Adamantly Pro-Truth in a Propaganda-Recast-as-“Post-Truth” Time, by Michele Santamaria

Dahlia Shevin, 2016, "You belong/ Tú perteneces."

In the Italian theatrical genre of commedia dell'arte--picture motley characters with names like "Harlequino" and "Punchinello" and broad farce--there is a constant tension between servants and masters, more precisely, the audience is left questioning which is which. As a librarian, I am constantly thinking about how the servant-master dynamic is central to our profession. Since I have chosen a field that is service-oriented, I ask myself: in what ways am I servant? And what is it that I am servant to or to whom? Are there ways that acting like a servant betrays my other core ideals? Are there ways that I can use my status as a "servant" to subvert oppressive power?

At the current political moment, I find these questions particularly inescapable and much more situationally specific: as I ponder whether or not to send a check to renew membership in an organization that "hastily" sent out a statement supporting initiatives of our President-elect, as I ponder the rush to formulate information literacy plans that tackle fake news and filter bubbles, as I ponder safety pin initiatives. Respectively, the questions that are raised for me with each of these examples are the following: Are librarians to be "neutral" servants who curry to power, no matter how much that power repudiates what we claim to be some of our highest ideals? Are we to be servants to the latest way to be on topic, ambulance chasers running after the victims of the fake news story? Are we to be, as one skeptical librarian put it, "Becky with the pin" by remaining silent while displaying our safety pin as a symbol of our goodness while someone with a marginalized identity gets attacked?

At my saddest, darkest, smallest, I am afraid that we might be all of these things already & that the current political and historical moment is just throwing a particularly harsh light on our profession's flaws.  I am afraid that no amount of information literacy is going to save us from the powerful and apparently intoxicating draw of fascism. But most of all, I am afraid for our students, the black, the brown, those wearing hijabs, those who go by they/theirs, the disabled, the students whom I protested alongside with fifteen days ago and who reacted so passionately when a Native American staff member told them about the North Dakota Access Pipeline.

When I saw a young black woman wearing a "Black Lives Matter" pin, I thought she might be headed to the student protest. I didn't have full details. I talked to her as he walked towards the Student Center. She had no clue about Steven Bannon.  But while the students chanted about their local context, their local struggles, it was clear that the current political moment had prompted this feeling of urgency. It was also clear that they wanted to know what was going on, that they believed in the power of information and communication.

So for now, I'm going to set aside my doubts about safety pins, LibGuides on fake news, and official statements. I'm going super-super local to be there for all the students who were at that protest and all the students who were not there but are also legitimately scared. Post-truth might have been designated the word of the year, and on some level, that terrifies me. On another deeper level, though, I understand that as a librarian I am ultimately a servant to the truth. I suppose other librarians might say "knowledge" or "information." What I care most about is the truth. And one of the most important truths sustaining me right now is that my brown skin and lived experiences tangibly help me to connect with some of these students. The truth is, as one autistic student yelled at the student rally, "I am not broken," though it has felt that way, at times, since the morning of November 9.

And yet, there are moments that give me hope. Last week, a Latina who had come to me during the most stressful point of her spring semester last year, came back with a group. At the end of our appointment, she asked me a question about study abroad and we laughed about how much she trusted what I had to say. And she said that she could tell that I was the sort of person who would tell her the truth, who would just say what they really thought. Truth and trust--I will be a servant to those and I guess also to love though I'm not the kind of person who hugs readily. But to be truly present for these students is one thing I can give and that, I think, is no small gift in a political time that seems hell bent on repudiating human connection along with its "no facts/post truth" significations.  Tell it like it is, especially to students.  Love them & call the post-truth that endangers all of us, especially the marginalized, by its proper name--call it and denounce it as propaganda.

Michele Santamaria is the Learning Design Librarian at Millersville University. Aside from #alwayslibrarianing, she is a year-round poet and advocate for social justice.  She has a chapter forthcoming in an ACRL autoethnography publication and a chapter forthcoming in a Library Juice publication about being a poet-librarian. Apparently, there are a bunch of them.  She is happy to interact over social media via Twitter @infolitmaven.

Information Literacy as Liberation

"Fake news" is lazy language.
Be specific. Do you mean:
A) Propaganda
B) Disinformation
C) Conspiracy theory
D) Clickbait

— Tim Dickinson (@7im) December 5, 2016

There's been a lot of discussion of what role librarians can/should play to fight the ongoing maelstrom of suspicious information sources. I agree: information literacy is a powerful tool we have at our disposal, but we have to be smart about this. LibGuides, while useful in some circumstances, are not the way to go. Our constituents barely use our websites when they are required to do so, never mind about when they are out in the wilds of Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, etc., looking at the title of an article that was just posted by a friend. And as clever as the CRAAP test is, and as funny as the acronym might be, I sometimes have a hard time remembering what each of the letters mean even though I'm in this field - imagine how often our students forget it.

No, we need to use a tool that the members of our community can take with them anywhere and easily remember at any time. I've written about this before, but I'm writing about it again because it's timely and important: we should be teaching our constituents to look at information sources using the 5 Ws.

• Who? Who wrote this? Can you even tell? Are they an authority in this topic? Credentials are important, but first hand accounts are also important. Most importantly: who stands to benefit if you believe this source?
• What? What kind of resource is this? Is it an advertisement? Newspaper article? Scholarly research article? Also, what kind of information does it present? Does the content accurately match up with what you already know about this topic? And another thing: are there a bunch of advertisements, either related or unrelated to the topic of the article?
• When? How up-to-date is the information? And how soon after an event was this published? (We've all seen false reports and misinformation happen shortly after major events like school shootings.) Also, how up-to-date do you need the information to be? Looking for reviews of classic movies that came out shortly after the cinematic debut versus critical acclaim that came years later can make a big difference.
• Where? Country of origin? (And yes, I teach students about country codes and how to figure out origin when it's a .com or other three letter extension.) How different is the information provided by CNN versus BBC versus Al-Jazeera? Also, where is this information in relation to the structure of the website? Is it on the front page? Is it buried?
• Why? What's the purpose of the source? Is it trying to sell you something? Convince you of something? Share facts? Also, why are you looking at this source? Entertainment? Medical research? Academic need?

This is something I've used for years, and it sticks to students. It sticks because they already have the 5 Ws as a tool in their mental toolbox, and I'm just showing them another way to use it. The thing about information literacy is that it's how we teach our constituents to think for themselves. We need to be as efficient and effective as possible in this war against propaganda, disinformation, conspiracy theories, and click bait. Don't you think?

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The Information Literacy Wrestling Spectacular

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If you've been doing information literacy instruction for any length of time, you've had to deal with the faculty member who wants a laundry list of skills and websites shown to their students. If you're especially lucky, you've also gotten "teach them everything they'll ever need to know ever about the databases" with a heaping side dish of "oh, and can you do it the first week because I'm sure they'll need it." Of course, there are variations on this theme, like faculty who see you as a substitute teacher who want you to come when they're at a conference or others who wait until you're in the information literacy session to ask for yet another thing... It's enough to make you sigh dramatically just thinking about it, right? The thing is, librarians know the laundry list isn't going to work. By the time students need the skills we've taught them, sometimes years later, they will have forgotten everything including the librarian's name.

It's all very frustrating. Feels like a wrestling match at times, and if you're at an institution that considers librarians staff instead of faculty, it can feel like a very mismatched sumo match.

The truth is, though, that it's been years since I've had to consciously think about this kind of issue. I have my arguments and responses so firmly in place that it's become second nature to me. But then I saw a string of tweets from Carolyn Ciesla, and I started to think about it again. I realized it would be a good thing to share on my blog, so here is how I approach the situation, including some of the phrases I use over and over again:

• Start early. I email all the first year seminar faculty, and anyone else who incorporates librarian led info lit, way ahead of time so I can be the one to start the conversation. This way I am more likely to be the one steering it to make sure my outcomes are in the mix. I use phrases like "we want to partner with you" to bring that thought home.
• Make sure there's an assignment involved. This helps with faculty who want their students to see all the things now because I can tailor my suggestions to what the students will actually need. When there isn't an existing assignment, I offer to help them design one. "It will help cement the lessons, if your students have to use the skills right away."
• Establish a pedagogically sound timeline. Make sure your instruction happens between the students getting the assignment and when it's due. I admit I stole this line, but I tell faculty "it's better that the instruction be just in time instead of just in case."
• Have a pre-established information literacy curriculum. This can be hard to establish, but nothing has helped me push back against the laundry list approach more than this answer. "With first year seminars, we teach X, Y, and Z, and since your class is on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, there isn't a lot of time left over." Also, "Since this is a senior seminar, most if not all of them will have already seen X, Y, and Z, but to be safe how about I breeze through that before moving onto A, B, and C." (How to establish a curriculum for your information literacy program is a whole other kettle of fish.)
• Be willing to say, "no." This is the most difficult thing, and you might want to check in with your boss before you do it, but it is possible to decline and come out alive. "We want to establish the basics for the students before we go onto something as advanced as that." This can be harder when faculty plop a request into your lap in the middle of the session, but it's still possible to tell them no, but kindly, at that point. "Your students will be able to find everything they need using the database I'm showing them now, but if we have time at the end I'll try to fit that in" is especially apt.
• Know when to give in. I once worked with a faculty member who wanted to teach databases and web analysis on their own, and they wanted me to show their first year students how to use our citation management software. I still think citation management software is a bad idea for first years. Using that kind of software for a paper that will have five citations is overkill and useless since first students won't use it again for months or even years. When this particular faculty member came to me (at a previous job), I complained to my director. "Do I really have to do this? Can I tell them no?" He told me it was my choice, but then wisely pointed out that I could embed my own agenda in the larger lesson and show them how to assess websites in the midst of teaching them how to use the software to create a citation. Smart man, and his idea worked perfectly.

I hope this post helps. I know I said, "yes! sure!" to everything early in my career, and don't beat up on yourself too much if you aren't comfortable turning down faculty requests and demands. As for the more experienced info lit instructors reading this, chime in with ideas that have worked for you in the past.

Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes (Turn and Face the Strain)

Back when I started this blog, I spent a lot of time complaining about how so many LIS programs have curricula that looks at least 5 to 10 years behind what I do every day. But more and more, I know it's not just the LIS graduate programs. Even in this supposed age of technological wonders and instant communication, we're lucky if 10-15% of libraries are on the same page - let alone our graduate programs and our national organizations.

Let me give you an example from when I was just starting to get interested in librarianship in a broader way. In 2010, I attended my first national conference: the American Library Association annual conference was in DC that year. I learned right away what so many people know: that the best learning opportunities come in the unstructured times at conferences. One moment from that conference still stands out in my memory. I overheard some people talking about "how nice that ALA is finally taking graphic novels seriously." This happened as I was walking away from the Dark Horse booth where I'd had a nice, in person conversation with a rep with whom I had connected via email in the past. By that time I had been overseeing graphic novel collections in libraries for 5+ years and had built collections at two different libraries. Overhearing that conversation blew my mind. Something I'd been doing for a most of my career at that point was "finally" getting attention from a national organization.

I'm not faulting ALA, nor really tooting my own horn. I was lucky enough to work at an institution that encouraged new ideas and also lucky enough to have the kind of relationship with students where they'd be honest with me about what they wanted. It was a shock, though, to realize how different things were between my library and the national conference.

I had similar feelings as I read and commented on the various iterations of the Framework for Information Literacy. Above and beyond the jargon and buzzwords and threshold concepts, I was excited to see that at it's heart, the framework resembles how I approach information literacy more closely than anything I've seen from a national organization. The idea of framing these skills as practical, as more central to student learning than any specific outcomes, feels right. The document is not perfect, but it's a lot better than what came before.

All of this came to mind, yes the graphic novel story as well as my thoughts about the framework, when I saw this tweet:

Feeling need for my reminder that lib instruction didn't start w the Standards+#acrlframework didn't invent new concepts. #history #infolit

— Lisa Hinchliffe (@lisalibrarian) February 27, 2016

Ms. Hinchliffe's tweet made me think about buzzwords and slow steady change and so much more. Not too long ago, when I started in this field, we were in the midst of a jargon change. I took a Bibliographic Instruction class at my MLIS program. The library where I worked for 5 years had even labelled their classroom with the words "Bibliographic Instruction." Students there referred to that room the way long time staff did... "the BI room." But the rubric I helped write to measure Writing Across the Curriculum focused on "information literacy." Library instruction has also been called "user education" and "library orientation." Heck, that last one is the origin of one of the best conferences we've got! Library Orientation EXchange, or LOEX, has been going on for over 40 years.

We can be slow to change, but also we can be quick to throw and/or forget our history.

The main thing I'm thinking about, though, is that I'm starting to understand why more experiences library professionals say things like, "we've always done it that way." I know it's easy to hear that phrase and think the speaker is stuck. But at this stage of my career, I can hear nuances in that much reviled statement. I can hear when someone means "but I really want to change it" versus when they mean "and I'm scared to try something new." More importantly, though, I've noticed an undercurrent of "I'm not afraid of change so much as I'm scared of uninformed progress for the sake of progress."

Things change. It's a fact so true that it sounds a bit cliched. But change without awareness of history can be worse than no change at all. Knowing where we came from can be a road map of sorts. After all, you want to void those million dead-end streets, don't you?

Bringing My Teaching Philosophy Into Focus

Teachers Point of View

I'd had the link saved for a while, but I finally got around to reading "Six Questions That Will Bring Your Teaching Philosophy Into Focus" last week. I've gotten in the habit of letting go of saved links if I haven't read them in a certain amount of time, but something about the title of that piece had me saving it - and I'm so glad I did.

I highly recommend reading the whole of the original if you have the time, but I thought it would be fun and enlightening to answer the questions and then share the results. If you only have time to read one, I of course want you to read my blog. However, you do need to know one thing from "Six Questions" - the author believes how we like to learn informs how we like to teach. I agree with that for the most part (caveats and addenda are all to do with the reading I've done about educational psychology and epistemology, and are besides the point of this post). So, here goes...

1. Describe the best learning experience you have had as a student.

I'm hoping the teacher who gave me this experience ends up reading this, which is likely since we're actually friends on Facebook. Without even a close second, my best learning experience was the time Mrs. Atwood (sometimes I can bring myself to use her first name, but not today) let us choose our own topics in the Talented and Gifted class she taught at my elementary school. (I know, forever ago, but it's pertinent.) I wrote about dragons, but it wasn't just a story I dreamed up. No. I compared the life cycles of eastern and western dragons. I discussed the science of dragon flight. I talked about St. George. I even covered the mating habits of different species. It was glorious good fun to write, and I may even still have the report itself around my apartment somewhere. Most important, though, that project let me know that my curiosity was just as important in the classroom as the teacher's goals. It taught me that education could be fun. Thank you, Debbie, for teaching me to enjoy learning.

2. Describe the best teaching experience you have had as an instructor.

Early on in my librarian career, there was this one student who tried to snowball me. We originally met during an instruction session I did for his class. He came once to ask for help. He came a second time to ask for help. The third time he came to ask for help, I gave him the help, but then I asked him a few questions about what he'd tried before coming to me. When I realized he was hornswoggling me, I called him on it. "I think you know how to do this and you're coming to me help so I'll do it for you." His face broke into a grin and he admitted it: "Well, I can be very charming." After his admission, I told him that he could always come to me for help, but that I was going to want some kind of proof that he'd tried it himself. Then I went further - I told him that I was going to inform the rest of the library staff about the deal we'd just made. He groused a bit, but then he agreed. A couple of months later, he came running up to me in the library to tell me about the B+ he'd gotten on a paper for which he'd found all the resources all on his own. It was in that moment that I realized I needed to hold our students accountable, that I needed to be kind but that I shouldn't be nice. Further, he taught me that students want to be held accountable.

3. What are you trying to achieve in your students with your teaching?

I want to get students to the point where they can teach themselves. It's a multifaceted skill set. Part of it is teaching them how to think critically, but that's not all of it. There's also the need to understand how to deal with failures, both in the short term and in the long term. Teaching students to concentrate on resilience and self-care while holding them accountable is a careful balance, and not one I can do on my own. (I've talked about my agenda in the past.) Information literacy cannot exist in a vacuum, nor should it.

4. Why is this important to you?

Because I care about the future. Grandiose, I know, but true. I know people who are educated to do a thing, and only that thing, aren't as well equipped to deal with change as are people who are educated to think. Because I want a well educated and informed, and yes - INFORMATION LITERATE - populace. Because, as I said in that post about my agenda, "our education system is churning out a generation of Spartans, but what we need is Athenians." Most of all, this is important to me because there are people in my past who gave me these lessons, and those skills have served me in good stead. 

5. How do you achieve your objectives you wrote down for question #3 above?

This is an area where I need to do a lot of thinking, since I don't have a strong enough answer. I know that I try to achieve my objectives by working to integrate information literacy into our curriculum and by educating members of my community about the research based practices I've developed. I know that I have built an information literacy curriculum in the past based on my constructivist pedagogy. I also know that I am working to do something similar at my new school in that vein. Of course, "Six Questions" is clearly focused for individuals and not programs, but I still feel I need more detail. And proof. Besides, if nothing else, I'd like to be able to answer the final question with more confidence than I currently feel.

6. Why do you use these particular teaching strategies as opposed to others that are available to you?

I do my best to use and advocate for teaching strategies that are research based because I know they are more likely to work, but that answer sounds hollow to my mind. I'm not saying it's wrong, just that I want to be able to answer this question with more depth. 

So, how about you? Do you think you could answer these questions? Do you want to?

Fighting a Pedagogy of Convenience

One of my biggest pet peeves in education is what I think of as the Pedagogy of Convenience. One way we see this is the faculty member who has a conference or an off campus meeting and wants a librarian to do an information literacy session while s/he will be away (grrr and hiss, right?). Never mind if it's too early in the semester to teach students about our resources. Never mind that it's obvious the faculty member in question is only looking for a substitute teacher and doesn't seem to understand that his/her students will forget all the skills by the time the paper/essay/whatever is due.

I'm sure most if not all of the academic librarians out there can relate to that particular frustration, but remember the old saying about how when you point a finger there are four fingers pointing back at you? Well it's true here as well. I've seen librarians - heck, I've been guilty of it myself - committing acts of convenience. Teaching something the way "we've always done it," even when we've seen better ways of doing teaching/demonstrating whatever. Even though I am far from the stereotypical "sage on the stage," I still talk more than the students in my sessions. It's a problem, for sure.

That problem is never far from my thoughts, so it's no wonder that it was my first thought after I finished reading "A veteran teacher turned coach shadows 2 students for 2 days – a sobering lesson learned" (posted on Grant Wiggins' blog but written by someone else). It's a good read if you have the time, even though it's not exactly on the same topic. However, two points from the blog post resonated strongly as libr* related:

• Students "feel a little bit like a nuisance all day long." The author's examples and suggestions for dealing with this are more appropriate to a semester long class, it's true. But it isn't hard to extrapolate to a library perspective. It makes me think about how, for each student who asks a question - like where the stapler is or how to long onto our resources from off campus - this is an important question. Rather than making our patrons feel like they are bothering us, we should be empathetic and helpful. Sure, it's more convenient to point to the instructions for logging onto the computers, but could we instead walk a patron over to the computer and help them?
• "Students are sitting passively and listening during 90% of their classes." The author makes a brilliant suggestion we in libraries can adopt: "offer brief, blitzkrieg-like mini-lessons with engaging, assessment-for-learning-type activities following directly on their heals." (I've done this and should probably write it up. At the very least, I need to start using this approach again.)

I know I'll never completely overturn the Pedagogy of Convenience, but maybe I can start to chip away at it?

How about you? Did you read the piece? Do you think you'll change your practice at all? Did anything else stand out from the article as applicable to your library?

Values and Value, by Nicholas Schiller

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I’m an idealist and my values drive a lot of my decision making. I want to share a little about my core library values and what happens when professional pressures start to compromise them.

It will probably help if I frame all of this in a story. A few years ago, I was at a local library instruction conference listening to a respected colleague present on a new program assessment effort she was leading. She encountered resistance from tenured colleagues who were slow to engage with assessment efforts that lacked clear incentives. I was newly tenured then and I had an epiphany: at some point I’d become one of these tenured barriers to new ideas. I’d stopped idealizing a “culture of assessment” and begun responding to it critically or even cynically.

I’m an information literacy librarian and a teacher because I value student learning. I’m emotionally engaged in my work; I imagine most instruction librarians are. When I’m doing my best work, I’m helping students unlock their curiosity and guiding them to master skills and methods for critical thinking. I’m making an important difference and this feels good. We should remember that our work has long-term social value. This is why I love what I do. On an individual level, my values are still rooted in reflective practice (from Char Booth’s Reflective Teaching, Effecting Learning: Instructional Literacy for Library Educators “Reflective practice: Instructor development strategies that observe and consider one’s own teaching effectiveness with the goal of improving the learner experience”), but on an organizational level I’d stopped believing in “the culture of assessment.”

This culture has been putting a lot of pressure on academic libraries being asked to demonstrate the value of libraries. Specifically, libraries are being pushed to provide systematic assessment of the impact of their programs. Demonstrating value involves assessment. Assessment involves setting program goals, listing leaning outcomes that demonstrate these goals, and then measuring how well we achieve these outcomes. Using this process we can know with greater certainty whether we are succeeding at what we set out to do and whether what we are doing is having a positive impact on library users. This is an unequivocally a good thing and a necessary part of reflective practice. It keeps us honest and helps steer our decisions with data. Assessment, however, is a loaded term with multiple meanings, some of which contradict each other. I want to be clear that I’m referring to “College Outcomes Assessment” which the ERIC Thesaurus describes as:

Formal or informal appraisal or judgment of two- or four-year college programs or students in relation to institutional or public expectations of achievement or development--often but not always measured against specific objectives.

College outcomes assessment is a necessary part of reflective practice, but it is not, by itself, sufficient to achieve reflective practice.  However, the definition above makes it easy to confuse outcomes assessment with reflective practice. This can be dangerous. Reflective practice is aligned with my core values, but merely “demonstrating value” is not. When it describes “College Outcomes Assessment,” the ERIC Thesaurus includes both assessment of programs and assessment of students. My assertion here is that assessment of student learning and the assessment of institutional effectiveness (program assessment) are significantly different efforts. Or, to paraphrase what a respected former colleague once told me: “There is the assessment you do to become a better teacher and there’s the assessment you do because the administration makes you.” My concern is that assessment of student learning appeals to the core values of instruction librarians and this appeal is being leveraged to entice us to engage in the kinds of assessment that don’t align with our core values. It can feel like a classic bait-and-switch con.

Good libraries assess because, when done correctly, assessment fosters student learning. However, when done incorrectly, assessment becomes a symbol for serious problems and issues in American higher education. Assessment can be a weapon used by administration to seize power from faculty. Assessment can be a Trojan horse for market values replacing the values of the public good and social justice. We love our work and we love student learning, but when this love and these values are co-opted to serve the neoliberal goals of demonstrating institutional effectiveness or to apply a market value to academic library services, it feels like betrayal. As an idealistic librarian, when I feel my values betrayed the quality of my work and my ability to help foster student learning diminishes.

So, how do we respond? To steal a simile, we should be as wise as serpents and as innocent as doves. We should know that the motivating agendas behind faculty and administration approaches to assessment are deeply rooted but rarely communicated openly. Assessment is political and its language is encrypted. We have to assess both to be true to our values and to survive in the current higher education environment. What we can do is to make sure that the value that we are demonstrating lines up with our values. We can be engaged, creative, and tireless in measuring student learning, social justice, and critical thinking. We can be more passive or somewhat-less-than- engaged, creative, and tireless when asked to measure return on investment, to value easy-to-quantify goals more highly than opaque goals, or to trade in our core values for the values of the marketplace.

My challenge in coming to grips with the pressure to assess has been to find a middle ground. I’m looking for a space between the idealistic librarian who is lured by the siren’s song of “the culture of assessment” into becoming a tool for the neoliberal takeover of higher education and the cynical librarian who can’t see past the pain of his betrayed values to engage in critical and reflective practice. The serpent and dove approach is helping me to do this. It reminds me of why I love my job while also encouraging me to put my experience and understanding of how the institution works (even when these workings are opaque to outsiders) to work for my core idealism and values.

Nicholas Schiller is the systems & instruction librarian at Washington State University Vancouver. He blogs at Information. Games. He tweets about capybaras, geeky things, running, and libraries at @nnschiller.

Nice vs. Kind

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I should probably admit, up front, that my thoughts on this topic are a bit jumbled. Some of it has to do with "nice" being a gender expectation, and then there's the growing students-as-customers mentality. Those two ideas are coming up against the fact that things are starting to ramp up on campus (new students coming this week, returning students this weekend). The end result is that I've been thinking a lot about the difference between "nice" and "kind" lately.

My mental conception of "nice" has always had a slightly negative connotation. That overused cliche about giving a man a fish versus teaching a man to fish? In my mind, "nice" is the person who gives the fish. "Nice" is making it easy for people without thought of what that might cause in the future. It's catering to the whims of our students without regards to long term plans or research in the field. [Side note: no, I'm not complaining about my current employer or any past employer. This is mostly on my mind because I'm taking on a new role at my current institution - teaching a class in the first year program.]

The thing is, I'm not "nice." As a professor, I'm a hard grader. As a librarian, I have no problems calling students on it when they are loud in the library. I've told students, faculty, staff, and even upper administration, "no." I will push back when I disagree. I am, however, kind. I will bend over backwards to help a student learn, to put faculty members in touch with resources they can use, and to make any member of my community more self-sufficient. It may be hard to get an A from me, but it's also hard to get an F.

Back to the fishing analogy, "kind" is teaching the man. Kind is about having patrons come back weeks or months or even years later to thank you. Kindness is why students come back to me and say, "thank you for pushing me when I was a freshmen; it made me a much better student." The difference between "nice" and "kind" is closely related to the differences between some students' expectations and institutional mission.

Further, it's also tied to why I refuse to call members of my community "customers." I've heard endless complaints about how self-entitled students, especially incoming freshmen, can be. I've been known to grumble about this myself. But I think we're feeding into it by thinking about students as customers. College is about learning to do things for yourself, including learning how to learn and learning how to think.

Being "nice" does a disservice to our communities in higher education. When I worked at a tiny two-year institution, I would often say, "the librarians at the school where you transfer might not be as available as we are, so I want to make sure you know how to do this for yourself." As a professor, I talk about how writing and public speaking are life skills my students will need in the job market. As an employer of student workers, I'm mindful of the fact that working for my library is frequently the first job our student employees have ever held and that we are teaching them how to be an employee. Holding students accountable after teaching them these skills will serve them better in the long run.

I know it sounds a bit paternalistic to say I know what students actually need, but with my experience and knowledge of the industry, especially with our accrediting bodies and the US Department of Education placing more and more emphasis on accountability, I do actually know better in some ways. I know we're a service industry and we want to take care of those who come to us, but it's much better if we teach them to care for themselves. Be kind, be friendly, but please... don't be nice.

How about you? What are your thoughts on the topic?

Ethics, Copyright, and Information Literacy, by Jacob Berg

[Editor’s Note: I asked Jake Berg to publish this piece on LtaYL after sitting with him in the hearing on the draft Framework at the American Library Association Annual Conference in Las Vegas. My thoughts on this document are very similar to his, and I knew he’d put my feelings/perceptions into words better than I could.]

For the first time since 2000, the Association of College and Research Libraries will update their Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education, replacing it with a more flexible Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education. 

The second draft of this Framework, released last month, includes a new definition of information literacy. 

[A] repertoire of understandings, practices, and dispositions focused on flexible engagement with the information ecosystem, underpinned by critical self-reflection. The repertoire involves finding, evaluating, interpreting, managing, and using information to answer questions and develop new ones; and creating new knowledge through ethical participation in communities of learning, scholarship, and practice. (2)

Upon seeing this definition, I wrote (on my own blog)

That "ethical participation" was included here is a huge step forward. It creates a discursive space in which it is possible to turn the library into a site of resistance, a bulwark against government and corporate surveillance, as well as an entree into a discussion of the costs of knowledge that are a part of scholarly communication. I hope this section of the definition is our point of departure to tackle these and related issues. 

It’s this last part, the “ethical participation,” that I’d like to focus on, because later in the draft Framework the authors devote a frame, a series of related threshold concepts, knowledge practices and abilities, and dispositions, to the value of information.

Experts understand that this value designates information as intellectual property, and therefore, recognizes three important dimensions of value. First, information can act as a commodity, and as such, creators can use their work for financial, reputational, social, or civic gains. These motivations may determine how information sources are shared whether given freely, offered for sale, or leased for temporary access. Information users have responsibilities as both consumers and creators of information based on the work of others. Academic and legal practices such as proper attribution of sources and complying with copyright are a result. (12)

Putting information as a commodity front and center and tying it to various "gains"? Consumers listed before creators? Complying with a copyright regime that every information professional should know is broken, at odds with the common good and encouraging innovation?

In the Knowledge Practices (Abilities) section of this frame, titled “Information has Value,” a threshold concept is to "Understand that intellectual property is a social construct that varies by culture," (12) but the above excerpt reifies much of what is wrong with the North American conception of intellectual property, and may be at odds with "ethical participation" mentioned elsewhere in the document.

Information has Value, yes. Well, we librarians also have values. Here’s a selection of things that have been written on the topic:

• “Agendas: Everyone has one,” by Chris Bourg (Assistant University Librarian (AUL) for Public Services for the Stanford University Libraries)
• “Admitting Our Agendas,” by Barbara Fister (Instruction / Reference Librarian at Folke Bernadotte Memorial Library, Gustavus Adolphus College)
• “Me, Too!: On Agendas in Libraries, Especially Mine,” by Jessica R. Olin (Director of the Robert H. Parker Library at Wesley College)
• “Toward a Unifying Field Theory of Librarianship,Or Not,” by me

And these values happen to conflict with parts of the law. In particular, copyright law which (as I’ve already mentioned) I think most of us agree is broken at the federal level.

Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 of the United States Constitution authorizes Congress “To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.”

Yet these “limited Times” keep expanding at the expense of the public domain. In 1790 a copyright would last for fourteen years, plus another fourteen for a renewal. Twenty-eight years later, all could benefit from a patent or creation. In 2014, some works can take as many as one-hundred-and twenty years to enter the public domain, and often these are “works for hire,” enriching not the creator of a work, but its distributor, at the expense of a public that could benefit from, build on, or reuse the work. (Source.) When you look at a partial list of works that would have been publicly available on January 1st, 2014 without our current intellectual property regime, it puts things into perspective.

We are at the point where, in 2013, Maria Pallente, United States Register of Copyrights, called for an overhaul of the US intellectual property regime. Indeed, this is the rare issue where bipartisan cooperation may be possible, with Derek Khanna on the right and Lawrence Lessig on the left, among others.

Is it ethical for librarians to teach students to respect a law that few of us respect? We know that members of the communities we serve will create knowledge, and they have rights that come with that creation. We also know that our communities want to participate in and interact with the cultural milieus in which we find ourselves. Using Legos to reenact a scene from a movie and then uploading a video of that to YouTube, for example, or using pop culture items/something else in educational settings without the threat of a lawsuit. We want to participate in what Lessig terms "remix culture," and we want to use culture to reach out to our communities.

Our professional ethics and values and the current copyright regime are in conflict. While the American Library Association lobbies for change while supporting the current intellectual property regime, how are we information professionals going to proceed? Because I'd rather not support this particular law, set of laws, at the expense of what I believe, and at the expense of professional ethics. There is too much at stake for us to behave in any other way. How will you reconcile "ethical participation" and copyright in the Framework in your communities?

Jacob Berg is library director at a small, academic library in Washington, DC. This is his second contribution to LtaYL, the first was “Doing Research Lets You Justify Why You’re Doing What You’re Doing.” He blogs about libraries and beer, roughly in that order, at http://beerbrarian.blogspot.com/ and is on Twitter, @jacobsberg.

My First Instruction Panic and How It Made Me a Better Teacher, by Derrick Jefferson

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My favorite part of my job is getting in front of a class of students who are probably bored and would rather be anywhere else, and somehow drawing them in, getting them awake and interested. This usually happens as soon as I walk into the room, since I don’t look like what most people think of when they think of a librarian. I am a rambling, big, burly African-American guy, covered in tattoos, and I tend to not fit the librarian cliché, though I sometimes do wear my glasses perched on my nose just so. You never know when the librarian stare needs to be implemented.

Even though I get attention with just my physical presence, I don’t stop there. I am very much a people person and like to meet the students in my classes halfway. I work primarily with majors in the School of Communication which includes journalism, film and video, and strategic communication, so the work tends to be topical. Their research usually draws upon current events and pop culture, and ties back to established communication theory and principles. This kind of thing can still be boring in the wrong hands, but I make sure it isn’t. If a student throws out, “I want to do some research on feminism”, and I say, “Let’s look at something like the impact of say…Beyoncé and feminism just as a starting point”, they tend to think that’s cool. Because Beyoncé.

I use this tactic not because I want to be seen at the “cool librarian”, but because it can remove the wall that a lot of students put up. My goal is to be accessible. My agenda is not to just stand up and lecture about library resources for a paper the students will write two months from now. I want to establish a relationship. I want them to know that I am their subject specialist, a person who once upon a time worked as a freelance writer, a filmmaker, producing music videos and commercials, and a person who loved studying classical film theory as well as documentaries. These are things in my toolkit that, as their librarian, I can bring to bear over the course of their time at my school.

Those are my intentions, and things have always gone according to script. Until recently. I had my first real panic late last semester when I was working with a new professor. Not only had I never worked with this individual, but s/he taught an introduction to media 100-level course as well as a 400-level class that deals with specific research in communication marketing. I gave myself plenty of time to learn the database the professor wanted demonstrated since I’m somewhat new myself. I was scheduled to do sessions for both classes on the same day – a day where the professor would not be present and I’d have the students, whom I’ve never met, all to myself. I tend to keep my nervousness at bay, however when I walked into the 100-level course ready to talk basic database searching, and how to find electronic copies of say Rolling Stone and Entertainment Weekly in our journal finder and found out rather quickly that it was the advanced research class where I would be performing a demonstration of this software I honesty wasn’t very keen on, the students noticed.

I am proud to say that it wasn’t a disaster. I took a couple deep breaths and recovered. I was able to demonstrate how to use the database to pinpoint what sports drink a video game playing male, between the ages of 18-25 who preferred Xbox over Playstation and played between the hours of midnight and 3am and used an Android phone, is most likely to purchase and why. What struck me, however, came next. Two graduating seniors lingered as the rest of their peers headed out the door after the class was over. They made a point of telling me that not only had they enjoyed my presentation and taken copious notes about the database, they also remarked how funny I was. Then they went further and asked to buy me coffee and talk shop about library school and what it was like. The catalyst for that moment was my apparent cat-like reflexes. They had seen me thinking on my feet and readjusting after realizing that I had mixed up my classes. They said that was a skill they see in lots of librarians. They said librarians, more than anything, are prepared and go above and beyond in helping people. For me, removing that wall, helped them see me as someone who isn’t just there to tell them How Things Should Be Done, but also as someone for whom knowledge can move in both directions.

Sometimes we feel the need to be super-prepared and super-professional, but it was that moment of being human and making a mistake that helped me connect with the students. I don’t recommend making mistakes like that if you can help it, but I do recommend being who you are with your patrons.

Derrick Jefferson is the Communications Librarian at American University in Washington, DC.  He received his MLIS in 2012 from Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, LA as a Project Recovery scholar based in New Orleans. He tweets about food, vinyl records, and libraries at @geekandahalf.

Thinking About Thinking, Or, Everyday Applications of Metacognition and Epistemology

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Once again, I've been thinking about thinking. With my instruction background, even have a master's in ed, and my philosophical bent, it's not surprising. Metacognition and epistemological development are my bread and butter, since how people think about thinking and how people think about the structure of knowledge are a major factor in teaching those same people information literacy skills as well as in how I run my library. But lately these thoughts about thoughts have been inspired by controversies that have been brewing and exploding on Twitter.

Some of them have seemed very tempest-in-a-teapot, others are deeply important, but all have been incredibly divisive. I'll admit I wade into the fray on occasion, but usually I try to hang back. No, I'm not going to tell you which of the recent controversies fall into which category for me. First off, I've had friends, colleagues, people I admire, on all sides of these recent debates. Second, I can see validity in many of the arguments. So, in the (perhaps futile) interests of peacemaking, here are a few ideas/rules I try to keep in mind when deciding whether or not to tweet:

1. 140 characters just isn't enough for nuanced arguments I think are necessary in most cases. Sure, you can actually say a lot in a tweet, but when highly charged topics are being discussed, it may not be enough.
2. Twitter can be an echo chamber. Things that seem important to those of us who inhabit the Twittersphere, things that seem like big news, can sometimes be barely a blip outside of our world. Sometimes things can be a big thing in one part of Twitter but barely be mentioned in another. (Ever taken a look at those trending hashtags and been confused? I know I have.)
3. There are some oft cited statistics that 55% of communication is body language, 38% is tone and inflection, and a measly 7% is the actual words. Even with emoticons and hashtags to give us cues about the 93% that isn't words, it's still hard to read people's tweets the way they may have intended them.
4. I want to form my own opinions, not just buy into others' wholesale. It can be hard to do this. I'm human and I am just as likely to fall for logical fallacies as the next overly educated adult. And I do fall for them. I'm not trying to say I'm the only one who's right or that other options are all wrong (see my next point), but in the words of a friend with whom I was discussing the participants in a particular Twitter brawl: "I want to listen to them, not obey them."
5. In most arguments, there are people who are right, people who are wrong, and many shades in between. Those shades in between can be the hardest thing to see. That same sage friend (who I'm quoting here because s/he said it so much better than I ever could): "I think seeing other perspectives as something other than contradiction is a challenge." 

Even if you ignore all of my above highly* important points, even if you take nothing else away from today's post, please remember: think about your thinking, and about others' thinking, and remember that not everyone has the same perspective on truth and knowledge and information. What seems like an offhand comment to you might be taken as a bone-deep insult to someone else, and vice versa. Most of all, please think before you tweet.


*Highly important, in this case, is highly based on my judgement. ;-)


P.S. In response to the people who might be trying to juxtapose this bit of advice with what I wrote last week, these posts aren't actually in opposition to each other. Tweet what you want, for sure, but if you're going to get embroiled in arguments, please do so circumspectly. It makes me think of an old Bill Cosby joke: "I said to a guy, 'Tell me, what is it about cocaine that makes it so wonderful,' and he said, 'Because it intensifies your personality.' I said, 'Yes, but what if you're an asshole?'" Twitter is cocaine in this analogy. 

Content, Not Format

Can we PLEASE stop pretending that just because it's on paper it's good and just because it's on the web it's bad? #librarianlament
— Jessica Olin (@olinj) September 17, 2013

I sent this tweet (and posted it as a status update on Facebook as well) in a moment of deep frustration. Leading up to that point, I'd had a string of interactions, with students, faculty, and staff that left me slightly gobsmacked. Although the specifics were different, in each moment I was being told, "Paper good. Electronic bad." I don't want to share further details since I'm not interested in shaming the people involved. What I want is to educate them. Even still, I can't help imagining these people talking like characters from Animal Farm:

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When I posted the above to my social networks, I was expecting it to be one of the many many tweets/Facebook status updates I send off into the abyss. I was wrong. In fact, the response was so strong, that I realized there was a blog post in it. However, before I go any further, I want you to know that I know writing this post to my typical audience is preaching to the converted. I see this more as me giving you ways to present the topic to those who still need convincing.

So, we need to ignore my previous exhortations that all sources should be evaluated based on the Five Ws, and pretend that we know absolutely nothing about the merit of different resources. Let's look at the kinds of arguments that might work to convince someone to change their stance on this issue:

• There is no such thing as a source that is never appropriate (go ahead, write an essay about Wikipedia without citing Wikipedia, and see what kind of response you get).
• Also, there is a risk in professors taking this kind of stance around students, particularly those who are younger than 25 and whose brains are still maturing, is that students can be so literal. I have, more than once, tried to bring a student over to a computer to show him/her how to use the online public access catalog, only to be told, "Oh, I'm not allowed to use online sources."
• What about all the craptastic, self-published books?
• What about all the refereed, web-based publications? One example is Disability Studies Quarterly, a source that, in the past, I required my own students to read.
• We also need to remind people that so many online sources are faithful reproductions of publications that were originally hard copies.
• A more practical argument is that, with book budgets being slashed, the books in the physical library can sometimes (though not always) be terribly out of date.

I tell people all these things, and yet some of them still insist that paper is supreme. Usually, though, if I'm persistent and keep presenting examples, I win them over.

How do you change people's minds about this? Also, why do you think we're still fighting this fight? Is it that nobody has tried to convince the "Paper good; electronic bad" crowd? Or is it something deeper?

Me, Too!: On Agendas in Libraries, Especially Mine

If you haven't yet read Chris Bourg's fantastic post, "Agendas: Everyone has one " and Barbara Fister's response, "Admitting Our Agendas," please do. The TL;DR synopsis of both posts is that both of these women are coming clean about having a driving force, an agenda behind their work in libraries. In Chris' case, she claims "a feminist and queer agenda for libraries [that] is a unapologeticly activist agenda, rooted in values of democracy, inclusion, and equality." And Barbara's push is reflected in her statement that, "We shouldn’t help students 'prove' something that is contrary to the evidence. We should help them find information and encourage them to form opinions based on the evidence."

While I am also a feminist who pushes students to deal with all the information they gather, not just the information that supports the opinion they had coming into their research, my own agenda is slightly different. And here's a hint:

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It's the reason I teach information literacy skills the way I do and the thing that drives me to make the library as appealing and inviting as I can. I want to get members of my community into my building, literally or figuratively, where I have a better chance of achieving my agenda. Why would this be behind everything I do as a librarian when I work at a college, and why would I admit it? Shouldn't I be focused on purely academic skills? Nope, nuh-uh, and not even, because my agenda is tied to knowing the truth about my students, even when the faculty members don't agree with me (which is thankfully less and less often as time goes by).

What I know is this: even at elite colleges and universities, most students will not go onto be professional academics. The majority of undergraduates are pursuing higher education because of the promise of better jobs. I've said it so many times in work conversations that I've lost track, but I'm putting it here because it is a (slightly pompous but) perfect way to capture my agenda: our education system is churning out a generation of Spartans, but what we need is Athenians. We need people who can think for themselves, not people who march lock step because it's what they were told to do. We need people who actually take the time to learn the stance of someone who's running for political office, not people who support the candidate who seems like s/he would be a good drinking buddy. To put it bluntly, my agenda is that I want to help graduate critical thinkers who are, therefore, well informed voters.

We've all got agendas when we think about it. For some of us, it's something that pushed us to pursue this career field in the first place. I applaud Chris and Barbara for coming clean with theirs, and have added mine to the list.

What's yours?

My (On Purpose) Mistakes

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There's less than a month before the new school year, and I've got a lot of ramping up to do. Part of that, because I've got a frozen position and work at a small library to begin with, is getting ready to do a lot of information literacy instruction in the coming months. (Not that this is really a problem, since I love teaching.)

All this means that I've been thinking about what has and hasn't worked in the past, and how I can apply those ideas to a new setting. Of course, I've written about this a lot in the past. I was an instruction librarian for my entire career before this position, so that is probably isn't a suprise. But I realized that the one thing I haven't discussed before is my policy about making mistakes.

And here it is: in every info lit session, I make sure to make at least a couple mistakes.

Why is that? Well, here are my reasons:

• If I make a simple mistake, like a spelling error or clicking the wrong button, I can show students how to recognize it when they make their own inevitable errors.
• Further, I can also show them how to recover from their own mistakes.
• Which means that the person/people to whom I'm teaching whatever tools or skills will feel more comfortable experimenting since they know they'll be able to overcome setbacks.
• And it also means that I seem more human and approachable.

I'll admit it took me years to feel comfortable doing this. At the beginning of my career, I was mortified by the slightest misspoken word. But really, I think showing students how to recover from mistakes is one of the most important things I can do as an instruction librarian. Technologies and interfaces change, but comfort with experimenting and learning from mistakes are transferable skills.

How about you? How do you feel about making mistakes when you're teaching?