The Zone of Intervention... get into it
Ok- first of all, here is a link to a blog post about that ball-sucker-upper-thingy I was talking about in class tonight... interesting post:)http://www.blyberg.net/2006/03/22/find-the-edge-push-it/
P.S. It IS the result of a collaboration between the AADL and the Ann Arbor Hands-On Museum
My main takeaway from the small group discussion of our chosen articles for this week's reading is that information literacy means many different things (or nothing at all) to different types of librarians. As a group of "librarians" we are not terribly cohesive. Asking a school librarian to do the work of an archivist would be like asking a civil engineer to do the work of a electrical engineer. We don't all have the same skill set and from specialization to specialization we all have a staggering variety of different tasks to perform... all lumped together under the umbrella of librarianship. How can we do a better job of educating the public on how we can help them? I think the first step is educating ourselves about what different librarians do. In class, Sarah mentioned that she thinks there is a program in place in the MLibrary system to "job shadow" another librarian for the day. This is a great way to understand what a person in another department is doing, but I wonder how many librarians take advantage of this?
In my course evaluation of SI 500 last year, I suggested that the class provide an overview of all of the specializations offered at UMSI and take place fall semester. So, at the very beginning of our grad school careers- we could all understand just what it is that the other specializations actually do- and not just try to remember what their acronym stands for. It's also the perfect time to change specializations to HCI. (I'm just KIDDING).
Beyond educating ourselves- as Kristin pointed out, we must connect to our patrons and their interests in considering their instructional needs. Lessons or instruction that we develop must be relevant to our patrons needs and must provide practical application for future independent use. Choice matters to patrons- our customers. If we don't provide what they want in a way they can consume it- then they will go someplace else... like Wikipedia:(
My "a-ha moment" was Kristin's comparing "reading literacy" to "information literacy". You don't give a Kindergartener a copy of "The Hunger Games" and say, "Read this". You start small, building your way (over years) through scaffolding tools and instructional methods to develop a student's reading literacy skills. In the same vein- librarians can't just direct a college freshman to an online database and say "Find an article on tigers", because he might not have the information literacy skills to find or access articles in the database. The problem with this analogy, is that by the time a student goes to college he is not in the mood for baby steps. Somewhere around 11 years of age, he might have already developed the opinion that he knows everything- including the most effect search methods, and is not interested in knowing how you might be able to develop his skills. The instruction of information literacy skills really should shadow the instruction of reading literacy skills. Reading instructors and Media Specialists should collaborate with each other to develop lesson plans that tie new reading literacy skills with new information literacy- one skill should help the other skill so that student's can immediately benefit and have an "a-ha moment" everyday. With this type of collaboration the teacher-librarian (and I DO consider myself a teacher) can help students understand that when things get frustrating- THAT's the time to ask for help. Though my new hand raising rule is: Think about it again, ask a friend, then raise your hand:) As librarians, we need to help all of our patrons that we work with identify the stage (of any process) that most frustrates them and then be prepared to intervene with appropriate instruction to help them through and help them develop competency.
Be right there and get in the zone.
I would first like to clarify one thing that seems to be getting confused (you aren't the only one) - I am by no means suggesting that school librarians BE archivists - but that archivists' and school librarians' shared interest in information makes them potentially strong partners in exposing k-12 students to research with primary sources.
ReplyDeleteThat said, I agree that librarianship is incredibly diverse. And I think that the barriers we put up between kinds of librarianship do not benefit patrons or in the end the profession of librarianship. I like the idea of job shadowing. I also think that there should be stronger communication between the different kinds of librarians in every community. While there are, I know, joint committees at the ALA - why not have a librarians lunch in your town once a month where librarians can all connect, reach out, find common ground, and ultimately work together to cohesively serve a community.