ALA Ethics, Mosley, and HarperCollins

ALA Code of Ethics
I've been thinking a lot about ethics this term, mostly because I'm taking a course on Ethics and Applied Policy.  I think this is actually the third class this semester for which I've been asked to read and review the ALA Code of Ethics - which is pretty cool in my book.  It shows that SI and the field of library science are very aware that ethics are important to being a professional librarian.  Overall, I find I agree with most all of the ethical statements, and believe they are necessary to upholding the rights of both librarians and users.  The statements of providing: a high-level of service; intellectual freedom; library users rights to privacy; co-workers and colleagues the appropriate level of respect and fairness; public interest not private interest, service that keeps personal convictions and professional duties separate; and professional development (participation in as well), all seem vitally important to our profession.  I've seen some of these in action, for example, in the February 2011 edition of the Ann Arbor Observer, there is a short piece in the UpFront section talking about fines and user's privacy rights.  In another case, a librarian at the UM wanted to pull what they thought was a vulgar material from the collection and found ways to disallow it from circulating (keeping personal convictions and professional duties separate).  In my relatively short library career, I've seen these ethical statements be needed to provide guidance on issues that are not always straightforward.  Which is basically what "ethics" is :)


Mosley: Creating a Library Assignment Workshop for University Faculty
This article was particularly interesting to me because of my current and former jobs.  In my former job, I worked for the Director of some of the UM libraries and she was very focused on engaging faculty in the library.  This article shows one way to do it well.  Secondly, an issue that has arose several times in my current job is librarians working with faculty on assignments and providing direct support to the professors via ctools and in-person meetings.  Ctools now has a feature where the librarian can upload resources and access the particular relevant assignment.  Finally, I've actually been at the reference desk when these students come up with their library-integrated assignment.  It's interesting to read this article, then, because it appears Texas A&M has thought through their model and that it works.  Faculty often know the library for their own purposes but don't necessarily know how their students use the library.  Through a workshop like the one described, faculty can have an orientation about the library AND better understand their students.  Further, through librarian outreach, librarians can become integrated in curriculum (as was discussed a few weeks earlier in a different fashion), and can become a larger part of the campus. 

HarperCollins: Three Perspectives
Whew!  What an issue.  And these tough issues will continue to come - quickly - as the digital world changes libraries forever.  I chose to read three of the more generic pieces from this list since I (admittedly) did not read much about HarperCollins up to this point

Official HarperCollins statement: HC's official statement on Library Love Fest blog 3/1/2011, An Open Letter to Librarians
-Clearly HarperCollins knows they are in a jam - they wrote this letter on the defense, seeing that libraries won't be happy with their new policy.  While they discuss their reasoning, they do not provide hard statistics or numbers showing where they got their 26 uselife of books. While they do say that they've talked to librarians, they don't specify who, what, where or the topic of the discussions.  It's clearly problematic; the backlash justifies my statement.

Professional Organizations Respond: ALA Washington Office, 3/8/11,  American Library Association tackles new challenges in the e-environment
-ALA's response was entirely professional.  They've identified a solid, practical way to deal with this and how to keep their members informed.  I'm not an ALA expert, so I don't know the way they usually deal with issues such as this, but it was refreshing and uplifting to see their response.  They know that they need to take immediate action - and they have - and they know that it is their responsibility as a professional organization to inform their members and work for them.  Kudos.

Press: Library Journal, 3/7/11, Library Consortia Begin To Vote Against HarperCollins Ebook Checkout Policy
This piece was helpful to read because it not only gave an overview of the issue, but also relayed what some libraries are doing in response.  The statements by folks in the article show the way real people and organizations are dealing with this decision by HarperCollins.  That libraries have revoked their licensing to HarperCollins sends a very strong statement that they completely disagree with the fact that books expire after 26 uses and that they will not stand for a company supposedly committed to resource sharing to do such a thing.  The article is a bit biased, but it also raises issues of concern for the future.

My Thoughts
This whole thing is quite a mess - libraries already in funding trouble now are being challenged with providing users with what they think should be a given resource - one that is part of their future as a library.  How are libraries supposed to move into the digital age if more and more constraints are put upon them?  How are they supposed to survive (in the way they need to) if companies continue to restrict them?  This seems to be a game between public and private, with private holding the cards trying to make money off the public which has very little right now.  The companies need to survive too, but not at the cost of libraries.

Reflection of March 7, 2011 Class

Book club week!  And boy, was it not only a good learning experience, but it was fun!  After breaking up into our separate book club rooms, we had to find someone to kick off the class session.  No one was speaking up, per se, and Kara and I had brought candy and had an activity planned to go with our Hansel and Gretel story, so I volunteered us to go first.  While our reflection will go into more detail, I felt we did a great job in our book club (this sentiment was also found in our evaluations).  The candy and drawing activity went over well, and it felt like those two things energized the group - good for the first book club of the night.  We had no issues with getting people to talk, and in fact one of our criticisms on our evaluations was that we cut people off.  This was partially intentional - the time for our club went incredibly fast and we wanted to make sure we had discussed enough topics.  All in all, the book club was enjoyable and fun.  One thing we did differently than every other group was split our discussion up; half was us discussing the story and the other half was discussing how we would use this in a youth book club as YA librarians.  It was a unique twist on the book club and one which I thought worked well.

The other book clubs, those of A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift, The Landlady by Roald Dahl, The Four Habits of Highly Effective Librarians by Todd Gilman, and the Nightingale and The Rose by Oscar Wilde, all went really well.  It was interesting to see how others approached their story or article, and interesting that only one group chose to discuss an academic article as opposed to a children's story.  The largest challenge I saw for all groups was the issue of time (wanting to get questions in and going over, or having to modify plans as we did while going along).  Each book club was unique, however and I felt we delved into all of the topics thoroughly.

Overall, it was a great activity and I definitely learned what to do differently next time - especially on issues of timing and bringing out more voices in the discussion.  It went well! 

Book Club Readings...

I've been debating how to blog about our book club readings as I know we'll discuss them thoroughly in class on Monday during our actual book clubs (about which I'm pretty excited).  It'll be pretty evident there as to whether or not I've done the reading critically, so I'll just list what I read and my immediate reflections to them (so if this is one blog post that is graded a bit less, I'll understand why).  Overall, there was a very interesting diversity of reading and it really was quite enjoyable (yay grad school!).

A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift: This piece was quite short but very thought provoking.  I am interested to see the questions and how our discussion plays out. Will we be participants discussing it in 1729 or will we be historians, of sorts?  Two very different ways to view this piece....

The Landlady by Roald Dahl: I haven't read anything by Roald Dahl in YEARS and was excited to see this on the list (never read it as a child).  I enjoyed the short story and am still processing the implications of it.  There's a lot to wonder about, in this one...

The Four Habits of Highly Effective Librarians by Todd Gilman: Another interesting piece to read here!  I liked the conciseness of the article and the topics presented.  It was written nearly four years ago so again I wonder will we be discussing this circa 2007 or 2011, when there is still definitely a Reference Desk at OUR large research library :)

The Nightingale and the Rose by Oscar Wilde: I never remember hearing this story as a child but it is vaguely familiar to me.  The story is so sad, and I'm still pondering "the point" of it.  A good topic for book club discussions.  Will we be children at the book club, or adults?

Looking forward to it!

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!

Just had to write... Libraries and Schools - What's Our Role?

While I am primarily focused on academic librarianship and want to work in an academic library (in Michigan), I cannot help but be extremely concerned for the sake of the students in k-12 and public libraries. With the new administration in Michigan comes a new budget - one that is drastically considering cuts to public libraries and schools. This ultimately will affect the students that will be using the academic resources and libraries in which I hope to work.

With news today that Detroit schools will be cutting funding to the point where students might be forced into classrooms with 60+ students, I cannot ignore what this means for the state of libraries. We will be needed more than ever to provide our resources to those who need them most. I am always thinking about the ways that academic institutions, public libraries, and schools can work together to collaborate and share resources, and it seems this is incredibly important now more than ever.

What can we, as librarians - public and academic - do to advocate for appropriate funding and resources for students in our states, cities and counties?  What can we do to help educate our children and ensure that they will have what they need to be successful, contributing young adults? What is our place in this atrocious state of budget cuts? What is our place in providing the tools that our young people need? There are the obvious ideas of protesting and sharing information about this, but practically, what is our role in this? Should we be building relationships across institutions (at ALL levels - between academic universities, community colleges, k-12 schools, and public libraries)? Should we be learning about this in our classes right now? Should SI hold a forum about our duties to the people who will need us in their communities?

I think all of the above are necessary to the success of our country. What do you think?

Book Clubs and Socratic Seminars: Hoffert, Tredway, Metzger and Dalton - In That Order

I decided to read the articles in order this week, something I rarely do but realized I probably should.  It was a valuable strategy for this week's topic: Book Clubs and Socratic Seminars. 

So, I started with Hoffert's "The Book Club Exploded."  Funny, because I just joined a book club about a year ago.  It was an informal way for me to make friends with some women after I moved back into Ann Arbor.  Our reason for gathering was that all of our significant others played rugby and we always found ourselves at the same gatherings but wanted a way to get to know one another better.  This is just a side note, but it was how I connected this weeks' topic to my own prior knowledge.  The idea of book clubs in libraries (oddly enough) hadn't really occurred to me, so Hoffert's piece about the diversity of Book Clubs was really fascinating to me.

I had also never considered a book club where not everyone actually read the same book but instead read books or pieces around a theme, genre or subject.  Her discussion of how this is good for libraries (where the library doesn't have to purchase several copies of the same book) make just TONS of sense.  Not only financially, but also allowing the book club members to explore topics and have truly indepth, active discussions where they would learn more by connecting themes across several pieces of writing. 
The different ways that book clubs can engage - over different types of texts, within different demographics, over meals, with the author - also was a great way to think about book clubs.  However, I thought the most genius idea - especially for public libraries - was to connect book clubs with library or citywide events.  This could be a great way for libraries to "stay relevent" and connect with their communities.  They can bring in new audiences and help create a more active community in this way.

Second, I read the Tredway article on a new term to me: Socratic Seminars.  The idea of such a way to engage students by having a "structured discourse about ideas and moral dilemmas" shows that the Socratic Seminar is far more than a discussion about the plot of a book.  The questions in a Socratic Seminar actually make students think - evaluating options and making decisions - based on what they read.  One thing I really took from this was that the instructor is a facilitator, one who lets students ask their own questions and guides them along the way.

I liked how Tredway discussed the students interacting in "intellectual discourse" by observing their classmates contributions and learning to paraphrase (something that definitely will come in handy as they continue their studies).  Further the teacher's role to guide students toward a deeper understanding and respecting other's points of view are other skills that are applicable in the real world (further education or in work). 
That all of this actually leads to high-end thinking seems most important.

The third piece I read really tied the idea of book clubs and Socratic Seminars together.  Metzger's idea to modify the Socratic Seminar into a student-led empowerment initiave was the culmination of what a good book club (led by the readers) and a formal Socratic Seminar would do.  As a teacher, she couldn't actually see what students were comprehending - even in a Socratic Seminar she saw too much ritualistic question and answer - so she allowed students to engage with and develop their own learning strategies.  She allowed students to facilitate one another and stepped out of the process enough so that students were really engaging with one another (high-level for freshman!) and let them talk out issues without the precsense of the formal adult.

Metzger's piece was inspiring because as librarians, we can do this.  We can easily slip out of the role of a formal instructor and step into a role that facilitates learning through informal deep processes.  We can allow readers a place to engage and we can lead at the beginning, but then really step back and allow the book club, socratic seminar, whatever you want to call it, to happen.  It shows that formal rules can be broken in a good way and that reader conversation can truly develop with a bit of structure and a lot of intention.

The Dalton piece - are we supposed to comment on this? - was pretty interesting - I have a feeling we're using it to model Socratic Seminar in class.  So, I won't comment too much except that I have seen this situation directly at the UM Library.  My previous job was assisting the Director of a few libraries at UM and several of the meetings for which I took notes involved discussion of prices of serials going through the roof, sustainability and Google digitization.   It will be interesting to hear my peers thoughts on this article, as well as open access and the DLPA in class...

Reflection of February 14, 2011 Class

I really liked the engaging nature of last week's class.  Analyzing the McGonigal survey was a great activity to do in a group choosing to be either Dr. McGonigal or the librarian who hosted the event.  My group chose to be Dr. McGonigal (because we liked her hair and boots and wanted to be cool like her) and had fun thinking about the factors that enter into being a presenter at a conference.  It was most interesting to see what people actually took away from the lecture and how that tied into their prior knowledge...

Onto prior knowledge, I actually DID really like the anchor analogy and was surprised that people did not really "get it" or that people did  not necessarily see transfer as part of a librarian's job.  I, for one, spent a few days each summer on lakes and know that those rafts need to be anchored down.  So, the idea of prior knowledge and a transfer to future knowledge being tied to the present place in which a patron or student sits makes sense.  The prior knowledge needs to be there, but without any sort of commonality (the raft), no connection can be made with what they're learning. 

I also thought the discussion of AP was interesting.  I took AP English and AP Calc in high school and don't remember a darned thing from AP Calc (still got an A and took the test so I wouldn't have to take the class exam) but I remember a heck of a lot from AP English which I passed.  The format DOES need to be changed but I don't quite remember my experience with those being quite as intense as others in the class (maybe I'm a little older or just had good teachers...)

The subject of hook questions was great, though.  Gave great examples of how to draw people in in real ways - not just boring questions people will never use.  And the activity that we discussed about Egypt and the French Revolution showed just that and was a great lead into to transfer.  When I saw that activity for high schoolers, I was thrilled because it's exactly what I think students need to learn and understand - REAL WORLD things that they can apply throughout their lives in different ways.  Transfer is an interesting concept that I've not often heard discussed about education, but class last week emphasized its importance and different ways in which to engage with it.  Much appreciated!