Library School: What I'd Fix

It's been a while since I graduated from my Master of Librarian and Information Science program (in 2001) but I just read "The future of library education: reflections of a newly educated librarian" from Open Shelf, and it made me think back to my glory days on campus learning to do what I've been doing ever since.  Specifically, I was thinking about what I would have preferred in the program:

A better understanding of what the program and each course was going to focus on: practical skills versus theory.

As it said in the inspirational article above, "library schools could better communicate to students exactly what parts of their education are intended to target" each.  These are professional masters degrees so a certain amount of both is required:  we need to be able to both do the job and know why we're doing it so we can maybe do it better.  It would be ideal if every course, regardless of subject had a clear balance of each.  In my experience, some courses had it and others didn't, and my school seemed to particularly focus on the practical skills when I was yearning for more theory.

More education on the collections management side.

My current position (and previous position, and probably several future positions) is in collections management and other technical services functions.  Sure, I had a reference resources course but having worked with resources, vendors, publishers and all the technology involved, I've found that I've had to learn much of it on the job.  Part of the problem is certainly the fact that electronic resources were still pretty young in 2001, but I don't recall learning anything about the publishing industry, in general or regarding specific players.  Evaluation of resources would have been very useful, even in general principles since they shouldn't have changed that much despite the resources themselves changing.

More information about the details of the library school's focus.

A not-too-recent blog entry stated that "it really does not matter which library school you attend".  I beg to differ.  It might not matter whether you come from a "top rated" school or not (although this article basically says that it's pretty much the only thing that matters in most fields), but there are certainly differences between library schools that, when I was applying and for many years after graduating, I didn't know at all.  But in speaking with colleagues from various institutions, particularly ones that were actually smart enough to look into the matter before handing over the tuition dough, library schools can differ greatly.  Some are best for producing mass quantities of just general librarians, whereas others are more suitable for those looking to continue on with a PhD; some have a great Archivists' program, while others are better for public librarians.  Perhaps this has changed since I was really looking into choosing a school, but, just like with any institution of higher education, marketing yourself as a solution for everyone when you aren't isn't good for you or your students.

Don't worry about making the argument for the program being a good investment or not.

Honestly, this was never really a concern of mine but I see it more and more in higher education.  I'm not sure a Master of Library and Information Science program or the like could be described as a good investment (sometimes yes, sometimes maybe, sometimes no) but I'm not sure it really matters.  Heading down a career path shouldn't be considered in the same way as sizing up stocks and bonds.  Deciding to take a certain academic or professional program that tends to lead to a certain career is all about whether YOU will be able to at least live with it if not enjoy it.  You don't have to like the company that you're investing in, at least not as much as you're going to have to like the job you may be doing for the rest of your life.

Make it less about books and more about information.

Yes, I know that we all like books (see the first paragraph from "So You've Decided to Go to Library School"), but we shouldn't be basing our choice of a profession on such a stereotypical understand of what librarians do.  Libraries are, and always have been about more than just books.  Yes, we can take advantage of the public's seemingly permanent connection between libraries and books, but if we don't make a bit of a connection with other things, then the second society loses their love affair with the dusty old tomes, we're toast.  In fact, in some libraries, books aren't even the thing the collections budget is spent most on.  I would like to see more focus on the Information part of the MLIS than on the Library part.  Don't get me wrong, I like that it's in the degree name (I don't like the MIS or the, shudder, MI) but I would gladly get rid if it if that's what it took to make our profession a little more respectable.

Ok, so I've had my rant.  What do you think?  What would you change (or not) about librarianship education?

Allies in the effort to supply college students with textbooks

When I read the blurb about Algonquin College's new program to provide electronic books as textbooks for students through January 17th's Academica Top Ten email, I was impressed.  Sure, everyone's moving towards ebooks now, but it's always nice to see an academic institution move forward on such a project with this much effort and planning.  And speed too!  Three years might seem like a long time to take to do something like this but ebooks are still pretty new and, institutionally, we're all still testing the waters with the vendors to see what works and what doesn't.

The write-up on Contact North seems more like a press release than an actual information piece designed to help the other post-secondary institutions consider their own related projects but it points out many key strengths of the project from my perspective:

• Partnering with more than one publisher:  Excellent.  The more the merrier.  That gives the institution more flexibility in pricing and instructors more choice in titles to use as texts.
• One platform that isn't connected with a specific publisher:  Not bad.  Hopefully the developer will listen to the institution in terms of changing needs, customization, and support.  Although it is Ingram's product, and their other ebook platform, MyiLibrary, is pretty bad.
• AODA compliant to some degree:  It doesn't go into much detail but it's got something.  Again, hopefully they'll be able to work with the vendor.

However, the article claims several benefits that have nothing to do with the deal specifically and only apply since we're talking about electronic resources, online stuff, like how they can be kept current much easier and cheaper than with print.  Really?  An online resource can be changed by the vendor at a distance?  Wow.  Next you'll be telling me there are screens that respond to TOUCH.

There were a few details that bothered me:

• The constant referral to cost-savings:  That's great and all but it's a little cliched to lean on the not-quite-accurate idea that ebooks are always cheaper because of the lack of printing costs.  The deal includes, for now, a built-in discount for electronic versions compared to the print versions.  Phase One allows for perpetual access to the titles if the student downloads them to a personal device.  Hopefully that will last.  Publisher's haven't tended to just give away that kind of access in the past so hopefully it will survive the pilot stage.  Of course, I assume that students won't be able to sell the etextbooks they aren't using anymore, illustrating just where the students' "savings" are coming from.
• The library is not mentioned once:  Yes, this deal is about student "purchase" of textbooks, but I would hope that the library had at least a seat at the table since we've all been dealing with ebooks and access issues (not to mention the platform vendor and the publishers in this deal) for a long time.  Some of the texts being used might well be acquired for less and with more stability by their own library.  The library should also be used to negotiating consortially for ebook deals, a possible direction the article mentions at the end.
• 100% of students?  100% of programs?:  I hope that doesn't force the hand of faculty too much.  Despite the flexibility of platform and the selection of publishers, I would assume that it's not always going to be possible to find the ideal textbook in the list of system-compatible works.  I don't know how college instructors select textbooks for their courses but I hope that this doesn't mean that they will have to "make do" with a certain title just because the institution has demanded universal compliance.

Well, hopefully Algonquin and other institution's moving in this direction will learn and grow through this effort.  I will be interesting to see how it turns how, come next September.

[ Read "e-Textbooks at Algonquin College" from Contact North. ]

Teach by NOT teaching

According to a relatively recent article in the "Journal of Learning Sciences" (learned of from Time magazine via Lifehacker), we are doing a disservice to our students and workers when we 'making learning easy'.  Kapur and Bielaczyc found that, in comparing students with and without direct teacher-involved instruction, those without consistently outperformed those with in post-tests.  On the one hand this is counter-intuitive:  when I'm building a barn, it's probably going to take me longer and I'm probably going to do a poorer job if I'm all alone than if my friends and neighbours come and help me.  It's easier to climb stairs than a rocky cliff.    But on the other hand, we tend to place more importance (and therefore internal resources such as attention, confidence, memory, etc.) on things that were difficult to achieve if for no other reason than we don't want to feel like we've wasted our time or, worse, looked foolish wasting our time.  Here is the summary of how to use this nugget of info in practice (from the Time magazine article):

First, choose problems to work on that “challenge but do not frustrate.” Second, provide learners with opportunities to explain and elaborate on what they’re doing. Third, give learners the chance to compare and contrast good and bad solutions to the problems.

Sounds like good advice.  As a parent, this suggests that I should back off a bit from helping my kids figure out homework or difficult new concepts.  As a librarian, this suggests that we should do our best to find that middle ground between challenging and frustrating info searchers and that perhaps we be more involved in the learning review steps, perhaps by providing venues and/or tools support such review.

[ Read Lifehacker's "The More You Struggle with New Information the More Likely You Are to Learn It" then Time magazine's "Why Floundering Is Good" then, if you have time and access Journal of Learning Sciences' "Designing for Productive Failure" ]

We can but we don't want to

Just read an old article about the publishing industry's problem with posting copyrighted text online from 2006 in which quotes Allan Adler, vice president for legal and governmental affairs for the Association of American Publishers as saying that "[Publishers] can't compete with free."  Oh really?

This is the exact opposite of the very argument publishers are currently using to argue that Open Access (OA) can never truly replace the traditional scholarly publishing process since it fails to sustainably provide all the competitive benefits that publishers have been providing for centuries, not to mention all the digital services available now.  If the publishing model that we are using now, i.e. anything in the industry except for OA, provides so much unique value (such as their contributions in editing, managing peer review, filtering, etc.) then how can you argue, at the same time, that a few professors posting longer-than-typical excepts online for free on functionless web pages are substantial competition?

I'm not arguing that we should all have the right to post whatever we want, however much we want.  It's just that the publishers' argument in this case is a little silly.  They don't need to make an argument for why it shouldn't be allowed.  The law already doesn't allow it.  And we all know why the law is there.  (Of course the issue involves the quantity allowed through US fair use which is a little vague but still, the point is that there IS a line that should not be crossed though it may be difficult to find the line.)

Incoming! As usual.

When challenged to move their institutions forward in this information-intensive age, administrators are generally quick to employ new technologies in pursuit of enhanced service offerings.

The troubling reality though is that the implementation of such technologies is almost always seen as providing desirable opportu­ni­ties to reduce budgets.

True. We seem to be in a fight with technology in the eyes of administartion when we should be seen as more invaluable because of the increases in technology. Fewer academic librarians means less skilled research being done in the university both by faculty and by students. Instructors bemoan the research skills of students and yet deny librarians class time with their students to help them with the problem.

[ Academic Librarians Are under Attack ]

"Paying full-price for a second-class university education"

From OCUFA Report, May 24, 2011, Volume 5, Issue 17:

A Laurentian University Faculty Association (LUFA) report warns that students are paying full-price for a second-class university education, thanks to an arrangement where about 1,200 Laurentian students are educated in Simcoe County at Georgian College’s various campuses in Barrie, Orillia, and Owen Sound.

The report says the partnership between Laurentian and Georgian is a way of offering postsecondary education “on the cheap”, emphasizing that the vast majority of Georgian-based faculty are low-paid contract academic staff who have to share offices, in one instance with up to 17 others.

Students, moreover, agreed with the faculty association’s critique that many of the college’s professors have crushing workloads, lack job security, and cannot voice dissenting opinions while working at the college site.

Students studying at Georgian also say that while they pay close to $800 more in tuition than college students, they have an inadequate library, few extra-curricular options, and face administration resistance when they try to form a student union.

Last week Georgian signed an agreement with Laurentian based on a memorandum of settlement negotiated between Laurentian and LUFA, signed December 2009, whereby Georgian now accepts that LUFA members have academic freedom. But still...no private offices.

Libraries can be, should be and are the hub of the school

From parentcentral.ca:

“A contemporary library that is running well should be the learning hub, the go-to place that kids flock to when they need to find something out,” said Kelsall of John G. Althouse Middle School in Etobicoke.

“In my library, kids come here to play chess, it’s the place they go to knit, run the Eco-Team — it’s the home base for student government.

“It’s where they can get really good reading materials, books they can’t get in the public libraries because the waiting lists are too long.”

Principals don't get it and school librarians are paying the price

From the Montreal Gazette:

While governments say librarians are necessary to teach the skills needed to navigate today's information environment, schools aren't hearing the message, a report released Monday suggests.

And that misunderstanding has led to cuts in school-library programs that could decrease student achievement and harm Canada's ability to build a knowledge-based economy, says People for Education, an Ontario-based, parent-led education agency.

"Use del.icio.us tags for school" article needs work

Just read an article on "how to use Delicious to organize your student life" which included the pretty obvious but expanded on steps:

1. Sign up
2. Tag everything
3. Bundle it up

along with tips under the headings:

• What should you bookmark?
• Building on your records
• How to keep track of all the tags?

Some of this info is pretty basic and is obviously meant for someone at least close to a first time user but when I read through it I had some issues.

1. "Tag everything". This may hold many people back. This is absolutely a vital part of using a tool like del.icio.us (along with the almost equally important rule of 'tag consistently and as much as you can') but I would think that most people would balk at the sound of this. I don't think that most people 'get' the need to do this so perhaps the author could have stressed this a little more.
2. "...find the book in Google Books and bookmark the link..." Not even close to everything is in Google Books so I'm not sure why the author used it as the one example. Perhaps there's a bias? What about Amazon, LibraryThing, Wikipedia, WorldCat, or your local public and/or academic library's catalog (this last one is not always permanently linkable although it's getting better). These are all much more comprehensive (especially as far as your course syllabus is concerned) book lists than Google Books. Although none of them have complete access to the full text online, they all have benefits that Google Books doesn't have.
3. "...(along with any reasons why it was cited). Ensure you note which pages were given to you as readings and why." I assume this is meant to be written in the notes or description field. This is a good idea although this field can only have so much text and since each URL is allowed only one del.icio.us record, if you tag a site that you will use outside of the class it's "for" as well, your use of this text box may conflict.
4. The article is suggesting bookmarking a potentially large number of URLs for each course. This may get a little messy when you're trying to find one in a pile of 50 or more URLs. tagging with something in addition to your course tag should be mentioned. (It does this in a rather subtle way when it says "Don’t forget to use the class code tag and any relevant tags to indicate class topic, course topic, section in coursework, related essays, etc." but I'm not sure this is strong enough or explicit enough to get the point across.

Finally, the one big failing of using del.icio.us in this way is that it relies on the fact that there is an online presence for whatever you want to include in your tracking/record of your course materials. What if the professor does not have any web site with his/her information (increasingly rare but still out there) but hands you a piece of paper with all the relevant info on it? The article should bring up this situation.

Overall, there is some great information for the del.icio.us noob in this article, but it could be made better. What do you think? Have any tips that should be added to a "cheat sheet" like this?

[ Thanks to "How To Use Delicious To Organize Your Student Life" from makeuseof.com ]

Turning textbooks into wikis

From an article in The New York Times recently, "Macmillan, one of the five largest publishers of trade books and textbooks, is introducing software called DynamicBooks, which will allow college instructors to edit digital editions of textbooks and customize them for their individual classes."

Although the article describes it as "a kind of Wikipedia of textbooks", it seems like it's more like turning each textbook into a wiki itself, with the publisher and/or author as moderator, allowing good suggestions to improve the work much faster than through the current print publication process, while easily avoiding unwanted alterations.

One comment about this article is that the author explains that textbook prices are so high usually because "students usually resell them in the used market for several years before a new edition is released." That is probably true but part of the reason why students don't see the price as being worth paying for is that too often textbooks are not read by the student. Textbooks are purchased on the off chance that they are needed in class, not because the student honestly believes that the content is valuable. Why spend more money on something you don't want inherently in the first place? Hopefully, making the textbooks and their changes more "dynamic", content will improve, or rather student-perceived content will improve and buyers will see them as investments instead of necessary but "rentable" evils.

But do you think this will really improve textbooks? And how many instructors/professors will take or even have the time to make the needed and/or suggested improvements. Some will, yes. But will there be enough?

[ From "Textbooks That Professors Can Rewrite Digitally" by Motoko Rich from The New York Times Media & Advertising section. Discovered via "The new new textbook?" from Against-the-Grain.com ]

Not as much but more than I have.

A little over a month ago, I said I was going to learn French. Well, I took longer than I expected to prepare, started later than I expected, postponed it more than I should have, and changed my strategy too often.

But that's ok. I have certainly learned more French than I ever have before. I am still slowly working on it but, what with traveling and preparing for interviews and their presentations, plus other work I have to get done, I have reduced my efforts to learn La Belle Langue quite a bit. And the workload will only get worse. What I need is some touch of formal pressure to keep up with it. Maybe a language partner, or a regular tv show or vodcast to understand, something like that. My other issue is my efforts to retain what I have tried to learn each day... with my other responsibilities and projects, I need some easy way to insert repetition of key lessons into the following 24 hours, whether it's a vocab list to carry around or a phrase to go over in my head. Something to drill something into my head until it sticks.

Learning a new language is hard. Or maybe it's just me? Anyone else have issues with this kind of thing? Any tips on making it easier?

Busting my own hump.

For what feels like years, I've had an item in my to do list that I've managed to continually postpone despite the fact that I was so gung-ho when I wrote it down. Learn something new. I know, as a librarian I'm always doing that but I wanted it to be an active, concrete task that chose. Each month (crazy, huh?). I even made a list that has quite a few items on it, ranging in specificity from the incredibly broad and vague (e.g. Health.) to the painfully narrow (e.g. Learn the basics about "canonical discriminant analysis".).

My idea was that I would systematically add skills and content to my repertoire that would help me in my work, my profession and my life in general. But it's hard to do! With time constraints, chores at home, kids running around, and a billion other potential projects waiting for my attention, I have yet to sit down and choose something for my "month of learning".

But today was different. I chose something. French. Ok, not everything. I don't expect to become fluent. Just the basics. I remember a good deal of my high school French classes. I'm Canadian (that's got to count for something). And it's in my blood - my grandfather is fluent and very French-Canadian. My goal will be some basic (re)understanding of the fundamentals of grammar, a handle on accurate pronunciation, and a small but practical vocabulary. Perhaps enough to visit Quebec or France and not have to hope that someone speaks English! lol

Any self-directed learning plans of your own? Have you had any difficulties getting them accomplished, or even started? How have you solved them, or have you? Any ideas?

P.S. Oh and my deadline is actually August 1st so I actually have less than a month but I wanted my repeating task (of choosing a new something to learn) to be scheduled for the first of each month.

Keeping Current

I taught a few sessions of a "keeping current" workshop that I put together for work a while ago which was mostly/usually about what RSS is and how you can use it in your current awareness strategy instead of subscribing to and NOT reading dozens of print journals. But while I was teaching these sessions, a recurring theme arose.

Finding information's not the problem. We all know that "If I only knew/read/skimmed everything in this book/journal/website/etc that would really help my job/research/homework/relationship/parenting/etc." There is enough information out there -- factual or not, professional or not, valuable or not -- to satisfy every individual need for knowing more about whatever they want to know about. The key is in choosing what "stream" to follow, or float down rather. You have to be pretty selective about what you're going to be tracking regularly. There's a lot of content out there but there's also a lot of overlap. What one Corvette expert has to say on a regular basis will repeat much of what another has to say. You can't listen to them all.

Well, actually, you can almost. If you narrow down your focus enough, you can still keep pretty good tabs on all the "experts" in a field. But then you can't do anything else. You can be yet another expert on the topic of marsh hens but when someone asks you about guineafowl you'll be stumped. Of course, if you don't focus at all, you'll be reading about a million and one topics and not get enough depth to be of value in any of them.

The best path is right down the middle. Make a list of your primary interests and primary specialties and focus on them. Read some books, read some blogs, search for some current articles on each of your main topics and do so with some regularity.

And remember to shut it off once in a while. Dive into something completely new once in a while. Or turn it all off and have a break. You'll be amazed at what bubbles to the surface when the turbines are turned off or pointed in another direction.

So what do you folks do to "keep up"?

Wrong way, people!

From Tomorrow's Professor Blog, I read an article about the current push for universities to offer 3 year undergraduate degree programs instead of, or in addition to, the standard 4 year programs. The claim is that it will save money, both for the institution and for the student, get people into the work force faster, and result in a more streamlined, "fuel-efficient" education system.

Bah, I say. As soon as I read this, I hung my head in despair. This is not the direction we need to be going. On a biological level, there's an inborn need for more formative years (i.e. more education of immature individuals in the species... not intended as an insult lol) the more complex the lifestyle or society the individual is born into. Everyone seems to be saying that life is much more complex now, and is getting more so... There are simply more things to learn and more specialized nooks for people to fit themselves into. We don't want less educated generalists, generally - we want better trained, better educated, more mature workers. Actually, we need everyone to be more educated generally, I think.

I have to reveal my bias in this of course. I am a librarian in a university, and although I think our library, serving our faculty, within our university helps the students (and staff and faculty) more than average, I still don't think we have enough time with them. We are integrated into their classes almost entirely but we still see the vast majority of the students about 3-4 hours for formal education sessions in information literacy throughout their time here. For a subject and skill set that most people don't think is useful or think they have already (wrong on both counts), this is hardly enough time to change their opinions AND teach them what they need to know. Shortening the time some of them are in university, will simply decrease our time with them, and increase the pressure of the faculty members to give us even less.

As it says in the article, "the push for three years [is] coming from those whose ideas about higher ed amount to: 'get it over with and get it over with fast.'" Yes. In all likelihood, shortening the amount of time students are required to spend in higher education would be cheaper all round. But so would not attending university at all! That's not the direction we want to be going. Honestly, our education system here in Canada and the United States is not perfect. But cutting the time in it is not the answer. More time might be. At least, better teaching strategies and an improved societal atmosphere of "education is a good thing" would help. And more money too. Cutting funds from higher education just destroys all the work that we have done in the past several years to improve our teaching as it is.

The funniest part of the article is the quote from Richard Vedder saying that "Thomas Jefferson's two-year program at the College of William and Mary didn't stunt his intellectual growth." Ignoring the tiring habit of Americans to bring up their founding fathers every chance they get, couldn't Thomas Jefferson be an exception? And besides, I think the almost 250 years since Mr. Jefferson graduated has seen a few developments that may make even a general liberal arts degree require a little more effort. LOL

934 The Buzz and Spin on 3-Year Degrees (via Tomorrow's Professor Blog, RSS feed)

EOSET, babies, and a new job...

Presentations are over! I talked about library resources that can be used in the classroom last week at EOSET 2007. It was at RMC which was cool. Never been over there before. Nice old buildings. Probably older than some of the older buildings on the Queen's campus. Very impressive talk by Major Workman on teaching, technology, policy, and the future. Very inspiring and refreshing, and of course, candid. It is the military you know!

Also a great description of a new automated assignment/testing system for some professor of math... can't remember his name right now. (Check on the EOSET program, you'll find it.) Anyway, it was about this system that randomizes rather complex math problems so that students can take "quizzes" with as many questions as they'd like, as many times as they'd like. It actually turned out that students were doing like ten times as much work and loving it! Pretty cool.

And in other news, my coworker is having twins. Don't know whether they are boys or girls or what, or identical or not, but that's pretty cool. Actually, it's really old news but I haven't mentioned on here yet so it's news to you! And my sister-in-law is apparently pregnant. Babies everywhere!

Still looking for another job for when this temporary contract runs out. I spent a lot of time today working on my resume and cover letter for the one I'd like the most (gotta apply soon) (Update: Just noticed the page this links to is gone.  I believe it was related to supporting the continuing teacher education program at Queen's U.) and I've got to work on applying to a bunch of others as well. Wish me luck. Again. Oh boy.

Coming to a head...

"Matthew 2.0" screenshot
Originally uploaded by mjthomas43.

And speaking of heads, isn't mine big??? LOL I read somewhere that in a personal blog/site you should have a picture of yourself to let your audience know who they are dealing with. So what better way to include a pic of me, than to have my big head sticking into the works from stage left?

So, this is my latest design. I'm not completely happy with it but it will pretty much have to do for now. I've got other things to do now. I will implement some minor changes here and there (I've received some valuable advice from JennTSG, and am open to advice from anyone else) but the general layout will remain the same... Unless I get struck with inspiration (which is sometimes as painful as being struck by lightning).

The other things I have to do are: create two other blogs I have ideas for (one on reference service and one on perceptions of librarianship, libraries, librarians, etc.), work on some presentations and posters and reports I have signed on to do, keep beating away at the dead horse I call looking for a permanent position nearby, and probably some other things that escape me for the moment.

I've been watching TVO's "The Agenda" which is totally awesome. Political and geeky and certainly NOT for the drowsy, it is primarily a interview/discussion show that focuses on Canadian (and sometimes world) politics and social issues. Put your thinking cap on, have a cup of coffee (ewwwww!) and give it a try.

Took my 2yo son to the photographers tonight to get a picture taken to include in his "Application for a Citizenship Certificate from Inside Canada (Proof of Citizenship) Under Section 3" (he was born in the States) which I really should have done a year ago but I'm doing it! Get off my back already!

And I was working on creating a "cheat sheet" for using the staff wiki at work today. I'm training the staff at Bracken on how to use a/the wiki and they've requested a handout. Of course, I can't just give them some notes and stuff on a piece of paper.... I have to create a work of art! Place the screenshots just so, choose colours, select fonts, perfect the layout... It has to be something I can be proud of, something people LIKE to look at, something they can hang on their wall... well maybe not that good, but still.

Now I am the teacher...

I'm just about to teach another Internet class for our customers [that's another thing librarians do... teach!] and although I like teaching, I'm really tired. Maybe I'll just tell 'em it's all done with magic and send them home early. I think they'll buy that.