The Next Steps

Last Wednesday, April 20, I finished my first year of graduate school in Information at the University of Michigan.  The final assignment that I had to complete was a project working with the Chelsea District Library, helping them gather information so that they can start revolutionizing the way their library can work with youth in order to empower teens and the Chelsea community as a whole.  It was quite an interesting project that coincided quite a bit with my visit to Chicago's YouMedia Center, that I wrote about a few weeks ago, and one to which my prior knowledge contributed. 

I worked with the Chelsea District Library to find metrics of other successful youth organizations across the state, country and world.  Metrics included such information as what does the program look like/how is it organized?; board members, development, and responsibilities; sustainability; and partnerships.  I put this information into a report that also included recommendations for their own youth initiative, a framework for them to outline their specific goals, and policy information that they will need to consider as they move towards implementation.

It was a very exciting project and I felt very lucky to be a part of it.  It will be exciting to see the model that Chelsea creates as it changes the way it's community thinks about the possibilities of a public library.

Presentation - Chelsea District Library from alissa talley on Vimeo.

Just had to write... a great professional trip to Chicago!

So I went to Chicago yesterday - train left at 7:30am, and I took the train back, returning into Ann Arbor at 12:00am.  A long, long day.  But a good one;  my time there couldn't have been better spent.

I had the opportunity to present at the Educause Midwest Regional Conference, held at the InterContinental Hotel right down town.  My supervisor at the library and I participated in a poster session, where we displayed a poster we'd created and talked to people about it's contents.  Our poster was on assessment of handouts that we provide at the Knowledge Navigation Center, Faculty Exploratory and Tech Deck.  We complete four focus groups earlier in the term to evaluate how people learn new technology and what they like and dislike about the handouts we currently provide.  Of course, the like the longer handout, but want a shorter handout, videos, an interactive handout, and activities.  Needless to say, this was the first phase of our research. 

It was interesting, because during the hour-long poster session I learned several things.  First, I learned more about our project, just by talking about it and answering questions.  I was able to better synthesize what we'd actually done and what we could do in the future.  Second, I learned that not a lot of others have done this sort of assessment of their materials.  To me, it seemed a fairly small task - a few focus groups and analyzing a fairly small amount of data, but it's just something that people haven't done.  Finally, I learned what it was like to be at a conference.  I was a bit nervous at first, but found the whole experience to be great professional development. 

After our session, I traveled down to the Harold Washington Library YouMedia Center   I had a chance to see not only a big, beautiful, old public library (which, ahem, needs to do research on how it uses it's huge amount of space), but also a youth media center in action.  And wow, what a place.  The walls are a bright green, there are flat screens on every wall, a young librarian (a 2008 SI grad) was working with some boys on redesigning and creating their youth center blog while another set of kids practiced their spoken word and recorded music.  IN THE LIBRARY.  This reconfirmed my beliefs that public libraries not only have to redefine themselves, but can and should.  The YouMedia Center was one of the most lively places I've ever seen and kids actually want to be there.  In my mind, this should be a model for other public libraries who are "fighting to survive."  This place isn't just surviving, it's thriving.  And your library can do this too... the MacArthur Foundation and the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) are scaling this up, and offering an RFP that will end up funding 30 libraries nationwide.  They see the value in sustainable, progressive public libraries, and they're showing it can be done. 

It was so inspiring to see this and it gave me a lot of hope for our profession if we are willing to be creative, step outside the box, help people think about libraries differently, and make this change happen.

Reflection of February 21, 2011 Class

Ah yes, it seems so long ago, the month of February and our wonderful guest speaker Vicki Brown, and our discussion of book clubs and socratic seminars.  But, what a great class.  Vicki was a tremendous asset to our topic and brought such practical knowledge it is hard to imagine what just reading about library book clubs in a book would be like.  I learned a lot of valuable information from her and her handouts.  The book club kits were a new idea to me and I found myself thinking of lots of ways that communities could engage via this type of book club format (across disciplines, workplaces, schools, community centers, etc.). 

One thing I'm particularly focused on right now is engaging teens with libraries which is why Susan's question was interesting to me.  I am a HUGE believer that we need to empower youth however we can, and was slightly disappointed to hear that the teen book club program was primarily run by librarians instead of teens.  I understand why at least it would need to start that way but see the book club as a way for teens to bring one another into the library instead of librarians leading all the time.  Of course the librarians can still promote and monitor the sessions, but I think teens can do anything and should have the opportunity to.  Other than that (which wasn't even part of Vicki's presentation) I loved it and learned a lot!

Our discussion about book clubs and socratic seminars was also very interesting.  It was helpful to learn about the types of questions, and then employ this while developing our own book club questions.  It was also pretty awesome to hear the socratic seminar modeled in class... it was a great way to see the possibilities involved in this method in a real way.  I did not ever really participate in such an activity in my schooling so it was helpful to both read about and see this in action!  Now, I'm excited to run our book club!