Class Reflection: Week 11

In class on Thursday, we had a lot to talk about. We spent a long time discussing a recent local controversy surrounding the proposal of a park next to the public library. It sounds nice; it would be great to be able to take your kids out on some playground equipment after leaving the library, or to see small musical acts or stage performances put on by local artists in the community in a proposed staging area. How nice! How idyllic! What's the problem?

The article is here, and it brings up some excellent points. The reason the proposed park is controversial is actually because the director of the public library as well as the the board came out against the construction of this park. They already see a large amount of substance abuse within the walls of the library on such a regular basis that they feel making a park next door would further exacerbate the problem.

As you can see in the article, some of the city council did not feel that the claims made by the library director were true. I think a big part of the problem is that in this kind of community, people either aren't aware or turn a blind eye to problems. This is a wealthy community. This is a clean city. The public library is well-funded, it's a beautiful space with enormous collections and excellent, innovative programming. We do not have drug users in our community, and they certainly wouldn't be found in the library. But it is true. A public library in any community attracts the homeless, and the drug users (who are not always the same people, by the way). Even on the island of Kodiak, Alaska, I heard rumors that the city's homeless gathered there. I was more surprised that the island had homeless people than that they chose the library as their preferred haunt.

But in her interview, the director of the library explained that the drug abuse is such a problem in the space of the library walls that they have had to remove ceiling tiles in the bathrooms to prevent people from stashing their drugs there. The library has quietly been dealing with this major community problem on its own for many years. They are only now being vocal about it because they can see that adding outdoor space just outside the walls of the library would invite more miscreant behavior. They have concerns about the safety of the space both next door and inside their walls. The director paints a vivid picture of someone having to clean up the syringes every morning in the proposed space. Who takes care of that? Since the library is next door, will they be in charge of monitoring activity in this public space? A shocking figure reported is that the library spends $250,000 annually on security personnel. That is a very large amount of money to be spending, and I am sure that the library would not spend nearly so much if they did not have the need for it.

I guess what our conversation boiled down to was that so many in this community, and other similar communities, see this as a library problem, when it is really a community problem. There are no homeless shelters in the area (so I'm told). Heroin is cheap and popular. What I really thought was admirable was that in her interview, the director doesn't place blame, but she doesn't shy away from talking about the problem either. Hopefully this controversy sparks more than just angry words about whether or not a park should be built. Maybe someone will start to consider what else could be done.

Week 11: Class Readings

How People Learn: Chapter 7

This chapter presents a more detailed look at some teachers in classrooms who are succeeding in teaching their subjects incredibly well. The main point is that it is not enough to say that once a teacher has learned teaching strategies, they can teach any subject. Now, I'm not sure who says that to begin with, because I don't think anyone wants someone whose area of knowledge is in the social sciences teaching the hard sciences, or vice versa. Do people really think that teachers can successfully teach any subject just because they are trained teachers? Anyway, the chapter suggests that teachers should not only understand teaching pedagogy, but have a very thorough understanding of their subject and the ways their subject is best taught. The chapter presents a history teacher who instead of outlining what their curriculum will be at the beginning of the year asks the students what they most want to know about themselves and about the world. They then come up with a list of questions which they attempt to answer throughout the year using various subject disciplines. The example was a student's question of "Will I live to be 100?" and they attempted to answer it by studying genetics, population statistics, family trees, environmental concerns, etc.

So this approach sounds really awesome and like a great teaching/learning methodology, but I think it would be almost impossible for most teachers to teach that way, and for a number of reasons. The first reason is that very, very few school curricula would allow such a free-form outline of the school year. The second reason is that only very experienced teachers could develop their lesson plans in such a spur-of-the-moment manner. Teachers spend all summer developing their lesson plans for the upcoming school year, and then continue to develop them throughout the year. It would be very difficult for anyone to do this. The third reason this is almost impossible is because this teacher seems to have a very broad knowledge base to teach from. Not too many social studies teachers, I imagine, could confidently teach genetics, for example. I think the text's example is an example of a great teacher, and her students are fortunate to have her, but I don't think it is a realistic model to draw from.

Overall, though, I do believe that the text's premise is correct: the best teachers are the ones who a. know how to teach well, and b. are masters of their subject areas. This must be why in many European countries, school teachers are required to have their subject area master's degree before they can become a teacher at all. But, in this country, that gets into issues of the cultural status of teachers, and rates of pay vs. student debt. The payoff just isn't there.

Week 10: One-Shot Workshops

Hah! Do you see that there? That photo of a young, hip looking librarian leaning against some shelves? That's me! Ok, it's not me. But it's a stock photo that represents me, and I got it from Getty Images which as of just recently gave up the good fight against internet plagiarism and now allows anyone to embed photos their website and it attaches that fancy photo cred tag at the bottom, too!

That photo above is brought to this blog by this week's One-Shot Workshops that we held in class. The first group that went did a presentation on copyright and Creative Commons, and showed us some great resources where we can access legally free-to-use images and music! As librarians, copyright plays an important role in our lives, as according to the ALA Code of Ethics (were you paying attention last week?) it is our responsibility to balance the rights of the creator with the rights of users. That can be a fine line! But not so fine that I had trouble walking it earlier last week when someone in China asked me during an online reference chat if they could have their friend in the States come and scan the whole book they wanted from our collection and send it to them. The answer is no. That's copyright infringement, and is definitely not acceptable.

The second group that went presented on Diversity in the Library, an always important topic in any field. The problem we have currently is that librarians are overwhelmingly white females. But the group presenting on diversity opened up the discussion to include more diversity than "How can we get men/people from other ethnic backgrounds to be librarians?" which is so often the only question addressed. They simply asked what having diversity in a library means to us, and we found that we came up with a wide variety of answers. To me, it means having the people staffing the library reflect the community they are in. I worked in a public library in an urban area, and most of our patrons were African-American, but almost all of our staff were white ladies, and that really stood out to me. To other people, having diversity in the library meant a diverse collection reflecting many different subjects, viewpoints, and formats. To others, it meant respecting that not everyone who works in a library has the same background or experience. To others, it meant having employees who have a disability, or resources for those who have disabilities. Our classmate who is blind is a constant reminder of how we can easily help those who have disabilities just by taking a few extra thoughtful steps. She explained that if she had had even a small browsing collection of books in Braille as a kid, it would have meant the world to her to be able to go to the library and pick out a book to read like any other kid. I really hope that by having her in my classes, I carry the idea of accessibility with me throughout my career.

We went next, and our workshop was on avoiding controversy when weeding library collections. It's kind of weird to think about, but weeding (removing books from) a collection is a necessary part of librarianship, and interestingly enough, it's the task that is most likely to stir up controversy in a community. People start saying things like "The library is throwing away all those good books that my tax dollars paid for!" and things get out of hand quickly. So based on the information I'm learning in my Collection Development course, we outlined a few strategic tips to make doing our professional duties less likely to cause problems. I think it went pretty well! I was actually nervous to do the workshop, oddly enough. I wasn't nervous to do the book club a few weeks ago, which was the same length of time and with the same people. It must have been because giving a workshop is considerably more structured than leading a book club. I think it went really well, though, and I shouldn't have been nervous in the first place.

The next group to present was talking about banned books, and we got to pretend like we were high schoolers, which was a riot. It was definitely a lot of fun, but I think the group may have gotten a little out of hand with the antics. Their presentation was good, we talked about why we thought someone might ban books and why we (as high schoolers) disagreed with people making those kinds of decisions for us.

Our final group's workshop was on learning to use the Apple Voice Over technology, which was a really great learning session. Unfortunately, only three people in the room (of about 10) had Macs, so we had to share, which wasn't bad but it would have been a better learning experience if we could have all easily tried to follow along. Anyway, it was immediately clear how complicated using adaptive technology can be! It really gave us a good idea of the kinds of challenges people who need to use screen readers face when using computers.

Overall, everyone did a great job, in my opinion, and I had a lot of fun learning from my peers! I really love when we have the class structured in these small groups and get to learn from each other. I've really enjoyed getting to know some of my classmates I haven't had the opportunity to really interact with yet.

Week 9: Class Reflection (It actually is week 9. I was not wrong in my previous titles!)

For the first half of class on Thursday we spent some time talking about our breaks, and Kristin brought up some great points about her visit to a great archive while she was in Hawaii. She was discussing all of their artifacts, and how so much of it was physical, and there was a sense of awe and reverence for the physical items. It brought up something which I think has been bothering me about the School of Information program: all of our emphasis on being "cutting edge" means that everything is digital. It makes it seem like every library or archive is handling almost exclusively e-books or digitizing their holdings. The program practically ignores the "traditional" physical aspect of librarianship or archivism. It's been bothering me in particular since my visit to the Kodiak Public Library in Kodiak, Alaska. The library director was recently hired in October to open the new building, and she has years of experience in libraries, both in leadership positions and otherwise. She said to me, "Right now, I'm dealing with major technological challenges. The Sirsi system hasn't been updated since 2003. I just realized that my staff (none of whom are professional librarians) didn't know they could have two windows open at once on the computer. They thought that in order to check their email, they had to close out of the circulation system, check their email, and then re-open the circulation system." She handed me paper documents to look over. When I visited the classroom my friend teaches in, they did everything in paper. My friend doesn't have internet at home. Now, Kodiak, Alaska is not exactly the prototype of America, but even so, it made me remember that even just a year ago before I came to SI my life was not entirely digital. And I think it's important to remember that once we leave SI, we will be dealing with a lot more physical objects than we currently do, and not everything we do every day will be "cutting edge." I definitely appreciate the emphasis on technology because it means that I will likely have the skills necessary to continue to be relevant in the future. But at the same time, it's important to remember that beyond SI not everything is digital. During lunch, the KPL director asked me, "So how did the library school transition to the School of Information? How did it become so tech-heavy?" And I tried to answer with the reasoning that I've been given, which is basically that the founders saw technology as the "next frontier" and a natural extension of teaching and learning which compliments the library mission, but somehow it seemed like a hollow and incomplete answer. I'm still thinking about it. Her understanding of the tech people at SI was that they were there to do the tech stuff that libraries need, and that isn't the case. They could, in theory, end up working for a library doing tech, but that isn't their main goal or focus. It's given me a lot to think about.

So after the brief discussion of shell necklaces and ceremonial spears, we started talking about whether shopping at Walmart or shopping at Whole Foods was preferable, since stocks "everything" and Whole Foods is a kind of curated collection of foods which are "good for you." Somewhat surprisingly, (and I must say I'm pleased, because Whole Foods is just ridiculously expensive) the class, at least those of whom spoke up in class, seemed to agree that shopping at Whole Foods wasn't necessarily any better than shopping at Walmart, since cookies are cookies whether they contain high fructose corn syrup or not, and people can be fooled into thinking that everything at Whole Foods is good and they can choose anything there and still be healthy. Of course the cost question came into play, since as graduate students we are all living on a, er, "limited" budget. I know I hate that Whole Foods is the only grocery store on my way home, so occasionally I'll stop to pick up a few ingredients for dinner. What would have cost me under $10 at Meijer costs me $25 at Whole Foods. And they're not even specialty items, just a can of tomatoes and  tortilla chips and shredded cheese, right? I can't stand that. Whole Foods I think is great for some things (I really like their wood-fired pizzas!) but I really would not say that Whole Foods is a better experience than Walmart, or another major grocery store (Meijer4Lyfe). And I'm glad that we felt that way, because as it turns out, Kristin was using it as a metaphor for the state of libraries today. Libraries are becoming more Walmart-y than Whole Foods-y in the sense that librarians are no longer cultivating collections of only "good, educational" books/materials. In a push to become more communal spaces and to have greater applicability to the larger community, libraries are stocking everything instead of just "what's good for the public." I think this is also in part because of the literacy initiative which basically says that a person reading anything is better than a person reading nothing, and that all materials have value. And just as in the grocery store, I know that I certainly read the labels and pick foods that I know are good for me, with the occasional treat from the dark side. I think that a conscientious reader can do the same in a library.

Readings: Week 8 (I apparently got off-count somewhere along the lines. Two weeks of week 8!)

Our readings for class this week were (thankfully) pretty light, which I appreciate because I think we all had very busy "breaks."

We were asked to read over the ALA Code of Ethics, which we have looked at in previous courses, as well. I imagine that part of library school has to do with being indoctrinated to follow the ALA Code of Ethics, which is just as well because they're a pretty good set.

The second reading was pretty interesting because it kind of went against the grain of what we had been previously taught about the Code of Ethics and a librarian's level of responsibility in providing access to information. Specifically, it went against what we were taught about it in the introductory course, 647. In regards to "dangerous questions," we were taught that it is unprofessional to judge what is or is not appropriate to provide access to, regardless of the material or circumstances surrounding it. A patron may be asking about books on suicide or pipe bomb building for any number of reasons which may or may not include actually committing suicide or building a pipe bomb, for example. This seems reasonable enough, a person could have had someone close to them commit suicide, or they could be doing a school project on recent history involving pipe bombs.

"Dangerous Questions at the Reference Desk: A Virtue Ethics Approach." Lenker, Mark. The Journal of Information Ethics. 17,1. Spring 2008.

The second reading challenges that interpretation of the ALA Code of Ethics, saying that to provide access to information which is potentially harmful to the patron or others without considering the possible effects is both reckless and irresponsible. The author says that it is a narrow line to walk, but a person's moral integrity should not be put into opposition with a profession's guidelines, or use them to hide behind. The paper was a bit misleading, because it went into a few hypothetical "case studies" of patrons asking dangerous questions at the reference desk, and then going over the virtue ethics stance of responding, which allowed for the hypothetical librarian to think about the different ways his answer could affect things, but I felt like it didn't actually come to a conclusion about what level of information the librarian could provide, or what he could say if he decided that the dangerous question was something that he felt immoral providing an answer to. Even if I decided that I didn't want to provide the answer to how to build pressure cooker bombs, how do I tell the patron that without being rude or unprofessional?

I really think that the reading we did brought up some fascinating points about how perhaps following the ALA Code of Ethics to a T while disregarding personal objections is at best a cop out for responsibility and at worst a serious degradation of a person's moral character. I think it begs the question, though, about how do you judge what you deem to be objectionable based on your own values and bias against what someone else deems to be objectionable? Can you put qualifiers on when it is and is not okay to withhold information? One person may find a patron's request for information on how to become a sex worker objectionable and another may not.

I'm really interested to see what we as a class have to say about this interpretation of the Code of Ethics. It seems safer to just stick to the code and provide whatever information is asked of us, but at the same time, I might feel personally responsible if I found out that I had helped someone to kill a family in a house fire.

Book club reflection: week 8

Greetings from the road! I am currently on a bus to Chicago, where I will catch a flight to Seattle, then another flight to Anchorage, then a final flight to Kodiak, Alaska! I'm using my phone to update this, so I apologize if autocorrect makes this post a little wacky. 

Thursday in class we divided into our book club groups and spent the whole class period discussing the readings we had picked out (I reviewed them earlier in the week on this blog). We had so much fun! My group was great, people brought snacks (I had meant to but had forgotten, ugh! There was plenty, though), we chit chatted for a little bit before we started, like a real book club is likely to do, and we all had great discussions on every piece. It was really impressive to see how much thought the teams had put into choosing pieces to read as well as how much everyone had put a lot of thought into the reading of the pieces as well. We decided that as a group we picked some pretty "dark" readings, which always makes conversation more interesting, if not uplifting. We managed to stay cheery despite the tone of the readings, though. 

Because I don't really want to go through every discussion of every reading, I will list some key points I thought were interesting in each:

1. What qualifies as a quality submission to a crowdsourced digital repository? How do we avoid censoring submissions when we select for curation purposes, and how can we say that a person's experience of an event such as the Boston Marathon bombing is more or less valid than another's?

2. What should we really be taking away from Margaret Atwood's "Happy Endings?" Is this an instruction on writing fiction for authors, or it is it an instruction for reading fiction, or can it apply to how everyone should be thinking about their life? The question of what is in "the dash" (meaning that your whole life on your tombstone will be summarized by a dash. How scary is that? E.g., 1989 - 2100, hey, I can dream of seeing the next century, right?) is addressed. 

3. In our piece, William Carlos Williams' "The Use of Force," we talked a lot about ethics and motivations. We wondered whether the fact that the doctor is a doctor justifies the use of force on a child to get her to comply with an action she clearly does not want to do, and whether because it was to "save her life" if it made a difference. We also wondered what kind of treatment we would allow or expect in a medical setting today. I noticed that we really only asked one or two of our questions that we had prepared; the group really took off discussing it all on their own. 

4. The piece on the Syrian opposition being deleted from Facebook was really interesting. We discussed whether Facebook had any responsibility to harbor graphic activist groups or not, as well as how the Syrian conflict had moved from being "good guys vs. bad guys" to a really conflicting mix of everyone vs. the bad guys. It was fascinating to think about the role that social media is playing in this civil conflict, and the continuing role it will play in future conflicts. Social media is not designed for these kinds of uses, and so their policies must evolve to consider their future potential use. Really thought-provoking material. 

5. The discussion around Bluebeard was really varied. Mostly it centered around how entirely creepy the story was, and for a fairy tale, we were concerned about how there seemed to be a lack of a clear moral. This likely stemmed from the speculation that Bluebeard is a story based on the true French aristocratic serial killer, which is all kinds of creepy. So what was the moral? We never did figure it out. 

Altogether, the book club was a great success!