The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up

Marie Kondo, The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up Berkeley, Ten Speed Press, 2014.

What gives you joy? That is what you should do, and what you should have. It determines what you should buy. Keeping tidy is easy: eliminate that which does not give you joy (an excellent argument for divorce, as well). Books are among the most difficult items to let go, because they 1) retain function and 2) contain information, giving them long shelf-life. They retain ‘value’, and the potential for joy, very well. But do you love this individual volume enough to keep it forever?

Among more than fifty paperbacks that didn’t make it are Tolkien, Steinbeck, Conrad, Kipling, Freud, Herman Hesse, D.H. Lawrence, and Henry James: cheap classics, most of which can be had from Project Gutenberg if ever wanted again. That leaves only 1200 or so to disappear en route to Kondo’s ideal collection size of between thirty and one hundred volumes.

Yeah, books are hard to let go.

[cross-posted at www.whateverettreads.blogspot.com/]

Review: Nicole Engard, More Library Mashups

Nicole Engard (editor), More Library Mashups. Medford, NJ: Information Today, 2015.

This is Engard’s second volume of examples and illustrations of how libraries are using open data sources to provide better information tools and services. Mashups, or combinations of distinct products into something new (like Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups), look for ways to use free tools to aggregate, distribute, and increase access to information. Examples in the book range from an automatic weather search triggering a tweet about library closure status to integrating book cover images into the card catalogue, creating computer availability maps, or using drupal to create a library calendar.

The projects aren’t terribly technical. They are meant to show what can be done with available tools, and to inspire further investigation and development by readers. The authors vary, of course, but most chapters are clear and easy to follow. More than any single project, though, these ideas are valuable for developing new ways of thinking about what our users need and how we can help them get and use that.

User-Instruction Textbooks

The syllabus shows two types of reading assignments: textbooks and journal articles. Sure, textbooks provide structure and coherence over the length of a course, while article can delve deeply in specific spots, but there should be more. The readings should also bring forward some over-arching themes for the course.

This is more easily done through the textbooks choices, which makes it worth examining those choices more closely.

The default texts from last year’s syllabus, Transforming Information Literacy Instruction Using Learner-Centered Teaching and Engaging Ideas, give us different approaches to the same goal? each provides a method for moving beyond the lecture and engaging students. And each is a good method; used together, they can almost completely fill a class period.

The underlying theory, that we retain and understand new information better when we do something with it than when we, at most, make notes about what we’re told, seems evidently upon personal reflection. Incorporating increased participation and encouraging critical thinking seem like rational, responsible goals form instructors. And the ideas for individual activities, for group-work or writing assignments, are invaluable. These books are both keepers.

But they don’t explain how to plan a lesson, prepare for a class, or deal with the unexpected. This takes practice.

The Information Literacy User’s Guide is a text book, appropriate for high-school and undergraduate students, covering the basics of ‘information literacy’ as expressed by the Seven Pillars theory. It, like Learner-Centered Teaching, was an explicit nod to the academic instructional librarians for whom the course had been previously designed--but added as a writing assignment, not as a reading. The book, which wasn’t discussed in class, was the assigned text for an information literacy program the students would design. They could draw on it as much or as little as wanted. If they read it, even better. If not, they still had to practice presenting the content to an audience. Goal met.

Still, we’re left with big questions. What is this teaching thing all about, really? What do we (the students) wish to accomplish as (future) teachers? Who are we? Why are we here -- especially given the resistance academic library instruction programs sometimes face from those they’re trying to reach.

This is gist for in-class discussion, but nothing on the syllabus addressed these concerns in a meaningful way. We can discuss why teaching is an important skill, practice the routines of instruction, and consider methods. We should; these are important. We should also find a way to articulate the big questions, though, and begin groping toward answers that will keep our psyches healthy in an demanding and under-paid career. This is where Postman and Weingartner fills a need. It is a call for educational  reform -- from 1969. It states the question that Kaplowitz and Bean both answer, but the question still challenges us. More importantly, Teaching as a Subversive Activity creates an identity for teachers as those who help others ask questions and find answers, which should be a familiar identity for librarians. And forming this self-identity as a teacher, more than anything, is what students should achieve in this class.

John Bean, Engaging Ideas, 2nd edition. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2011.

Deborah Bernnard, Greg Bobish, Daryl Bullis, Jenna Hecker, Irina Holden, Allison Hosier, Trudi Jacobson, and Tor Loney, The Information Literacy User's Guide: An Open, OnlineTextbook. New York: SUNY Open Textbooks, 2014.

Joan Kaplowitz, Transforming Information Literacy Instruction using Learner-Centered Teaching. NY: Neal-Schuman, 2012.

Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner, Teaching as a Subversive Activity. NY: Delta, 1971.

The Accidental Law Librarian

This post was originally published at http://whateverettreads.blogspot.com/2013/12/the-accidental-law-librarian.html

Anthony Aycock, The Accidental Law Librarian. Medford, NJ: 2013, Information Today.

The Accidental Librarian series is intended to provide working professionals with an introduction to new areas of practice, be they technologies or subjects. In this volume, Aycock—who has worked in academic, court, and corporate law libraries—covers the basics: types of law, types of questions, and types of materials and sources. It is a nice, easily-readable primer, and combined with something like West’s Legal Research in a Nutshell, would be an adequate foundation for a librarian to confidently step into a law library with tools enough to begin. Of course, it is only an introduction, and Aycock provides plenty of pointers to additional resources. While far from everything one needs to know, having spent several years in the field, I can say it would have been helpful to have this available when I started. Recommended for both mid-career professionals entering a new field and new librarians just choosing their paths.

Hack Library School... now a convenient eBook!

Hack Library School might be a derogatory name, or it may be an imperative statement.  Some might think it means library school is for hacks, letting us trade creativity for a steady paycheck; others will see it as an opportunity to deconstruct a required curriculum, allowing us to make something meaningful from an otherwise uninspired set of credentialing courses.  I prefer the the second take, because like any undertaking, the benefits from library school are largely equal to the effort put into library school.

The Hack Library School--a blog by and for library students, on the other hand, takes pride in both meanings.  They've also done us a great service by publishing the HLS Guide to Library School, which collects over 300 pages of advice for new and prospective librarians.  Beyond being full of good advice, this book does readers another favor.  It fills the "you don't need library school to do this job" niche (even though you DO need the library school credential to get the job), which means I won't bore you by trying to write that book.

Book Review: The Great Dissent

Thomas Healy, The Great Dissent.  NY: Metropolitan, 2013.

Legislative history--the process of determining what a law was intended to mean--is generally very dull stuff: reading memos, committee reports, and testimony transcripts is only fun for the first few hours.  Healy, though, teaches law (at Seton Hall University), so he both knows how to do that sort of research, and how to make the work engaging.

Which is fortunate, because his subject is one of our most important laws: the first amendment to the United States Constitution, which guarantees our rights of expression, religion, and peaceable assembly.  While this law has been on the books since 1791, it was only in 1919 that we began to understand it as actually limiting the government's ability to prosecute people for what they say.  That we can now disagree openly about government policy or protest against its actions is directly due to a change in the way Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr, interpreted the words.

This book, unfortunately, comes too late.  By recounting one judge's evolution, occurring during the high communist paranoia after World War I, Healy shows the importance of this debate--and the importance of standing against governmental tyranny, something sorely lacking in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, when fear of terrorism and the resulting Patriot Act chilled discourse; something we still struggle with as the NSA vacuums us every scrap of electronic data; something we traded for a false feeling of security.  Holmes' courage--to change his mind, to stand against the majority, and to support freedom over fear--should stand as an inspiration for us all, and Healy presents it as a readable political thriller.  This should be required reading in high school civics classes.

Book Review: Micropublishing in the Library

Originally published at When I Finish This Chapter, http://whateverettreads.blogspot.com/2012/07/walt-crawford-librarians-guide-to.html

Walt Crawford, The Librarian’s Guide to MicroPublishing. Medford, NJ: Information Today, 2012.

Crawford defines micropublishing as using print on demand services to produce copies of a book as required for a niche market. This definition is too narrow; micropublishing is ANY content creation, print or online, for a niche market—publishing, being the act of making public, is not limited to any particular format. What Crawford means to suggest is that libraries can and should be involved in community content creation, because libraries are their community information centers, and can inexpensively utilize print on demand processes to assist interested authors.

What Crawford give us is a how-to manual for producing a polished physical manuscript—the content development process is out of scope here. He provides templates for laying out a manuscript, step-by-step instructions for making the text look good, and details for navigating the interaction with a print on demand vendor. The goal is to enable anyone to create a good-looking physical book, using only common software. Crawford assumes access to MS Word and the internet; with only this basic equipment, anyone should be able to follow the steps he lays out and, without too much difficulty, have a reasonably-priced object for sale.

While Crawford sees this as most applicable for public libraries, where writing groups and local history or genealogy students may produce content of interest to a small or local audience, his methods are equally useful for a self-publishing fiction author or even an open-access academic imprint that wants to make an archival copy available. This book’s value, though, comes from its detailed layout instruction; readers are encouraged to apply these skills to their own imaginative ends. After all, the goal of micropublishing is to produce a high-quality content carrier, cheaply. Crawford shows us how to do exactly that in this book.