Reflection of March 28, 2011 Class

Class last week was kind of a whirlwind - lots of topics, engagement, and interesting discussion.

First, what a treat to have Paul Courant in class.  It was too bad I was totally and utterly swamped the previous weekend through last Wednesday and sat in the back of the class for the first time all semester.  I'm just going to go on the record and say that I think that Dr. Courant is the person to look to for issues in the future of libraries.  I think his economic background, connections across UM and the world, and his realistic and optimistic views of what's happening today and what needs to happen are pretty spot on.  Not that I agree with absolutely everything, but most of it - and most of all, I respect his progressiveness.  It makes me want to be him one day!  (Look for me, circa 2035 Dean of Libraries? :)   I truly appreciated that he took time out of his incredibly busy schedule to engage with us.  However, what I took away most from his talk was his suggestion to be optimistic and don't list the reasons something is hard to accomplish.  I've actually been struggling with this idea this semester.  I've got some big, wild ideas for libraries (school, public, and academic, and communities) but every time I mention them to someone inside the institution, I'm brushed off.  People will say "well we tried that, people weren't interested," or "too many logistics involved..." stuff to that effect.  I will take his advice and keep it with me as I move around the library world and not let those things stop me!  Anything can be done if it's done right with the right people.  So, there.  :)

After Dr. Courant's informative talk (which I did enjoy - learned a lot about the Google Settlement and DPLA, and more), we discussed embedded librarianship.  This was a pretty interesting discussion, many ideas thrown around and it became clear, once again, that we all have different views of what this means.  Maybe its a good thing!  I think embedded librarianship gives people a chance to define their roles in libraries - something that is continually happening more and more and is needed for us to "stay relevant" (boy I'm getting sick of that terminology :)  Our discussion showed that the embedded librarian term can mean so many things and really opens lots of possibilities.  What's to say people won't be come entrepreneurs in this field?  Create this field?  Work from home and become consultants to people who've never thought that librarians could be useful to them (we even discussed an embedded librarian in the mall...).  Pretty exciting stuff... and lots of opportunity here.

Finally, we talked webinars and found our groups.  I'm pretty excited for this... we've got a diverse group and chose to focus on institutional repositories.  Should be fun and challenging.  As I wrote last week, I've not been a huge fan of webinars in the past, so I'm excited to make a good one.  :)

In short, a busy week (filled with sorrow for Prof Frost, overloaded grad students, and interesting topics) that is leading up to the end of my first year of grad school.  Already can't believe it and am excited to move into continuing to use the skills I've learned in this class in my professional practice.