Reflection on Reading, 27 March

This week, we read (links require U of M log in):

• “The Embedded Librarian Online or Face-to-Face: American University’s Experiences” by Matos, Matsuoka-Motley, and Mayer
• “Effective Teaching: Examples in History, Mathematics, and Science” from How People Learn
• “Online Webinars! Interactive Learning Where Our Users Are: The Future of Embedded Librarianship” by Montgomery

These readings concerned embedded librarianship, subject-based teaching methods, and the virtues of webinars.

The most interesting discussion was that of what makes embedded librarianship different from a librarian that acts as a liaison to a particular department from within the library. The article touched on issues of physical proximity, casual contact with students and faculty, and using virtual tools to bridge the physical gap if the librarian can't be physically within the department. All of this made me think about SI's own librarian and my experiences (or lack thereof) with her. I haven't gone to her for help yet - I'm one of those frustrating patrons that asks the normal reference staff - and I don't know if that would change if I just ran into her more or felt that she was more accessible. But I also remembered hearing that the emails she sends announcing her office hours tend to generate a lot of emailed reference questions. It might be that, in the case of Information Science, it is better to be virtually available than physically nearby. 

The chapter in How People Learn discussed the necessity for teachers to have both knowledge of the subject they teach and pedagogical knowledge, which in this context is an argument for embedded librarians and subject specialists who are both knowledgeable in their area and in librarianship. This is another example of librarians who don't fit into the concept of librarian-as-support-staff. If it's true that subject knowledge is not enough on its own to make a good teacher, then it should be equally true that in order to make the best use of the library, it is necessary to have someone who can combine knowledge of the subject area with knowledge of information service. I should probably remember that next time I have a library-related reference question. 

The last article was a short one extolling webinars as "the future of embedded librarianship." I don't know how true that is, since "webinar" is not the sexiest of terms and might not appeal too much to college students. But the author is right in saying that virtual reference and instruction are where librarianship, especially, I think, academic librarianship is headed.
I also think that continuing to ask ourselves how we can handle the transition to this new internet thing is not a constructive way to approach the topic. Librarians are making this way too complicated, and they're setting themselves apart from their students in the process. Many college students are not new to the internet. We have been online since we were little kids - it's as natural to us as the "real" world is. By continuing to treat the internet like some new unexplored frontier, you're dating yourselves and undermining your own credibility. All you really have to do is use the internet to present information in a way that feels natural and familiar. Trust your instincts.
Also, keep in mind that for many new college students, the internet is not the unfamiliar environment - the library is. By making as many of your resources virtual as you can, you're removing some of the cognitive barriers that prevent students from using the library. You're making it more familiar, not less.

- K

Reflection on Class, 20 March

Presenting a workshop during our last class was a strange experiment. In terms of tone, it felt a lot like a normal student-led discussion. Where it differed, though, was in terms of the content and each participant's relationship to it. My partner and I were in a position of teaching, and the rest of the group was in a position of learning (during our turn, at least). What was strange about that, though, was that I didn't feel that I had the authority to be teaching our topic. I understand that this was an exercise in the methods of conducting a workshop, but it still made me wonder about how the responsibilities of presenting a workshop compare with the responsibilities of teaching in a classroom setting.
There are obvious ways in which classroom teaching is different from library-based workshops. Workshops are usually intended for patrons older than grade school-age, for one thing. For another thing, they're not mandatory. Patrons attend workshops because they want to for whatever reason, be it to learn a skill, improve their careers (or begin them), or just because they want to learn something new. But they don't have to attend, and they don't have to stay if they do come. So it is important to present a workshop that is interesting more so than it is important to teach an interesting class. And it might be that workshops and classes have to be interesting in different ways. Entertaining vs interesting, maybe? I'm reminded of the spinach sundae analogy, but perhaps the opposite - fruit sorbet? Tasty and good for you? That's the goal for any teacher, of course, but most teachers don't have to worry too much about their students leaving in the middle of class if they miss the mark.
A lot of what it means to present a good workshop probably depends on the audience. A room full of working parents eager to get home and have dinner with their children may be similar in some ways to a room full of jaded graduate students who feel there are better uses for their time, but the two groups will probably respond well to different techniques. The sophistication of instruction may vary depending on the group, as well. The more they know about a topic, the more the presenter needs to know in order to make the workshop worth everyone's time.
That brings me back to my main concern for this and future workshops: am I qualified? My partner and I tried, for this workshop, to base everything we said on materials from reputable sources, but at some times it still felt like preaching to the choir. Obviously, if you're presenting a topic on which you aren't an expert, it is important to do enough research to at least be competent. That only goes so far, though. An expert is an expert because they have done the work required to achieve mastery of a subject, and that can't happen in a night-before crash course. Anyway, people can tell when you don't know what you're talking about or when you haven't prepared enough. But what if the topic is important - patrons have been requesting it or the library feels that it must address the topic - and you can't access a real expert? I wouldn't be surprised to learn that this situation occurs often in small or very under-funded libraries. I guess you just have to make do, then.
It has been great to learn and think about this aspect of librarianship, since I'm sure many of us will have to come up with answers to all of these questions before too long.

- K

Reflection on Class, 13 March

In last week's class, we discussed the ALA Code of Ethics. The discussion went somewhat differently than I had expected; another course I have taken featured a discussion of the Code, but that discussion didn't go much deeper than to apply the Code to various realistic scenarios in order to judge the best response. That's completely valid, of course, and a good way to teach what librarians are expected to do by many others in the profession. But I enjoyed the fact that we had a less clean and clear-cut conversation this time.
As some of my classmates have pointed out, a discussion about that ALA Code of Ethics should take into account that it is not binding. You can't be disbarred from librarianship for allowing a book to be banned. The ramifications for breaching the Code are social and informal, though they still may have a negative impact on a librarian's career or social life. Some librarians may chafe at that - why should they be held by a set of ideals that isn't even imposed by their profession itself, but by a particular organization within that profession? You could say that the concept of librarianship encompasses certain ideals (intellectual freedom, access to information, public service), but that's difficult to argue. When I Google "librarian definition", I get: a person, typically with a degree in library science, who administers or assists in a library. The same process with "library" gives me: a building or room containing collections of books, periodicals, and sometimes films and recorded music for people to read, borrow, or refer to. What in those definitions leads to valuing the protection of users' privacy? The Code of Ethics is a result, then, of years of the collection of individual perspectives on what it means to be a librarian.
For the record, I personally do believe in the ideals set forth in the Code, and I think that they are an excellent set of guidelines for information professionals. But I'm also a person who already believes that censorship, withholding information, and violation of privacy are morally reprehensible in most cases. If faced with a patron who wants to challenge a book or just wants me to pull it from the shelf, I like to think that I would fight against it regardless of the situation. But as we heard in class, not everyone agrees with me there. And it's not as if you have to reject the Code of Ethics entirely in order to think that it's better to judge situations individually. That's a problem with any ethical system; like I said in my last post, it all comes down to intuition.
There's also, like always, the problem of other people. What do you do when you, the perfect champion of intellectual freedom, comes up against someone who doesn't think books about "the homosexual lifestyle" belong in a public library? You can't just hand them the Code of Ethics (what do they care what some fancy organization thinks about it?), and if you're me, you can't tell them what you really think. You can politely tell them about the challenge policy, making it sound as unappealing as possible, and leave it at that, but you're unlikely to appease that patron. I honestly don't know what the answer is, here. Me-me thinks that the library is better off without people like that, but librarian-me wants the library to be as inclusive as possible, even to people I don't particularly like.
Codes of behavior can create some issues, like the ones above. The ways in which they are followed or not followed and the way they interact with other morals and norms can lead to internal and external conflicts. I suppose the best thing to do is to decide if they code you're following solves more problems than it creates.

- K

Reflection on Reading, 13 March 2014

The reading for this week was

• "Dangerous Questions at the Reference Desk: A Virtue Ethics Approach" by Mark Lenker

And here I'd thought I'd never read another philosophy article. While I admit that I don't remember much from my undergrad ethics class, I did minor in philosophy, so this week's reading was a pleasant surprise. 

I began this reading skeptical of the possibility of applying a theoretical ethical system like virtue ethics to a real-life problem like reference service. I mean, that's what you're supposed to do with ethical systems, but I'm not sure it usually works out well. As I read the article, my skepticism was confirmed. Assuming that Lenker's definition of virtue ethics matches what is commonly accepted, the application of it doesn't actually simplify or clarify the moral ambiguity of "dangerous" reference questions. 

For one thing, it seems to me that a judgment of what kind of a person the librarian would be if s/he does x or y is already an implicit factor in that librarian's decisions. It is my experience that people put a lot of thought into how their actions reflect on them. But if we set that aside and assume that the librarian is considering virtues for the first time, we are still left with what is basically an ad hoc application of positive and negative adjectives. Lenker calls unquestioningly providing potentially dangerous information "mindless." Someone else may call it "dutiful" or "good-willed." How do you decide what word fits?

It comes down to intuition. Almost every decision can be characterized in multiple ways. We choose the word that seems to fit the best, right? We choose the word that feels right. That's why a librarian who unquestioningly provides information on how to build an explosive is acting mindlessly, while a librarian who without question gives a young girl information on how to obtain an abortion without her abusive father finding out is acting dutifully or professionally. (To my mind, anyway. But isn't that the point?)

Every individual librarian has to make these decisions for him/herself, often on the fly, often without any preparation. We can talk about ethical systems all we want, but in the moment when someone really does ask for information on suicide, we go with what feels right. Ethicists argue that such ill-considered decisions will be poorly made, but I don't think that attempting to formalize them helps. It's all intuition, even if we're just talking about choosing an ethical system to begin with. Me, I'm a Utilitarian. 

- K

Reflection on Class, February 27

I'll try to conjure up some memories of our book groups two weeks (and one very long spring break) ago.
I suppose what always strikes me about discussing literature is how, when you're listening to a group of people talk, you formulate ideas and thoughts without any real effort. As is evident from my last blog post, I didn't have a lot to say about most of the readings chosen by the rest of my group. I'm not the biggest fan of fairy tales, and this batch of them felt tiresome, expected in the worst way. I didn't want to talk about them at all.
But during the discussion, hearing other people discussing the stories made them more interesting to talk about - not surprising. That's why we have book groups to begin with, right? I'm not sure if it's wanting to participate in the discussion that makes the literature more interesting or if it's hearing other people's ideas and coming to understand a work in a new way as a result. It's probably both. In any case, this class really made me miss being an English major.
Something that surprised me was that there didn't seem to be any rhyme or reason as to which of our questions to the group went over well and which didn't. Some of the questions that seemed creative or insightful were met with total silence, while questions that I had thought of mainly as segues sparked the best discussions. I would be interested to repeat this reading ("The Man Who Built Catan", a nonfiction piece about the creator of the game Settlers of Catan) with a different group to see if they respond in similar ways.
On a professional level, this was one of the few exercises I have done that I feel I can translate easily into my anticipated career. So there's that.

Reading, February 27

This week, I'm lucky enough to be reading several short stories and essays:

• "The Duration of Life" by the Brothers Grimm
• "Parrot Land" from The Brazilian Fairy Book
• "The Fisherman and His Wife" by the Brothers Grimm
• excerpt from "Darkness Too Visible" by Megan Cox Gurdon and "Why the Best Children's Books are Written in Blood" by Sherman Alexie

These are mostly children's stories or are about children's stories, so the differences between them are very interesting. 

The first, "The Duration of Life," is a folk tale about the stages of human life. It is simplistic, but with the ring of truth that folk tales usually have. Being by the Brothers Grimm, it is, of course, dark. The themes seem to revolve around punishment for human greed and knowing when to be happy with what you have. Good lessons for children, I suppose. I expect the discussion about this one to be either very minimal or pretty intense. 

"Parrot Land" felt familiar in the same way that "The Duration of Life" did. It is a frame narrative in which a princess who is apparently friends with a parrot that tells stories is being courted (?) by her evil cousin. The cousin sets up a failed parrot sale outside the princess's home to get her attention, but she asks for the storytelling parrot to distract her. It tells her about a prince who runs a bunch of errands to get his father his sight back and ends up with a shiny sword and a nice horse. I don't have a lot to say about it. Maybe discussion will prove the story to have more depth than what I see now. 

"The Fisherman and His Wife" is about how women are greedy and wrathful and don't know what they want. What else would it be about?

And finally, three cheers for Sherman Alexie. I'm sure this is the popular opinion, but I'm no hipster. The juxtaposition of these two excerpts highlights a lot of issues surrounding writing and librarianship, chief among them that literature is highly personal, and a lot of people feel that their way of thinking about it is the one true way. I can never condone censorship or book-banning (clutching my petticoat as we speak), but I can sympathize with a parent who sees the dark world of contemporary (or any?) teenagers and worries. Thanks to Mollie and Krista, though, for giving us the Alexie piece to calm our nerves. I think I know the direction this discussion will take. 

- K

Reflection on Class, February 20

We discussed book clubs in class on Thursday, and it was one of my favorite discussions so far. That might be because it was one of the few discussions we've had that relates directly to my intended career as a public librarian, or maybe it's because it made me feel like an English major again. In any case, it was nice to talk about something other than teaching.
I especially enjoyed the Socratic seminar in the second half of the class. Actually acting out a book group scenario was helpful for putting our readings into context. The index cards that we used to record our questions, for example, was a good exercise. In this case, only a few people actually read their questions to the group before the conversation hit its stride. In another group or class, though, all of the questions might have been needed.
I also noticed that the discussion felt very much like many of my undergraduate classes, where we sat in a circle around the room with the professor at the front, but we spoke to each other, not just to the professor. In this class, though, even though Kristin was a facilitator and not the leader of the discussion, it still felt like she was the leader. Maybe it would have been different if it had been a student facilitating, or maybe it wouldn't have mattered. I would be interested in how this dynamic would play out in different circumstances.
I am looking forward to seeing how our book groups this week will compare. We covered a lot of guidelines in our discussion last week, but I suspect that it is more or less intuitive in practice. I suppose we'll find out.