All posts tagged “reading”

March 7, 2018
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The Intermediary We Don’t Need?

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Photo by Mark Rabe on Unsplash

My first experience teaching an information literacy class (10 years ago!!!) was a dud. It was a Psychology Research Methods course. I did the requisite library catalog and PsycINFO demo. I used student-supplied keywords. They didn’t “work.” I got flustered, but doubled-down and stuck to panicked typing in hopes that a demo would finally yield the “right” results. I was terrified, frustrated, and no doubt frustrating to students.

I don’t do resource demos in classes anymore. I will occasionally talk a class through a particularly sticky part of our link resolver if everyone is having the same issue, but for the most part I let students explore in groups, pairs, or alone and offer one-on-one assistance as needed. It warms my little librarian heart to see students helping one another. I am excited to facilitate discussions and listen to students’ points of view, experiences doing research, and comments on the appropriateness of different information sources to various needs. Those are the classes I love. The ones rooted in conversation and reflection, the ones where I don’t go near an instructor podium computer, the ones where my teaching tech tools are dry erase markers.

Last week one of my favorite librarians sparked this pedagogical reflection with a tweet:

That last line was telling: I never go near the library website. It made me try to think about another discipline that relied on teaching a website or web tool as central to the study of that subject. I couldn’t think of one.

Then I read a fantastic article by Kevin Seeber and Zoe Fisher, in which they, among other things, revised their lesson plan for English Composition II to focus on source evaluation rather than database selection and searching. It was uncomfortable for some of their colleagues who were used to database demos, but ultimately fit in better with the English Composition curriculum and helped students practice a more nuanced version of information evaluation.

And, because all my reading and worlds seem to be converging together these days, I just opened up my blog reader to see a wonderful post by Dani Cook on the Rule Number One blog that lists 10 ideas for making your teaching more learner-centered. Some of my favorite suggestions focus on active practice, showing an interest in students as people, and authenticity as a teacher in the classroom.

When taken together, Jo’s tweet, Zoe and Kevin’s article, and Dani’s post made me jot down a flurry of questions: How amazing would our teaching be if we didn’t have an instructor computer at all? Is our focus on databases, websites, and functionality of resources interrupting our relationships with our students? How much more effective would we be as teachers and facilitators without that tech intermediary? Do we even need it?

I spent 4 years as the web developer and administrator for my library’s website, so I’m no technophobe. I understand the value of a simple, easy-to-use interface and good information architecture. But I also don’t see the value in teaching the technical details of digital resources that are becoming to easier to use, and, let’s be honest, that students won’t be able to access after they graduate. They aren’t paying attention, I’m bored, and we could all just be at home watching Drag Race. I know that at this point in information literacy practice and teaching many of us are all about active learning and exploring deeper information literacy concepts. But I know–because I do it too–we sometimes still revert back to click here, here’s where you go to access this one thing, this is what this one error message means, etc. What if we just completely eliminated that from our teaching? We could give students a URL and let them have at it, offering help as needed individually or in small groups. Or we could just not have a class in a computer lab. No computers. None. Zero. What would that kind of information literacy class look like?

Relationships are scary, especially when you are the temporary instructor for a class that knows one another much better than they will likely ever know you. We tend to place the computer, resource, or website at the center, as the focus of our relationship with students in the classroom because it is “the information” in information literacy. It is seen as primary, as the thing that’s important. It’s a security blanket we all hide behind (myself included) because it’s easier to focus on our ability to know information and information resources than it is to emphasize our roles as teachers and facilitators of discussion with ambiguous results. But this intermediary places a roadblock in our relationship with learners. It might be an annoying pebble or a boulder, but it’s the object that can block the librarian from cultivating a relationship.

I used to hope that if students could remember one thing from class, it was that I was available to help them whenever they needed help. But my actions in the classroom were emphasizing the website, libguides, and datbases–the things–not me or our relationship. Now I hope that students remember our connection in class, and I try to structure classes (as much as they can be structured) to foster that connection. I don’t want an intermediary between my students and myself, and if that means I never turn on my instructor computer, I’m ok with that.

January 23, 2018
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Spring Reading

Photo of a Spring Reading List

I did not do the best job documenting my fall sabbatical reading. It’s sort of a jumble of confusing Zotero folders, hard copies of articles, bookmarks of blog posts, and screenshots of Tweets (because I am old). I’m trying to remedy that this spring and realized that best way keep track of my reading is to use the tool that’s basically taken over the running of my professional life: my bullet journal (see above).

Here’s what’s at the start of my spring 2018 reading list:

It’s just the beginning, but I’m already excited about increasing my understanding of relational theory, digging into writing about race and feminism, and learning more about the day-to-day practice of our field.

What are you excited about reading this spring? What’s at the top of your TBR list?

March 8, 2017
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Reading Roma Harris on International Women’s Day

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I’ve been consumed by and consuming one book this past week, and it seems fitting to write about it on International Women’s Day. Roma Harris’ Librarianship: The Erosion of a Woman’s Profession is, at its core, a defense of women. Harris deconstructs the “problems” within librarianship and argues that they are fundamentally rooted in the field’s feminization within a sexist society that undervalues and dismisses women and women’s work. This book was published in 1992, but it is still. so. damn. relevant. Every other page is flagged, copious notes have been taken, and I may have even underlined one or two things (in pencil, lightly).

I encourage you to read it, to get a sense of the supremely important role gender (and gender performance) has played in the construction of our profession over the past hundred and fifty years. But I want to focus on one chapter in particular: The aptly named “Self-doubt and Self-blame.” Harris writes:

In an ambitious content analysis of the library literature, Bennett observed what he referred to as a “mea culpa” convention in the field, that is, the “criticism of librarians, libraries, and librarianship by librarians themselves” …librarians often blame each other for what are, in fact, externally imposed barriers to progress…Some turn their anger inward, pointing accusing fingers at one another for being too feminine, too masculine, or not enough of either. Others see that the barriers to progress are externally imposed and choose to fight back or leave these professions entirely.

As I read this chapter, all I could think was, Yes. Yes to all of this. I am often a self-doubter and a self-blamer, and, when things get really dark, a self-denigrator. I question my parenting choices, my career decisions, and my day-to-day existence as a woman. I wonder if I couldn’t be living better, which, as I write it, feels a bit preposterous. You live the life you live. But in this world, even as a woman who inhabits a fair amount of privilege, it’s still easier to see myself as being to blame when things go wrong or when things get difficult. Yes, personal responsibility is important, but it’s equally important, if not more so, for the individual to be able to critique the larger system of which they are a part. But I never can seem to get beyond blaming myself.

I often take all of this self-doubt and blame and transfer it from my personal life to my own work. Just yesterday I felt as though I wasn’t doing enough, wasn’t being effective enough, wasn’t making enough of my difference in my library and at my college. I know, intellectually, that I am being hard on myself and doing what my mother and countless other women often do–blaming ourselves because we’re easiest to blame. But emotionally, my ego takes over and I become the person to blame for all of the things that could be done better.

I think drawing that comparison to how we treat our own profession is spot on. I find myself doing it, too, at times. I think there is nothing wrong with being critical of our profession. It’s needed to call out issues of inequity and spark creativity. But I do think there is a problem with disparaging our work in our lowest moments as being unimportant, out-of-touch, or irrelevant. Our constant preoccupation with what’s next in libraries makes it easy for us to dismiss and not build on the important work we do right now. Instead of, as Harris states, “taking the battle outside,” we fight it amongst ourselves.

We librarians need to be more like this…
We librarians don’t have anything new to contribute…
We librarians need to stop doing this…
We librarians should be more like these people in these fields…

Take for example, my reaction at a recent conference session. Wonderful librarians were presenting on faculty development and faculty-librarian collaboration and talked about using the question “How can we [librarians] help you [faculty]?” I immediately did an inward eyeroll and thought: That’s the problem with us librarians. We keep setting ourselves up to be doormats. The problem isn’t necessarily with the critique, because unequal power relationships between teaching faculty and librarians (whatever our status) are a real thing, but with the direction of the anger. Why wasn’t my reaction: *eyeroll* That’s the problem with neoliberal educational structures. They’re all about efficiency and hierarchy,  and when they combine with sexism, you get this uneven power relationship between librarians and faculty that force those kinds of questions/statements. 

It’s easier to blame ourselves, to encourage the librarian to be more professional, more knowledgeable, more accommodating, more MORE. It’s hard to demand change from deeply entrenched power structures. The fact that Harris’ writing still echoes my day-to-day work life 25 years after it was written is proof enough that our efforts at transforming “librarianship” into something more/better/bigger/faster/smarter are not going to save us. We don’t need the saving. The structures we exist in are what need to change.