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.

Webinars!

Welp, I'm not even sure we're supposed to write this week, but it kind of feels wrong not to.  So, I'll do a brief reflection of the webinar experience up til this point.  I've tagged one-shot workshop here too because I realized that a webinar really is a type of one-shot workshop, perhaps even more challenging due to the lack of face-to-face time.  Anyway...

Can't believe that was our last "assignment!"  I have to put assignment in quotation marks because again, it's a really practical thing that I am so glad to have had the opportunity to do.  Because we worked in groups of 4 this time (instead of partners for the book club and workshop), the task was different and more complicated.  Further, being able to speak on a topic for 20-30 minutes instead of being able to have full on discussions and activities as one would in a workshop made doing a webinar definitely a new experience. 

Two things I'll say with authority: 
1) it was so nice to have time to work on this in class.  Even though my group didn't actually do a lot of our research there, we did create our work plan AND got to know one another better during that time.  It was really helpful to have a chance to talk with people with whom I would be interacting in a professional space.
2) I was so glad to have watched another webinar before my group did ours.  I added some slides about the webinar basics, take-aways, and saw some of the technical issues that could and did arise for other groups.  This helped me know solutions to some of these and also helped me see what to avoid.

Overall, I think our webinar went very well.  We got good feedback, with the trends showing that people thought we did a good job and were very prepared.  They also seemed to learn a lot about a topic about which they didn't originally know very much.   Our participants would have liked to see more images in our slides (I agree) and they also had trouble with the sound (apparently we sounded like chipmunks at times).  These would both be things I would fix in the future (adding more images to the slides and investigating sound issues prior to the webinar).  Our group worked very well together and it seems the webinar was a success.

It's also been great watching other webinars!  People have overall done a great job and I've learned a lot about interesting topics.  I saw the webinar on teens in the library on Friday morning and learned about a group I'd never thought to include in libraries- young professionals.  The Saturday morning webinar on visually impaired patrons was also very interesting.  Today's webinar on limited English speaking patrons was a great topic too!  People have done a swell job of being prepared and knowledgeable about their topics which has made the webinars go smoothly.  It seems that the only real negative has been the technical stuff, even getting into some of the webinars.  Unfortunately this is a large barrier because it is a big part of the webinar experience.  The content can be great but if people can't access it, hear the presenters, etc., they can't get the content.  Luckily, I've been able to see and hear all of the webinars I've attended which is great.  It's been wonderful to hear my peers be so professional and have knowledge on such interesting and important topics.  Yay to everyone!

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.

How People Learn Chapter 7; Montgomery; Matos, Motley, Mayer; Webinar

How People Learn, Chapter 7 - Effective Teaching: Examples in History, Mathematics, and Science

It was useful to read this chapter about effective teaching across disciplines (plus I just love this book!).  Digging back into How People Learn and being reminded of  that good learning is dependent on pedagogical and well organized knowledge is always a helpful framework when thinking about teaching and learning.  I also love how the authors incessantly remind us that solid learning begins with what student's already know and their questions about the material.

At first I wondered why we were reading this chapter - why do I need to know how to teach history, math and science?  And, well, I probably won't need to know how to teach each of these individually, but I do need to know what helps people learn in different disciplines and different ways.  What I took from this chapter was that different ways of teaching, connecting students to previous knowledge, activities that promote real knowledge growth, and creating communities of learning and practice are cross disciplinary techniques that depend on an expert instructor.  It's not that any teacher couldn't use these with practice and expert knowledge of subjects, but more that most instructors don't use these methods continuously.  I thought that the discussion of history dates and facts vs. research and evidence was particularly interesting.  The idea that "the history" is really just "a history" and that the dates and facts are just a basis (as is computation in math) for the larger picture.  Remembering that people learn differently was also a major point in all of the disciplines.

Keeping these things in mind is helpful when thinking about library instruction because all of those broader concepts apply - prior knowledge, different types of learners, being an expert, and creating community are things that librarians can and should consider while they plan their instructional sessions.


Montgomery 2010 - Online Webinars! Interactive Learning Where Our Users Are: The Future
of Embedded Librarianship

This article was interesting because it simply makes sense.  Librarians can and must become embedded in instruction (be it an academic library with academic departments, a public library with information about public school curricula, or a school librarian with individual class material).  The points made in here that librarians can be active in students learning through technology, can connect directly with faculty, and can have a way to connect beyond a "one-shot workshop" are critical to making embedded librarianship work.  Librarians can prove, once again, that they are integral parts of deep learning and can become embedded beyond the library into departments, courses, and assignments.  Interactive webinars are one way of doing this and they reach far beyond even virtual reference.  They provide a space for people to interact via technology and help the face-to-face happen without needing to be in the same place.  I see this as a potential area where librarians can really excel and be engaged.  A librarian could do a webinar for a course before it starts - "here is what will be helpful to you as you work through this class," "I'll be holding office hours via chat every week at this time," "look for my short webinar before you do this assignment, I'll be online when it's over so you can ask any questions."  Ideas like that are completely doable and exciting to consider :)


Matos, Motley, Mayer 2010 - The Embedded Librarian Online or Face-to-Face: American University's
Experiences

This article provided concrete examples of how embedded and hybrid librarianship works.  It seems interesting that the question remains - "would virtual embedded librarians remain relevant if they still had office space" because to me, the answer is clearly "yes."  I see librarians needed in EVERY space: online for those who don't want to or can't talk face-to-face, via webinar for those who can't make it to a session, in person for those who want to sit down and talk with someone one-on-one.   If a problem is coordination of this, a library could appoint a coordinator for these or develop policy on how to manage time, space, and technologies.  I appreciated this article because it gave me other ways to consider librarianship and best practices for engaging with users.


View a Webinar from a list to be provided - Webinar page on wiki, including link to Webinar Strategies page
I viewed a webinar sponsored by Library Journal and EBSCO/NoveList called "Libraries are Essential: Connecting to Youth in Your Community."  I must warn readers... I spent over an hour trying to download RealPlayer and figuring out how to make this thing work, (also the reason this is posted just at 9pm), so I might be a bit bitter in my overall evaluation.  I have to say that this webinar exemplifies the reason I am not a fan of webinars.  I used to watch them ALL THE TIME in one of my previous jobs, and never felt connected to the presenters.  I have to say, participating in class a couple of weeks ago with Bobbi was the best webinar I'd seen even though we couldn't see anything.  The slides during this webinar were not engaging, I couldn't find a chat transcript so I couldn't see questions or comments (not sure if they were submitted anonymously during the webinar) and I wasn't sure how to contact the presenters to get the materials they discussed during their webinar.  Plus, the presenters didn't seem quite as energetic or prepared as I would have thought.  The first woman who spoke seemed very nervous (maybe she was?) but then maybe webinars are not her best option for presenting information.  I get the point of webinars, I've just yet to see one that's really been engaging and interesting (outside of our time with Bobbi).  Otherwise, it's hard to sit for an hour and not be distracted... 

I must say, though, that this excites me to see my classmates and my own webinars.  Hopefully they (and my group) can change my slightly negative attitude toward this awesome tool.