11A: Reflections on Last Class

In this post I'm going to focus specifically on our in-class reference activity/skit/game. I played the determined and slightly overwhelmed patron who had come to Heather and Ben with questions about poverty levels in the U.S., India, China, and Mexico. I wanted to know the poverty rate in each country, but also to understand what that rate "meant" -- how it was calculated, how those calculations varied between countries, and ultimately how I would explain this all to a teacher/professor who would press me on the details (this was my own dramatization of the prompt, as I felt these details would be especially appropriate for the kind of class in which students are always terrified of being asked to justify their answers for fear of very intent/probing follow-up questions.)

I appreciated how Heather recognized that she might not have the entire picture w/r/t my intentions, and that I might not really know what I'm asking for, but kept deepening our conversation through a number of methods:

• Asking a mixture of open-ended and clarifying questions "Would you say you're more interested in these data or would like to find more sources?" "What were the instructions you received from your teacher?""What do you think about using this type of statistic?"
• Not expressing frustration when things became more complicated or ambiguous, but rather communicating verbally and non-verbally that she was continuing to investigate with me and was invested in learning the outcome with me.
• At a few points I didn't know how to answer a follow-up question because it fell out of the prompt given and I couldn't come up with an answer quickly enough (I did invent the "my teacher is going to grill me on this data" angle but didn't invent a specific assignment, for example). In those moments I felt genuinely flustered, and I appreciated that Heather again made some space for me to process my thoughts and didn't overly press her line of questions, but rather looped back and tried other ways to get at the information.

This experience really reiterated our focus on the class on compassion, strong non-verbal cueing, careful selection of questions and more broadly questioning strategies, and the importance of "geeking out together" as an ethic. 

It will be interesting to see how the types of questions that students bring to librarians will shift over time as the amount and complexity of digital information increases. If, as Alyssa and others mentioned, we continue to enter this kind of post-truth moment where information is contested and information literacy skills do not keep up with the increasing importance of digital information, librarians may have to field even more complex versions of these back-and-forths over the meaning and context behind statistics and other data. What might those trends look like in light of future employment trends like computer/robotic automation and the increasing specialization and complexity of tech jobs? How can librarians, as some of the folks on the front line of digital information literacy shifts, pass along their insights and experiences to educators and others who can teach the necessary skills, or should librarians demand more opportunities for information literacy instruction as we've discussed? 

Also: is there something particular going on in our society today with regard to over-reliance on statistics and predictive modeling versus other kinds of research and data? What role might librarians have in helping communities and learners seek wisdom and clarity in the questions asked of data and digital systems? I've been thinking about this "how do we ask the right questions and use information and digital resources with wisdom and clarity of purpose" issue -- I intuitively feel librarians can play a huge role through these kinds of front-line conversations with patrons and students, but I'm still learning what that might look like day-to-day in our professional lives.

11B: Reflections in Instruction in Libraries and Community-based Technology Education

Before starting the readings for this week, I happened to see this Tweet from Pew Research scroll across my feed:

Many Americans have high expectations for their local libraries services. https://t.co/wfSXEgMcx8 pic.twitter.com/PDndYcs1gJ

— PewResearch Internet (@pewinternet) November 29, 2016

The fact that 80% of Americans DEFINITELY want to learn digital skills in their public libraries is so exciting! I loved the experience of designing and teaching basic computer classes in a public library as a Community Technology Empowerment Project Corps member in 2011-2012, and I'm only just realizing that the community interest in tech skills have only increased over the years. This is all to say that I approached the readings very much with the question: "how could instructional practices translate to transformational opportunities to learn and discover programming/making/technology in the public library setting?"

Understanding by Design provides a strong set of processes and suggestions that center meaningful learning rather than teaching or curriculum for curriculum's sake. I find the idea of designing backwards to be especially helpful when approaching technology education -- when setting out to teach skills like programming, what is the intended learning one wishes patrons and students to experience? It could be learning to understand the parameters and nature of problems and use analytic skills to craft solutions - in other words learning to think like a computer science more generally. It could be to learn concrete skills that could be applied in school or the workplace -- and indeed, a lot of my classes back in 2011-2012 were designed to help adult jobseekers navigate basic professional software in a workplace, as well as demonstrate their ability to pursue continuing education and pass a course. Often the pursuit of "coding" as a self-evident goal is a mix of both of these ways-of-thinking and professional goals without much clarity.

It would be interesting to break down the "think like a computer science" further and, for example, help community members be able to pursue their own learning/research/activist goals in a way that draws meaningfully upon electronic research. How great would it be if every community in Michigan experiencing situations like the Flint water crisis or the Detroit public education crisis could go to their libraries to fluently navigate public data sets, and in doing so gather data to bring to their elected representatives or to use in their own lives? Perhaps this is overly ideal, but there must be some more meaningful learning objectives to be designed around other than a nebulous hope that code = better job = more money somewhere down the line!

If I were to apply the backward learning model as laid out in the text, it might look something like this:

1. Identify desired results - In this case, increasing community awareness of public data and creating new opportunities to investigate important issues in the community

2. Determine acceptable evidence - This could be demonstrating knowledge of how to access a particular data set at Data.gov, or how to use a free mapping tool to visualize a set of data, or how to pose an appropriate research question and identify a plan of action in pursuing it, or all of the above!

3. Plan learning experiences and instruction - Here's where I see a tutorial in something like Data.gov or ArcGIS Online or perhaps another local open data tool, followed by a session on posing research questions, and a self-guided final mini-project that involves using a tool to answer a question of personal importance. (I'm seeing this as a three-session public library class, with each session being a two-hour mix of lecture, guided tutorials, and self-guided exploration). Here's where I can also see an artfully designed hook problem (to Wiggins and McTighe's framework) could bring students into a compelling and appropriately-difficult sequence of learning, rather than presenting a tool in an overly technical and intimidating manner.

In thinking through this example, I realize that the assessment/evidence piece (#2) is definitely my weak point. On a personal values level, I tend not to value quantitative/measurable results for their own sake and prefer more open-ended creative exploration of ideas. However, I can already see the value of the backwards-first approach in that it's much easier to be detailed and focused about assessment if it's in the service of those ultimate learning goals/results, rather than a more detached measure of quality. This is also a nice affirmation of how thoughtful design processes can really challenge our assumptions of the value and function of different aspects of instruction/education/learning.

Wiggins and McTighe's exploration of the long-term purpose of schooling reminds me again of our conversations about the civic/democratic/educational role of libraries in our communities. To what extent should librarians solicit specific learning objectives from patrons, or perhaps study community dynamics to hypothesize those goals and develop appropriate community-based education opportunities? How does life-long learning relate to learning for professional advancement, or learning for children designed to address gaps and inconsistencies in public education, or specifically as ways to increase engagement in the democratic process and community life? These goals all overlap and intersect, and it seems that in designing community-based technology education we would have to confront and engage them in some manner.

10B: Post-Reference Library Reference?

(Side note, I laughed out loud/woke up my cat at PC Sweeney's fourth option for talking about reference death, "4) Students in Library School who think it’s something new to write about")

I really connected with this quote in particular:

"What I’m saying here in a round and about way, is that we need to continue what libraries have always been, and that is to be enablers to those who want to learn and provide the resources that enable our communities to learn. It’s not reference, its enabling our patrons to live more fulfilling lives"

I find so much value in setting aside the parameters of individual instances of interpersonal reference and instead thinking about how we want to encourage people to learn and solve problems in their communities. I'm definitely biased as this is pretty much exactly what I hope to accomplish with my own work with technology/libraries -- I have always loved being somebody who supports and teaches tools and encourages and makes space.

Like Sweeney, Kenney seems to be interested in reframing around the opportunity that exists rather than what has been lost -- it's interesting to read about the criticism of online databases. This is definitely something that academic libraries continue to focus hugely on, and has a lot of utility for helping the process of research, but I think in a public context the value calculations are way different.

I really appreciated hearing from Rebekkah Aldrich, one of the librarians interviewed in Albanese and Kenney's article, when she listed some of the ways librarians are moving to better understand what patrons are striving towards: "“Today, we need targeted efforts that speak to where people’s passions and aspirations lie. We need to target the unique things we can corner the market on locally: reader advisory, homework help, digital fluency, local history, hacker spaces, and working outside of our buildings with collaborators to make our communities more sustainable and resilient.”

I see a common struggle across these articles to find a balance between truly understanding what patrons desire and need on one hand and continuing to understand what special value libraries can provide towards those ends, while perhaps remaining true to some of the core assets and skills of libraries -- or maybe not. I'm actually not convinced that the traditional implementations of reference in libraries need to persist at all for libraries to continue providing absolutely essential services -- I see there being tremendous value in instead focusing on the problem-solving and tech-centric interactions with patrons AND also the value of a community/civic physical space where members of the community can gather. In other words I'm pretty far along the throw-it-all-out camp, at the end of the day, though I'm open to being totally proven wrong on this!

I think regardless of big-scoping ideas of what reference should or shouldn't be, change happens through individuals creating new services and resources with enthusiasm and creativity. On that note, I absolutely loved discovering the This is What a Librarian Looks Like tumblr and exploring some of these personal stories of librarians getting out there and doing amazing things. This obviously isn't a think piece essay, but instead a source of inspiration about the many ways to be a librarian. For example, I loved this one description:

"Hello! My name is Heaven-Leigh, I worked at the Knight Library at the University of Oregon for 4 years as a lead student assistant. Patrons remember me as “the one who always asks if you are looking for a male, female or single occupancy bathroom.” I left the library with full support from fellow staff and students to write a book on sex positivity in the life of sex workers. If people are interested in following the progress of my book, here’s a link to my blog!"- Heaven-Leigh

Clearly for Heaven-Leigh, it's important to help engage patrons inclusively and expand the capacities of library reference to include sex positive materials (as per our collections conversations!) and inclusion for gender diverse folks. To me, her story illuminates the ways in which reference can also provide a path to education that may be omitted from school and/or mainstream culture, but provide absolutely vital information for individual development - a kind of DIY queer/trans inclusive take on community-based education. I find this to be totally exciting and valuable :)

Works Cited
Kenney, B. (2015). “Where Reference Fits in the Modern Library.” Publishers Weekly, Sept. 11.

Albanese, A.R., and Kenney, B. (2016). “The Changing World of Library Reference.” Publishers Weekly, Aug. 26.

Sweeney, P.C. (2011). “Reference is Dead; Long Live the Enabler.” Blog. Apr. 28.

This is What a Librarian Looks Like. (Tumblr blog) http://lookslikelibraryscience.com/

10A: Class Discussion

Our discussion in the prior class covered a lot of territory, spanning themes like collection development ethics, the library as a civic/democratic space, inclusion and sanctuary for immigrants, free speech versus curation of materials, and whether libraries can ever fully exist outside of the political (our consensus seemed to be, no, the library is inherently politicized and the librarian is a political actor). There's a lot of ways to get at these threads, but I thought I would pick out two ideas I took away from our conversation:

• The question of "what materials are appropriate for kids?" is incredibly thorny. Some folks were comfortable applying the free speech/don't limit materials at all approach to youth collections, while others wanted to introduce some guidance via grouping and shelving of materials, and yet others believed in a kind of civic and developmental responsibility to ensure youth weren't encountering materials that others had agreed were toxic, full of misinformation, espousing the ideology of hate groups, etc. These approaches and issues challenge the idea that a commitment to freedom of speech is in itself enough - as we discussed, that may also be a specifically American ethic that other countries are much more comfortable contesting in practice. I guess the theme I take away from this particular thorniness is that, yes, we do have to be mindful of the choices we make, which may very well be inescapably imperfect, and try to make sense of them in the context of other values that guide us.

• We can think of public libraries as neutral spaces, or democratic spaces, or communal spaces, or healing/dialogue-facilitating spaces. While there is significant overlap between each of these approaches, they also suggest very different functions that public libraries might play within communities -- is the library the place you go for refuge? Is it a place where you should expect to feel safe regardless of your identity, and/or a space where librarians will specifically facilitate a safe space that is intolerant of hate towards you? Where does the ethical foundation of libraries spring from? I personally believe in libraries as spaces of direct democracy and one of the most beautiful expressions of who we are as a country. As Maya Angelou said:



"I always felt, if I can get to a library, I'll be OK."



I don't think there's an easy way to distill our conversation down into answers and conclusions and I'm comfortable with that. One thing I really like about this class is that it makes me more aware of my own ideas - which I sometimes experience more as a conviction or value than as a rational argument, for better or worse - while also helping me understand how that idea coexists with many others, and how we all belong to a community of thinkers on things like this. It's really neat and humbling thing to experience. :)

9B: Reactions to the Reading

These chapters definitely had me thinking about my experience at a small academic library in the Pacific Northwest. As a tech floater person who also helped with some reference, I interacted with assessment by writing down tally marks for different types of questions at the desk, and also more substantially by helping to redesign the web interface for our QuestionPoint portal.

Though I helped collect data or implement features, I ultimately was only at the very far end of this process, and didn't really fully understand what process the librarians were using to understand and improve assessment. Despite this, I remember how motivated and process-driven my librarian coworkers seemed to be about really understanding and addressing user needs. They seemed to have really internalized service and the goals of reference, and were trying their best to apply it to the complex tasks of supporting mostly Internet/distance-based learned in mostly-online classes, with a much smaller subset of students attending in person classes on campus.

The readings  made me wonder: how do academic librarians in particular advocate for learners and students within institutions that may, in other ways, fail or underserve students? Many times the librarians were more motivated than the instructors or the administrators especially around core competencies of information literacy. Our university had an attitude of pushing off responsibilities for learning and supporting skill development to librarians with an expectation librarians would succeed by pursuing these goals in a self-directed way. But in reality, the librarians often lacked the necesary support to make instruction successful. It seems like instruction as a goal for academic librarians in particular can't exist as a vacuum, but must be integrated into broader academic goals and experiences to be effective.

9A: Reflections on Music Reference (Due to Missed Class)

As I wasn't in class in our last session, I instead did a little research on music reference in libraries. One of the first ways I experienced the pleasure of geeking out about something via extensive Internet research was getting really into music as a high schooler. I loved the process of learning to contextualize a musician in a particular overlap of genres and historical moment, and how as I learned more about labels and important concert venues I'd find new ways to understand and connect with the music I loved.

And yet, I don't really know how librarians relate to music, in terms of items in collections or working with special music libraries. How do core reference skills like the reference interview and problem-solving with the customer play out when working with a very specific type of resources? And what are the particular challenges and concerns in special music collections?

Christensen, Du Mont, and Green (2001) describe how music libraries tend to elicit requests that require a great degree of domain knowledge, often to find a very specific item. In this setting, librarians and paraprofessionals appear to do quite well, outperforming other academic library departments on the whole. However, this environment is challenging for student workers -- and whether they were music majors or not did not affect the outcome. I wonder whether this sense of specialized knowledge and an intimidating environment for student workers might reinforce the music library as being the domain of highly educated, "elite" music librarians. I wonder, then, if there is an implicit devaluation of other forms of music, such as punk or rap, and the bodies of knowledge required for those types of music. Also, how might a student musician have a different experience at a music library than a student writing a paper about opera?

Kirstin Dougan's 2012 paper focuses on music student information seeking behavior, and makes the interesting claim that performers and music editors have more in common in their search behavior than musicologists and other researchers investigating music. Across these different needs and search strategies, Dougan notes a general lack of information literacy and search skills when it comes to music collections. Given the separate disciplinary silos between the players/educators and researchers -- pragmatic research for playing and education versus more free-form investigation for meaning and context -- perhaps more education about music tools would be a way to expose all users to more dynamic skills and search experiences. Lai and Chan's (2009) study suggests that libraries could respond to these disparate needs by more carefully crafting their collections and developing targeted reference services for each audience - for example, helping conductors find scores more easily. I like the idea of users driving new types of reference interventions a lot - and for me this also sparks other opportunities for exposing users to types of resources they may have never even considered before.

To what degree should libraries attempt to create serendipity? When should librarians serve the conductor by providing prompt, exactly-as-requested scores and targeted resources, and when might they have the opportunity to introduce them to musicology research that would inspire an entirely new direction in their work? This may be overstating the role of libraries in explicitly guiding discovery - but there seems to be an opportunity lurking here for some types of programming or services. Maybe something like "musicology for guitarists" -- I'd go to that workshop! :)


Sources:


Christensen, Beth, Du Mont, Mary and Green, Alan. (2001) Taking Note: Assessing the Performance of Reference Service in Academic Music Libraries, A Progress Report. Notes: 58(1), pp. 39-64. https://doi.org/10.1353/not.2001/0127

Lai, Katie and Chan, Kylie. (2009). Do You Know Your Music Users' Needs? A Library User Survey that Helps Enhance a User-Centered Music Collection. Academic Librarianship, 36(1), pp. 63–69.

Dougan, Kirstin. (2012). Information seeking behaviors of music students. Reference Services Review, 40(4), pp. 558 - 573. http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/00907321211277369

8B: Reflections on Readings (Diverse Populations)

Both "Reference Services for Diverse Populations" and the ALA Code of Ethics provide a lot of context for the different ways we've engaged with diversity and libraries over the semester so far.

I appreciate how Cooke clarifies that equitable service delivery requires an attention to the particular needs and experiences of underserved populations and not simply a "be inclusive across the board" approach. Indeed I think this really succinctly describes the difference between equity and equality -- which is also beautifully demonstrated in this meme:

Source: OutFront Minnesota via Everyday Feminism. Full article here

Cooke then goes on to illustrate what attentive inclusion means for particular groups of patrons. Reading this definitely led me to reflect on working with recent immigrant communities in Saint Paul. I remember working with a Hmong father who was working hard to get his daughter into our reading tutor program (which had an unfortunately huge waiting list). We eventually were able to add his daughter to the program, but in the chaos of the scheduling process I neglected to communicate things clearly and consistently to him, which made him extremely frustrated. I didn't initially realize he was so frustrated because he was showing me a degree of respect as somebody working in a library -- but when I asked my Hmong coworker to help translate our interactions, she later told me that he was masking his frustrations and that I should instead consistently confirm with a Hmong speaker. The whole experience reminded me that while I had perceived myself as both "doing the best I can and handling mistakes with good cheer!" and "I had solved the problem of placing his daughter, so we should be good!", it wasn't until I really involved other folks with more cultural and linguistic backgrounds that I could actually provide him and his family with service that matched his expectations. To be honest I was pretty embarrassed by how much I had missed, and how much I had coasted on belief that my own approach was enough, and I've tried to really learn this lesson and express it in practice ever since.

What would it look like for a wide variety of library services - including technology in library contexts - to regularly listen to its diverse communities and incorporate their perspectives in the heart of their work? How much the insights of user research and other HCI methodologies help in this sense, or perhaps other continuous evaluation/community based research approaches? 

8A: Reflections on Class (Virtual Reference, Lib Guides)

Blog Post 8A:

In our previous class session, we focused on a mix of frantic Gchat virtual reference interviewing, looking at transcripts of successful and not-so-successful exchanges, and presenting our libguides. A few moments and themes that jumped out at me:

- There's not always an easy consensus when Monday morning quarterbacking (ha this is my favorite sports metaphor..) virtual reference conversations. The class as a whole paid attention to pivotal moments in the not-so-successful virtual reference transcript and tried to identify critical shifts that happened -- and while we could intuit shifts in engagement or how an overly-professional attitude or overly-specific recommendation at one point may have lead to the souring of an interaction, it's hard to know for sure. The biggest takeaway from that exercise, for me, was that that rapport we build with patrons is a unique, specific, and complex relationship, and like any relationship it needs to be tended to appropriately and treated with an attitude of unconditional goodwill (to borrow Alyssa's framework of always approaching the interaction assuming the best).

- Our class seems to have really adopted a relationship and person-focused approach to reference, which is really nice to see. It was also helpful to hear from folks who work in virtual reference and hear about their experiences with training, supervisors, etc. -- as well as those strange experiences like prank/bizarre reference questions! But as somebody who likes to think about things theoretically, it's really really helpful to have a constant sense of how a certain approach plays out in practice, and how the ambiguities inherent in reference conversations play out when you are forced to make a decision to how to respond in the moment. It seems like a lot of pressure in some ways, and clearly many folks have found ways to be graceful in those situations and interact in a way true to their values, which I definitely appreciate.

- I enjoyed seeing all of the libguides, and kind of wish we had some time to actually explore the pages digitally ourselves. One thing that I noticed was that we didn't really discuss the accessibility and usability of our resources. I would have liked to have discussed how we expected our resources to be used in actual libraries, and also how the design of our sites (such as the contrast between text and background colors, the use of alt-text and standardized headings/formatting) affects how somebody with low vision or somebody using a screenreader would experience the resource. I hadn't really thought about the role of intermediaries in libguides, but after seeing a wide variety of hyper-useful resources (the citizenship resources stick out to me) I thought more about how a libguide could be targeted to a librarian who would facilitate learning and exploring these resources, perhaps in an open computer lab or out on the floor with patrons. I'm actually unsure, would this use fall outside of the realm of libguides and into something else, like a guided librarian tutorial? Regardless there was a lot of potential for learning and guiding patrons through a variety of resources, and it was neat to see all of the ways that manifested across projects.

Blogpost 7B: Readers Advisory, Goodreads, and Snapchat!

Thorton-Verma, Henrietta and Schwartz, Meredith. (2014). "The State of Readers’ Advisory". Library Journal. Retrieved on November 1, 2016 from http://lj.libraryjournal.com/2014/02/library-services/the-state-of-readers-advisory/

University Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. (2016). "Readers' Advisory Guide for Literature: Goodreads". Retrieved on November 1, 2016 from http://guides.library.illinois.edu/c.php?g=347638&p=2344499

Graves, Alanna. (2016). "http://www.slj.com/2016/05/teens-ya/how-to-use-snapchat-for-readers-advisory/" School Library Journal. Retrieved on November 1, 2016 from http://www.slj.com/2016/05/teens-ya/how-to-use-snapchat-for-readers-advisory/

I approached this search with two main questions in mind, which come from my vantage point as a tech-focused academic library person: (1) how have social networks like Goodreads influenced in-person readers advisory? and (2) how might librarians accomodate these new ways of relating to text and media by recommending specific digital platforms and tools, and providing a kind of "tech advisory" interaction (I was responsible for a version of this while working as an Academic Technology Assistant in my Seattle academic library job, and now a little bit with the Digital Project Studio here)?

I was definitely surprised to find the 2013 study referenced with an infographic in Thorton-Verma and Schwartz's LJ article, which showed that a third of librarians (34%) refer patrons to social networking sites for books such as Goodreads. I wasn't really sure what librarians thought of Goodreads, but it makes a lot of sense - SNSs that focus on reading can help facilitate a reading habit that also links a patron up with their community both locally and across the Internet. Plus, while sites like Goodreads do push readers to Amazon and other online booksellers, they also can definitely be integrated into library usage (picking up books you find online at your local library, or even librarians drawing upon Goodreads as a tool/resource while holding in-person readers advisory conversations -- I have a fond memory of a public librarian in Seattle giving me advice on new feminist sci-fi authors and plugging those names into Goodreads immediately after).

After doing some more searching around on Goodreads and libraries, I actually found an academic libguide for Goodread! (this kind of felt like the perfect convergence of a bunch of themes we've focused on in the course so far ha). Interestingly, the UIUC guide relies very heavily on screenshots -- thus violating a principle that we tried to stick to in our group's libguide process. On one hand, I can see a very visual libguide being helpful for the type of user who might be passionate about books and is also somewhat unfamiliar with technology in general - but at the same time, are these the individuals who are likely to access an academic library website? This kind of approach would definitely require a lot of upkeep to avoid becoming outdated after a major site update -- and I see that it was last updated on April 12th, 2016, which is fairly recently! Hmm, so I'm not 100% sure of my verdict on this libguide, but it's a neat resource.

Finally, readers advisory with Snapchat. I thought this was so inventive and teen-friendly and just a really great take on an engaging version of readers advisory. I also love Graves' point about Snapchat as a means to make patrons more comfortable geeking out about books:

"Despite these small challenges, Snapchat is an invaluable tool that can help alleviate patrons’ feelings of library anxiety. For example, adults who read young adult books but feel slightly embarrassed about it might prefer watching booktalks on Snapchat to asking for suggestions at the library or browsing the Teen Room when teens are there.""

When I was a kid, the East Branch of the Lexington Public Library was a safe space where I could stop worrying about social anxiety and life and really get lost in ideas and words. But I know that many young folks feel almost the exact opposite -- that books are a place of demands placed by adults ("read this!!") and evaluations of skill ("take this test on the reading") and not a space to be expressive and creative. I absolutely love the last moment in this article:

"One of my favorite Snapchat success stories is when a boy asked me, “Hey Ms. Alanna? Can you put a hold on that comic book that you talked about last Tuesday? The one about the girl superhero who just wants to be normal?” He meant Strong Female Protagonist by Brannan Lee Mulligan. Snapchat helped me convince a young teen boy to read a comic book that was located at another branch. He probably wouldn’t have picked it up, or even known about it, on his own."

Graves' article provides another way to think about social networking sites and emerging technology -- not just a big societal trend to be chased, but a set of tools with which to approach those enduring human processes of boldness and experimentation and expressiveness and curiosity, all of which are familiar territory for librarians and afford us a place to really shine and help others.

Blog Post 7A: Reflections on Virtual Reference

In an in-class presentation, we heard about the success of virtual reference on campus. One slide in particular included the following finding from internal evaluation:

Data indicate: people love personalized assistance; more complex questions come virtually than in physical spaces; convenience and expertise matters

Virtual reference seems to sit as this fascinating intersection of the practice of reference and librarianship, the changing place where most people/users typically "are" when working and thinking, and also the way that our needs for connection and affirmation have shifted with our use of digital spaces. I've been thinking about what it means that people actually want to connect more online and over more complex problem-solving -- and I don't have a specific answer, but a number of questions:

• How does a shift from an interaction in a communal physical space to a one-on-one digital space relate to broader shifts in the United States away from institutional affiliations and more towards customization and personalization? (Beyond the tech aspect, I'm thinking here of some of Robert Putnam's arguments in his 2000 book Bowling Alone
• If virtual reference librarians are not wholly bound by physical spaces anymore, what is their relationship to the physical or institutional library? Would their success in virtual reference pave the way for new types of virtual help/assistance/relationships/advising? What do virtual reference librarians have to learn from e-counselors, for example, or vice versa?
• How does the degree of "personal thumbprint" in the virtual reference interaction - such as including a name and photo of the librarian - impact the success of the virtual reference encounter? (There's probably a strong parallel here to therapy/counseling practices, which AFAIK show that a little disclosure can be helpful for building rapport but too much personality/ego presence from the clinician can worsen the efficacy of the interaction)
• What does "roving reference" look like online? Is it those annoying little chat boxes on sites trying to sell you something!? I hope not.. are there other possibilities for meeting online users where they are, perhaps?

I really enjoyed the talk in class and am curious to see how virtual reference continues to shift and evolve, and whether some new format beyond text-based online chat is inevitable/emerging right now.

6A: Reflections from the prior class (Qualtrix aggregate data)

I really enjoyed looking at the aggregated Qualtrix data from our Customer Service Observations. Our group discussed a number of topics, including the challenges of sitting behind a screen while on a reference desk, the specifics of what makes a behavior welcoming or not, and ambiguity in the layout of libraries (especially informal quiet spaces). The common thread seemed to be us imagining how to incorporate these results specifically into academic library positions.

As we imagine the types of roles and environments we may be part of in the future (or currently in many cases), I also find it helpful when we widen the scope as a group to users, environments, and experiences. I appreciated in the discussion of the library reserve system when Alyssa raised the point that, despite our individual difficulties or frustrations with this system, it helped to widen access to important resources to students who may not be able to afford their own textbooks, and may already be working extra jobs to afford attending school. Alyssa's observation helps to complicate our understanding of what needs to be in place to constitute a successful encounter with library resources, both in terms of reference and the broader questions of engaging with the library.

I definitely continue to filter a lot of our course focus through an idea of academic library work, but I would like to try harder to imagine how these interactions would play out in public libraries engaging children and seniors perhaps, or in a very particular kind of special library. My interaction with a special collection within an academic library sort of hinted at how a small collection's culture might vary significantly from the broader library culture, but I wonder how that plays out when the collections gets way, way more specific -- and full disclosure, I have a dream Special Library job that would take place at an Experiential Train Travel library. The library would collect any and all resources related to traveling on a train, but with a special emphasis on the subjective experiences of transit (perhaps virtual reality footage from on trains!?) Anyways, I have been wondering what a virtual reference interaction might look like in a hyper-specialized collection that would draw interest perhaps from all over the world (again, dreaming here), and whether this type of interaction might question any of the premises we've discussed as a group. Perhaps that experience of sitting down with a librarian and having help thinking through a collection would look different with a collection formed around subjective/experiential content? Just a thing I'm thinking about.

I'd love to learn more about other classmates' dream library configurations and positions and how they imagine being engaging reference folks in those environments :)

6B: Reading Reflections (on virtual reference, accessibility, and Second Life/virtual reality)

Reading the Ross, Nilsen, and Radford chapters, I appreciated how the principles of reference interviews held up quite well in diverse contexts when librarians took the initiative to adapt their interacting style as appropriate. In working with patrons with disabilities, for example, the text mentions being aware of the different way people might communicate, and making sure that welcoming behavior is appropriate for the abilities of the user (making sure users who are deaf or hard of hearing can visually see you, keeping your mouth visible when speaking, etc.)

I wonder how technology might be used differently in order to increase the accessibility of reference interactions. The section on virtual reference emphasized how solid reference skills may transfer to a virtual chat environment, and gestured to new ways to include emerging affordances (though this section was mostly focused on texting/SMS), but I definitely was left wondering what non-text digital systems might look like. What might a more inclusive model of virtual reference look like that continues to uphold the values of quality reference interviews, but creates new opportunities for engagement for users who may have difficulties or an inability to relate via text -- and this might range from patrons who use augmentative and alternative communications to experience text (such as screen reading software) to patrons with an intellectual disability to patrons who don't natively speak the same language as the librarian in question. And in general, text-heavy interactions may not suit the learning styles of diverse patrons.

For a while, librarians were incredibly excited about the capacity for virtual reference encounters in 3D worlds populated by avatars (especially Second Life.) In a 2008 Library Review article, Nicholas Joint wrote that rather than replicate traditional reference models within virtual worlds like Second Life, librarians should instead draw inspiration from virtual worlds and construct new models that do not depend upon the traditional idea that "the location of content determined the location of reference services." The article ultimately takes a critical stance towards attempt to re-create geographic/location models in Second Life and instead points to the need for new models and ideas.

To me, this work on Second Life seems to signal that while simply adding a virtual 3d environment may not fundamentally alter the virtual reference encounter, exploring ways to interact beyond text might open up new possibilities for folks who might be excluded from overly textual encounters. Perhaps there are ways that the new wave of virtual reality might better facilitate the empathetic, discernment-focused aspect of reference conversations -- that sense of being with each other and searching together, as we have discussed in different ways in class. This line of thought might risk becoming about something other than what libraries/librarianship are meant to provide, and yet I think there could be an entire way for this type of non-text-oriented interaction to become important and helpful to connect people to libraries even more (and perhaps have a special applicability to special collections).



Joint, N. (2008). Virtual reference, second life and traditional library enquiry services. Library Review, 57(6), 416-423. doi:http://dx.doi.org.proxy.lib.umich.edu/10.1108/00242530810886689

Blog Post 5B

From Smith and Wong, Ch. 3:

"As Mary Ellen Bates (1998, 19) has observed, 'The time you invest in the reference interview is time you don't spend later re-doing your work when you finally figure out what your client really wanted.'"

This is so important and, in my experience, so easy to forget. One of my biggest challenges in doing reference work, and also qualitative interviews, is jumping too quickly to the "make connections between what somebody is telling me and start problem-solving" phase without really thoroughly understanding the issue in their own terms. As Mary Ellen Bates notes, this is at a direct detriment to the process at hand, and I have often had to go back and retroactively question my assumptions/ask new follow-up questions.

Using the open/closed question framework, one thing I hope to really internalize is not asking closed questions too early, even if I start to feel a hypothesis of "what the patron wants" forming in my head, and continuing to use open questions until that hypothesis has been verified or a new one has taken its place. This certainly relates to our previous class discussion about the extent to which we as librarians position ourselves as experts, and how to achieve partnership in research inquiries -- I forgot the term that Brian used, but something along the lines of "what we offer as reference librarians is professional discernment," which is totally accurate.

The "Conducting the Reference Interview" chapter in Ross, Nilsen, and Radford's book helped me better understand some specific strategies beyond just "open questions". Two in particular:

1) Instead of focusing on systems-centered questions, ask user-centered questions. Specifically: "What have you done so far?"

I absolutely love the phrasing of "what have you done so far?" Asking this question early has the power to really reframe the entire reference interview - rather than being oriented around the expertise of the librarian, it really draws the user into reflecting about their process and actions they may have taken or may want to take.

2) Sense-making questions: more structured than open-ended questions but still focused on understanding the user's experience of a gap in information/resources and why they care, not just delivering an answer.

This actually helped me figure out something I've been fuzzy about in interviewing and research in general: how do you probe for more specific information without over-emphasizing your own hypotheses/making the conversation or interview coalesce in a way it may not be ready for, and instead stay with the user-centric perspective?

Also, re: not asking "why" directly -- that is so on point. It reminds me of a quote that I have never been able to properly attribute because it gets garbled in search queries, but: "Why is the least philosophical question." In other words, there are much more helpful and probing and profound ways to get at the nature of things than the question why. I suppose the entire reference interview methodology proves the necessity of better questions, but I appreciated this little bit in the text in particular.

5A: In Which I Write About 8.8 Meter Long Tapeworms

After discovering the Mütter Museum's website at the end of last class (and recovering from my viserceral reactions to some of the images on that page...) I remembered that this isn't the first time I've heard of a medical oddities museum.

6.5 years ago, when studying abroad in Tokyo, I journeyed with a few friends to the Meguro Parasitological Museum (from their website: "Try to think about parasites without a feeling of fear, and take the time to learn about their wonderful world of the Parasites.")

 Friends!

Parasites!

In the 1950s, the general practitioner Satoru Kamegi donated his extensive private collection of parasites to form a small special collections museum. If memory serves, Kamegi had operated on soldiers during wartime, many of whom had been living in squalid environments and acquired large, thriving parasites. He created the collection while helping countless people. The collection contains the longest preserved tapeworm in the world -- 8.8 meters long. I saw it. It was gross.

In thinking about the Meguro Parasitological Museum and the Mütter Museum, I feel that these kinds of special collections have enormous value for all of us. We often only understand our bodies, our health, and our range of functioning in the terms of empowered social institutions that want to tell a single story of function and dysfunction. Having something like a museum of parasites, while totally gross!, helps uncover some of the gruesome realities of war and poverty. Similarly, our understanding of political figures and history so rarely engages the embodied reality of people - the disease they struggled with, the disabilities that shaped their relationship to the world. It may be uncomfortable to experience a giant tapeworm in a museum, but it also helps us collectively expand our understanding of what happens in bodies in the world.

I guess personally as somebody who's fairly squeamish and doesn't really like horror moves or gross-out humor at all, I find this kind of thing hard - but also, again, helpful in a weird way of understanding other people better. I actually had a really cute anime-y tapeworm keychain that I got at the museum and had on my phone for years. But that gets into representations and cuteness and Japanese culture, which is a whole other thing!

It's genuinely fascinating that special collections can play this kind of role, and I wonder what other work is being done in medical special collections in particular.

Sources:
http://www.kiseichu.org/Pages/english.aspx
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2001/03/11/national/strange-world-of-parasites-on-display/#.V_PInrwrK2w
http://www.atlasobscura.com/places/meguro-parasitological-museum
http://muttermuseum.org/

Blog Post 4B: Reading Reflections

How can librarians, and in particular academic librarians, engage students as whole people?  By charting out roughly what we might expect a student/researcher/patron/human to be experiencing at different parts of their research process, Kulthau's "Initial Model of the Information process" helps us to construct better mental models of student behavior and hopefully provide something they will find actually helpful and supportive.

I find it fascinating that, while researchers have appeared to been working on these deeper models of the student experience with research for decades, the actual research process is so rarely taught in terms of an emotional process or even a process with distinct stages. As an undergrad at a small liberal arts school, I feel like the research process behind papers was often only discussed on the level of the output - the essay, the works cited section - and not framed in the sense of an investigation with stages. It wasn't until I started working as a research assistant in 2013 that I realized there was a specific process I could use for carrying out a lit review for example, and not just freewheeling between a list of references I had taken out from my library (and probably had overdue fines on...) I never felt like I could come to the library for that problem, as I felt like I should have been able to figure it out and that the angst of battling a lack of structure was just part of the process.. but in retrospect, it would have been nice to have the consistent support of a librarian in my field who I could consult or check in with as I worked on projects. That also evokes to me a feeling I associate with my favorite library as a kid: the tiny East Branch library in Lexington, MA, where a librarian with bright hair would kind of check in now and then about my books and ask me about my hobby progress (I was really into video games and model rockets), but otherwise let me just browse and read alone. That sense of continuity and community meant a lot to me at that time, and while the needs of an undergrad are likely different, I feel like there's a way academic reference could offer that, too.

This definitely makes me think of our discussion in class about reference librarians now working primarily in instruction units -- but I also wonder, in general, how much communication happens between the different entities responsible for undergrad student learning? Given that the role of reference will likely continue to shift with technology and other changes, as outlined in Janes' essay, how might librarians end up playing a larger or smaller role in the lives of students, and what does that mean in the context of longer-term shifts in higher ed? I have vague guesses, but I'd love to learn more about some of those questions of whole student learning/undergrad-level research education -- after hearing about student experiences in public libraries last class, I'm curious to learn more from folks who work in academic libraries and what they think about these shifts!

Blog 4A: Reflections on Class 3

The URL "data.gov" does not give the impression that it might lead somewhere playful and clever. But I was pleasantly surprised just how relatable and downright fun the "home of the U.S. Government’s open data" ended up being! Alyssa and I explored the platform and discovered a wide diversity of data presentation styles, from web apps for climate change to curated geographical information specific to native territories.

At the heart of data.gov's work appears to be a genuine desire to reach people with data, to engage and even delight them, and have that connection help support whatever research questions or social issues are most relevant to the user.

I found it personally super helpful to see data.gov in ation. In my previous posts, I have been kind of thinking through the relationship between libraries and communities, and also wondering how research, data, and technology figure into the equation. Even though my background is largely in research, I continue to struggle with feeling that the incremental, empiricism-or-bust model of research isn't the best way to engage people or communities - and also might not be engaging for me in the coming years or decades. I love so much about libraries, but I'm still trying to figure out how to connect the dots-- like, how would a librarian who mostly supports researchers experience a different part of the process? Would I risk just amplifying the aspects of research I find least relatable?

Data.gov is actually a really wonderful example of the kind of empowering, revelatory work that can be done with digital libraries, special collections, virtual reference, or some combination of the above. As the amount of data out there increases and increases, it becomes even more vital to have these translational tools that seek to create strong, relatable connections between individuals, communities, issues, and data. It's just a little spark for me right now, but I'm definitely eager to seek out more -- and strangely compelled to focus on map/geographic resources in particular. I could definitely see myself working with maps all day ^_^

3B: Reflections on Readings for Week #3

Samuel Green spends the majority of "Personal Relations Between Librarians and Readers", which was  published 140 years ago (!), describing a wide variety of ways librarians might help patrons investigate topics and answer questions. His suggestions range from ready reference to research consulting, and from an air of civic duty to flat-out paternalism and elitist moralizing (""The collections of books which make up the contents of the circulating departments of our libraries have been provided for the use of persons of differing degrees of refinement and moral susceptibility, and for those who occupy mental planes of various altitudes.")

At one point, he throws out the following example:

"A reservoir dam gives way. Citizens become suspicious that too little care is taking in making the repairs. You drop a line to the chairman of the proper committee of the city government to say that you have just received Humber's " Water Supply of Towns" from London. He calls for the work, and takes it home to study."

I love the suggestion that a librarian would be so on top of local committee actions that they would preemptively reach out to a city government member to help them get better information. But this kind of civic-minded librarianship is exactly how libraries in Flint played a vital role in helping citizens advocate for themselves and challenge the inadequate information coming from government officials over the last few years.

The Flint Public Library is at the center of a variety of citizen research and information efforts -- they help citizens learn where donated bottled water is to be distributed; provide a reputable source of information after local and state government bodies have been discredited by their inaction or coverup efforts throughout the water crisis; and FPL's director Kay Schwartz has been vocal and visible as exactly the kind of active citizen-librarian imagined in Green's essay (though much, much less paternalistic). And at the current stage of the crisis, the FPL is even collecting community stories and experiences of the water crisis.

I find this model of librarianship so exciting and admirable! What are other ways that libraries can provide an alternative to information sources that are revealed to be misleading or unreliable? How can libraries step in to help support the needs of the community when appropriate - and what are those limits? Thinking about the FPL's role in the community during the water crisis really powerfully illustrates how the library's choice of informations sources have vital consequences - if they had simply accepted governmental data without any additional context or space for citizens to contest it with their own research, they would not have been able to provide this kind of support within the community. It's really good stuff, I think!

3A - Reflections on Class #2

When I came across the Dictionary of Terrorism at one of the tables our group visited near the end of the night, I definitely paused a moment. What would a dictionary about terrorism be hoping to accomplish? How would it differ from an encyclopedia on terrorism, or a literature review of terrorism studies, or any number of other framings for this kind of work?

Over the last couple of decades, terrorism and the war against terrorist organizations has shaped so much of our society, from media coverage of government decisions to airport security to our expectations of safety and measures to protect our safety. As the cliché goes, we're living in a post-9/11 world. But I think the "knowing" of terrorism has influenced us hugely as well: the ways in which we know, or frequently don't know, about the behavior of our government; the shadow precision (and imprecision) of drone strikes; the broad interpretation of the Authorization for Use of Military Force to include "associated forces," a notoriously ambiguous category that has been used as a catch-all for all kinds of U.S. military action abroad. At the core of each of these is a tenuous balance of ambiguity and secrecy, selective enforcement, and organizations that often feel entitled to make decisions on our behalf without our knowledge.

In light of this all, I was curious whether a dictionary of terrorism would attempt to make definitive statements (as dictionaries tend to!) without regard to the politics of knowing and secrecy, or instead describe those processes and help the readers decipher and actively consider those processes, or something else entirely. Any approach such a book takes will inevitably express a political project, and I wondered whether this particular book would see its project as allied to academia, or the American public, or defense institutions, or some complicated balance of them all. I tried to scan the book quickly in the time allotted, but all I could really determine is that (1) according to the Acknowledgments, the editor was relying on a pretty wide net of information sources, from lawyers to professors to librarians to archivists, (2) the structure of the book did seem to imply that each entry included a definitive "definition" that seemed to often literally refer to the entity listed rather than the discourse surrounding that entity, and (3) at least according to the table of contents there didn't seem to be a real transparent discussion of the decisions of what to include and why. But really these are just very quick impressions and don't tell the whole story.

I think I was drawn to this strange dictionary and the questions it raises because it seems to point to this vision of librarianship as a way to deal with those murky conflicting goals and create a space for people to come up with their own answers, and also formulate their own questions without an agenda. Maybe this dictionary would spark conversations with regular patrons who are veterans with disabilities, or kids from immigrant families, or somebody working on a project for school. I've been trying to figure out what kind of role I want to play in communities and research and social justice, and this process involves a lot of flailing and false starts, but I found there to be something comforting in geeking out about a really specific reference book in this way. I'm continuing to think on it, but I'm happy I found this book.

Blog Post 2B: Reflection on Readings for Week #2

"Whether they are physically present or not, people who ask reference librarians for assistance are often at a psychological disadvantage. In today's information environment where information is available everywhere all the time, people feel that if they cannot find what they want, then they have failed. In the user's mind, there is a feeling that they are inadequate because they could not retrieve what they wanted. Having to approach another person for help implies that they have to admit that they are a failure, while some users are not willing to do so. Of course, the librarian does not see the user as a failure - but the user does not know that. Because users are not certain how to proceed, they rarely state exactly what they want." (Smith and Wong, 2016:19-20)

I found the above passage to be genuinely surprising, and also intuitively to ring true.

Most of my library career has been spent helping patrons solve problems with technology, especially patrons who have more limited experience with the tools they are using (e.g. helping an elderly patron scan important documents and send them as .pdfs, or helping an unemployed patron who had been at the same company for decades navigate the labyrinth of job searching online.) In many of these situations, there is a pretty widely understood social script of not understanding technology - we all regularly encounter situations where we are taken aback by tools, no matter our level of experience (as we go deeper into technology the problems become more obscure, to be sure, but they continue to leave us all feeling at a loss pretty often!) And so I've relied on that kind of collective recognition that, yes, we all have to ask for help for technology to make the process relatable. I've tried to empathize by also expressing confusion and frustration at different tools, saying "oh yeah PDFs are totally weird and hard to format, I've found myself frustrated by them as well!"

But that all being said, I guess I hadn't fully considered how it might feel, in general, to be in a position of "psychological disadvantage." In retrospect, I've seen this more in my work in a college library with younger students who might ask for help using graphic design software, for example, but also clearly be frustrated that they're in a position of not knowing at all. These interactions have always felt different, and I find it helpful to think about how those feelings of "admit[ting] that they they are a failure" might create a specific set of emotional needs and tensions to keep in mind in the interaction. I wonder how this will change is digital literacy increases broadly and also the barriers to use of digital tools continues to decrease -- what will be the point where people "admit failure" or reach a point where they can no longer proceed, and how can reference adapt to that particular situation? What will tech help in a library look like?

2A: Reflection on Class #1

"If libraries didn't exist, it would be necessary to invent them"

At some point when I worked at the Saint Paul Public Library, I found this blog post with its strangely catchy rephrasing of Voltaire. The sentence became a kind of mantra that appeared in my head whenever I read about the changing role of libraries, the decline of paper books, the crisis of funding combined with all of the inventiveness happening in public libraries.

In our first class, I really appreciated how we didn't start with prescriptive ideas of what libraries are or should be. Instead we started with the things that made us excited, and also what this concept of service might mean outside of the specific context of libraries (but with obvious deep connections). I like that for some people, "libraries" meant helping teens learn and engage with their communities, and for others "libraries" meant collecting resources that would help students answer legal question or grow as scholars. Sometimes it's daunting to look out at our community institutions like libraries and imagine how much they are going to change in the coming years and decades.

I like the idea of really understanding and fostering passion for service in its own right, and how, combined with caring about information and civic spaces, this might lead us to the idea of a library or our role within libraries. Even if the libraries we want to nourish and grow and contribute to look markedly different in the future, I feel like service is really at the core of how we're operating within communities. Even if technology shifts the outlines of "librarianship", our passions and values and commitments will still coalesce around spaces of learning, growth, community, and information in the service of answering important questions -- one way or another we'll invent the library.

Hello!

Hi! My name is Zoë and I'm starting at UMSI this fall in the MSI program (LIS + SC concentrations, although this may soon change!) I love cats and dogs and board games and pinball and various shades of geeking out. In terms of my professional goals, I'm excited about helping diverse community members make progress towards their goals through technology, whether that means supporting queer & trans online peer communities (I'm working on a research project on this topic!), improving assistive technology, or answering technology reference questions for adult learners. I find it really important to work and enact change in the context of community, and I'm looking forward to exploring how I can do so within a college/university library or student services setting. These interests are all kind of rough sketches however -- I'm still figuring things out.

More about me: I was born in the Chicago area but mostly grew up in Lexington, Massachusetts (just outside of Boston/Cambridge). I lived in the Twin Cities in Minnesota for six years -- I first studied anthropology at Macalester College and then worked at a bustling, loud, lovely public library in Saint Paul. I ended up there via the Community Technology Empowerment Project, and I owe a lot of my focus as an adult to that wonderful AmeriCorps program. I moved back to Boston to work in Internet research and then again to Seattle to work in an academic library as a technology assistant before finally getting here to Ann Arbor in 2016. I hope to make it back to New England (ideally Western Mass/Pioneer Valley) and work for a liberal arts or community college.

I love spicy food, mountains and woods, feminist sci-fi, tasty coffee, and in general a lot of introvert pursuits. Oh, and I adopted a kitty recently from the Humane Society of Huron Valley's cat cafe. Jane is the absolute cutest -- she plays fetch! She makes weird adorable chirping noises!

Jane being a sweetheart

I think that's it ^_^