Library Day in the Life, 1/25/11

So I'm coming to the Library Day in the Life thing a day late, apparently.

8:12 AM -- Depart for bus stop.

8:26 AM -- Get on bus. (At least, that's what the schedule says, I didn't check.)

9:06 AM -- Arrive at work. (Something very delayed happened with the bus somewhere. Since I read on the bus, I don't always keep track of landmark passings and traffic.)

9:10 AM -- Discover that the Java Runtime Environment on my desktop has shuffled off this mortal coil, making it impossible to log in to my first virtual reference shift of the day. I have three shifts today; I'm filling some schedule gaps left by the abrupt departure of one of the larger institutions in our collaborative.

9:26 AM -- Having re-installed the necessary software and rebooted my computer, I can finally start virtually referencing. I also start with FriendFeed and blogs and email.

11:03 AM -- Sign off from second virtual reference shift.

11-something AM -- Start this post!

11:34 AM -- Lunch. The banana chips I had for breakfast didn't have much sticking power.

11:46 AM -- Lunch over. Start prepping for this evening's class presentation at the main library of the big state university that neighbors my small private university. Once again bemoan the fact that Marketing controls our pretty website, so that I can't really add pages to the prettier library section.

12:13 PM -- Read through Jen Hoyer's "Information is Social: Literacy in Context" slides on a recommendation I saw on the ILI-L email list. Wonder if the reason I do the things she says academic librarians don't do, but should do, is because I started out in public and special libraries. Feel happy that my faculty colleagues value service learning and so value the "communication approach" to information literacy. Wonder if I will ever get over my dislike of "information literacy" as an organizing concept.

12:50 -- Search for library assessment presentations on SlideShare. Browse. Add libraryassessment.info to my blog bookmarks. Continue browsing.

1:35 PM -- Help a staff member with an unpleasant health insurance policy complication and related issues.

2:00 PM -- Third virtual reference shift.

3:00 PM -- Virtual reference shift ends. Move on to email conversation with tech services coordinator and ILS vendor about how to make the system report on what I want it to for assessing library collections and usage. We may need to pay for some scripts; we definitely will need to change our acquisitions workflow.

3:26 PM -- Print out list of fall graduates who have not yet been cleared by the library. Give to circ desk staff to see if anybody owes us money. Feel guilty about delegating.

3:35 PM -- Talk with student worker who spent last semester in Bali and put together a book of Balinese children's art. She is going to do a presentation in February in the library reading room.

3:40 PM -- Headache from flashes as the university president is photographed in the library for a magazine is getting really bad. Thinking of heading out for an early dinner break.

3:45 PM -- Yep.

4:30 PM -- Back. Administrivia.

5:45 PM -- Off to do the presentation, which will end at 7:30.

Is the library a customer service institution?

Some initial thoughts on Paul Ford's "The Web is a Customer Service Medium" (h/t Anil Dash)...

A medium has a niche. A sitcom works better on TV than in a newspaper, but a 10,000 word investigative piece about a civic issue works better in a newspaper. When it arrived the web seemed to fill all of those niches at once. The web was surprisingly good at emulating a TV, a newspaper, a book, or a radio. But the web is not just some kind of magic all-absorbing meta-medium. It's its own thing. And like other media it has a question that it answers better than any other. That question is: Why wasn't I consulted?...WWIC is the thing people talk about when they talk about nicer-sounding things like “the wisdom of crowds” or “cognitive surplus”...The web is not, despite the desires of so many, a publishing medium. The web is a customer service medium. “Intense moderation” in a customer service medium is what “editing” was for publishing...The days of the web as all-purpose media emulator are numbered. Apps on mobile are gaining traction; the web browser, despite great and ongoing effort, will not become the universal platform for everything ever. Apps provide niche experiences.

Okay, so. In comics, someone struck with a sudden idea gets a lightbulb drawn over their head. It usually works the opposite for me. Strike me with a big enough idea, and I get a wrapped present. I know it's there, I know it's something I'm going to really like, and the wrapping paper is so shiny. But what is it? I won't know until I unwrap it. Which can take...time. But here's what I've got right now from the metaphorical shaking of the package and listening for thumps or tinkles:

Historically, as an oversimplification, libraries as institutions developed for the purpose of preservation and access. People made Stuff. Eventually libraries ended up with some of that Stuff in order to serve their patron(s) or customer(s).

At some point, libraries in the United States moved from being an after-market customer service to being a market in and of itself.

This process seems to have speeded up in the second half of the 20th century, at the same time as broadcast media gained prominence. Coincidence?

Libraries, on the whole, have never successfully engaged the question of broadcast media. When recordings are made available by someone else, we may collect them. But if no recording of a particular broadcast is made, well, tough luck.

Broadcasters therefore have had no reason to look to libraries as a market.

In the online era, all media is increasingly broadcast media. A book downloaded to a mobile device or an online journal subscription has more in common with on-demand TV than their print ancestors.

If libraries continue to fail to engage the question of broadcast media, we will be left with very little to collect, and publishers will cease to look at us as a market.

In contemporary American society, only consumers (or capital owners) have power to influence production.

If libraries are not seen as consumers, we will be...what? Returning to our historical roots? Losing our ability to pursue our goals? Stuck in an identity crisis? Left with no choice but to become capital owners?

Iris at Pegasus Librarian sees the light about library research instruction:

If there’s one thing I’ve learned, though, it’s been that I am not there to teach the students how to find, evaluate, and use information. I tried that with a couple of courses, and it failed. Miserably.

No, I’m there to do two things: to give the students a couple of skills they need right now, and to spark their imaginations about what could be possible if they decided to make a habit of this research stuff.

When I do presentations for students, I tell them that I will have succeeded if they remember two things. First, that tools exist to uncover the information they want and need. Second, that librarians want to help them learn how to use those tools. I give the example of students who come to see me a week or two later and say, "I know you showed us how to [library thing], but I don't remember how it works," and I tell them how happy I am with that response, and I mean it. And inevitably, during the walk-around-answer-questions-hands-on-student-research part of the presentation, someone will say, "I know you just showed us how to [library thing], but I can't get it to work." And I smile at them and show them how.

It is not only for our own sake that we librarians need to relax about presentations. Students are so ready to feel dumb or ashamed when they don't pick up something right away. Being open about the fact that these tools take practice is a good first step.

Libraries, the Universe, and Everything

Barbara Fister has a good response to "Truth be Told," the latest report from Project Information Literacy. She asks questions that preoccupy my professional mind quite frequently: "For instructors, this may mean thinking hard about what the purpose of a research assignment is...What, ultimately, will students know, be able to do, and value as a result of the experience?...For librarians...How do we guide them to the best sources when most of our efforts in developing collections has been to simply make them bigger?"

Partly these questions preoccupy me because I'm tasked with things like aligning collection development with learning outcomes in an assessment plan. Partly they preoccupy me because they are enjoyable, fiddly kinds of questions. Mostly they preoccupy me because I like to know what the heck it is that I'm doing. I am responsible for a small library with a small staff and a small space and a small budget. I can burn through the available time and money at an impressive rate. I don't recommend it, though, and even if resources were more abundant, I think I'm a person who is happiest when my work is some recognizable part of a purposeful whole. "I have fun and keep people reasonably pleased" isn't a bad vision for my work, but it is not that compelling, either.

Barbara Fister rocks, as usual

"What can librarians do to help readers and books find one another in a world where our money is going toward temporary access to corporate-controlled intellectual property? How can we intervene to repair an outdated scholarly system of authority control that doesn’t recognize that we can’t spread knowledge if it’s packaged in locked containers? How can we liberate knowledge and culture to support life-long liberal learning?

What we need is a movement: liberation bibliography...

My colleague at Gustavus, Mary Solberg, is a theologian who includes liberation theology in her introductory course on Christian thought because she finds it’s a way of 'doing theology' that links core theological beliefs to the day-to-day ways that people choose to live their lives...If I were to write a manifesto for a liberation bibliography movement, it would probably have these points on it."

The heart of library research

At Naropa University, students wholeheartedly engage in mindfulness awareness practices in order to cultivate being present in the moment and to deepen their academic study… Through such a focused self-exploration, students…acquire the ability to be present in the classroom and in their lives; to engage in active listening with an open mind; to analyze a subject; and to integrate what has been learned with personal experience. (Naropa University, paras. 4-6)

I am the Director of Library and Archives at Naropa University, which “has offered mission-based contemplative education…for more than thirty years” (Naropa University, para. 3). I have the privilege of observing and occasionally participating in the ongoing debate about the precise nature of contemplative education. Is it education in a particular contemplative practice which is grafted onto a traditional academic discipline (e.g., “contemplative psychology”), or is it teaching and learning about a traditional academic discipline through the vehicle of a contemplative pedagogy? At this time, I lean more towards the latter position. I believe it imposes fewer constraints on the subjects of study and the methods of teaching and learning. My main professional stake in this debate is that, as yet, I have not encountered anyone working on the concept of contemplative library research.

My favored theoretical framework for library research is Carol Kuhlthau’s Information Search Process (ISP). In Seeking Meaning: A Process Approach to Library and Information Science, Kuhlthau outlines the ISP, presents the empirical evidence for its validity, and suggests practical applications. The ISP “incorporates three realms: the affective (feelings), the cognitive (thoughts), and the physical (actions)” (Kuhlthau 44); it comprises six stages: Task Initiation, Topic Selection, Prefocus Exploration, Focus Formulation, Information Collection, and Search Closure. At each stage, learners exhibit characteristic thoughts, feelings and actions. These phenomena “indicate the need for considering uncertainty as a natural, essential characteristic of information seeking…the goal of library and information services shifts from reducing uncertainty to supporting the user’s constructive process” (Kuhlthau 200-201).

This talk of a constructive process is a good fit with contemplative education, where students construct learning through presence, listening, analysis, and integration. An introduction to contemplative education that is often used at Naropa is the anthology The Heart of Learning: Spirituality in Education, which includes contributions from notables such as Parker Palmer, bell hooks, and His Holiness the Dalai Lama. In “The Grace of Great Things,” Palmer highlights the need for education to cultivate in learners a “sense of the precious otherness of the things of the world” (Palmer 23), a “sense of community with each other and with all of creation” (Palmer 27), and a “capacity for wonder and surprise” (Palmer 29). These capacities all critically depend on increasing learners’ tolerance for uncertainty. They must move from an emphasis on being right to an emphasis on adding value to their knowledge (Kuhlthau 174). They must move from unreflective anxiety in the face of uncertainty to a patient and genuine openness (Palmer 30).

In contemplative education, teachers mediate and model this learning process for their students. What kind of mediating role can librarians play in contemplative library research? Kuhlthau introduces the concept of a zone of intervention, “that area in which an information user can do with advice and assistance what he or she cannot do alone or can only do with great difficulty” (Kuhlthau 129). Within these zones, librarians can help learners through the prior organization of a collection, locating a single reference source or identifying of a group of sources, giving advice about the research process, or engaging in “holistic interaction over time through guidance in identifying and interpreting information” (Kuhlthau 131). An important part of this holistic interaction is encouraging learners to remain mindful of their thoughts, feelings and actions. For example, I remind Naropa students that anxiety is a natural part of life in an unpredictable world and that they are learning in other contexts how to sit with their anxiety without getting overwhelmed. I also remind them that the information sources they use in their projects are not lifeless objects but the recorded thoughts of other people who, though perhaps distant in time and space, are still available for conversation. In Palmer’s terminology, they are precious others with whom one may join in community.

I am far from being able to propose a distinctively contemplative Information Search Process. However, the resonance between Kuhlthau’s model of library research and Naropa’s model of education encourages me to continue this line of inquiry. In time, perhaps I and others will be able to speak coherently and convincingly of “the heart of library research.”

WORKS CITED

Naropa University. “Contemplative Education: The Spark of East and West Working
Within.” http://www.naropa.edu/about/conted_primer.cfm (accessed November 25, 2009).

Palmer, Parker J. “The Grace of Great Things: Reclaiming the Sacred in Knowing, Teaching, and Learning.” In The Heart of Learning: Spirituality in Education, edited by Steven Glazer, 15-32.
A New Consciousness Reader. New York: J.P. Tarcher/Putnam, 1999.

Kuhlthau, Carol Collier. Seeking Meaning: A Process Approach to Library and
Information Services. Westport, Conn: Libraries Unlimited, 2004.

Finally, some professional links...

Without much in the way of commentary, though.

Glazer, Steven, and Huston Smith. The Heart of Learning: Spirituality in Education. A new consciousness reader. New York: J.P. Tarcher/Putnam, 1999.

Denton, Diana, and Will Ashton. Spirituality, Action, & Pedagogy: Teaching from the Heart. Studies in education and spirituality, v. 8. New York: P. Lang, 2004.

Miller, John P. Holistic Learning and Spirituality in Education: Breaking New Ground. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2005.

Teachers College Record, Volume 108, Number 9, 2006. You may or may not need to access these articles through a library's online research database or interlibrary loan.

Naropa University's Center for the Advancement of Contemplative Education.

I will also throw in Carol Kuhlthau, because I think her Information Search Process model is the obvious point of entry for contemplative pedagogy into library and information studies.