interesting post questioning who [...]
Didn’t know I needed to be a salesperson
Friday, April 10th, 2009Yes, I knew I’d have to teach people how to use email. And unjam printers. And help people use copiers. But I don’t think I ever understood in library school how important sales and marketing would be to the success of our profession. Within a month of starting work as the Distance Learning Librarian at [...]
Making progress on library instruction
Wednesday, January 7th, 2009Last April, I started in my new position as Head of Instructional Initiatives, though for the first four months, I was also still doing the job of Distance Learning Librarian. Since taking this on at the end of July as my only job, it’s been a wild ride. I took a lot of risks, tried [...]
Technology education and the “real world”
Monday, December 15th, 2008I just love that feeling of serendipity when I find that people are thinking about the same things I am at the same time. Karin Dalziel made an impassioned case for every librarian to learn how to program. Dorothea Salo responded to it and described how she thinks technology should be taught in library school. [...]
Validation of my crackpot teaching ideas
Thursday, December 11th, 2008Last week, my students in the Web 2.0 and Social Networking class I teach (at San Jose State) presented their fantastic proposals (via web conference) for implementing a specific social tool at a specific type of library. I was so impressed with their creativity and professionalism. Each of them made a very good case for [...]
Library school survey results
Saturday, September 27th, 2008A few weeks ago, I posted a survey to Survey Monkey to get people’s views about their library school education and what they think should be taught in library school that isn’t (or wasn’t when they were in school). The 91 responses I got were really interesting and I wanted to post them so everyone [...]
Consistency or effectiveness in instruction and assessment
Sunday, September 7th, 2008The part of my still new-ish job that causes my the most worry is assessment. I’d hoped to have time this summer to do some serious research on information literacy assessment and get some good ideas for how to best assess library instruction this Fall. However, I got too busy with other, more pressing, tasks [...]
Reinventing the Rook Tour
Monday, August 25th, 2008Last week was one of the most stressful, but also most satisfying, weeks I’ve had at work. That week, we did our “rook tours” which are orientations to the library for the new Freshmen entering the Corps of Cadets (our school’s population is around 50% ROTC). For three days a week before classes start, we [...]
The best laid plans of mice and Meredith
Tuesday, August 5th, 2008It’s amazing how I manage to delude myself year after year. Every spring I make a list of projects I want to get done in the summer when I “have more time.” And every year, I barely get through any of them. This year I was really optimistic about what I could accomplish and I’m [...]
Loex 2008 goes online!
Monday, April 28th, 2008I got this email about LOEX 2008 Encore from Catherine Pellegrino at Saint Mary’s College and wanted to spread the word: The annual LOEX conference is trying something new as an experiment this year: three of their breakout sessions will be presented as live, interactive webcasts a few weeks after the conference: http://www.loexconference.org/2008/virtualsessions.htm I think [...]
Chutes and ladders
Wednesday, March 19th, 2008In spite of the fact that I’ve had one of those all-day sinus headaches, I’m walking on a cloud. Starting April 1, I’m going to be the Head of Instructional Initiatives here at Norwich, which means that I will lead and coordinate all instruction (and most assessment) work at the library. I’m also going to [...]
Building 21st century librarians AND libraries
Sunday, March 9th, 2008There were three recent posts that got me thinking a lot about the growing necessity to have tech-savvy people in public services positions. The first was Dorothea Salo’s post about how many librarians outside of Systems see learning about (or doing anything with) technology as being something outside of their sphere of responsibility. The second [...]
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