and or not near

keywords: librarianship, reference, media, technology, literacies, teaching, learning, instructional design, assessment, diversity, equity, inclusion...

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"While recruiting initiatives and fellowships are reasonable starting points, they become meaningless gestures for institutions which screen on performing whiteness. These actions are further undermined by framing diversity as a problem to be solved rather than engaging in reflective work to dismantle institutional bias. Framing diversity as the problem implicitly suggests a final outcome, locating responsibility and discomfort away from white librarians while marginalizing colleagues who do not perform whiteness to the satisfaction of gatekeepers."

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Reflection on Information Literacy and Critical Instruction

A few weeks before the ACRL conference in Portland, I learned about a “critlib” sphere on social media. I immediately became engaged by the conversations of critical theory, pedagogy, and information literacy instruction. I started thinking about how information literacy entailed more than just standards and even skills. Information literacy entails critical thinking—which is more of a way of thinking than a skill, just as how information literate behavior is more of a state of mind than a skill. As educators we cannot simply aim to teach a skill; we should be striving to engage our students into understanding the why it is vital to practice the skills of information literacy. Our students will understand if we can personalize the content of our instruction to their identities and contexts, if we can engage them to learn, if we can motivate them to think critically, if we can teach them to empower themselves with their education. “I have never let schooling interfere with my education,” said Mark Twain. To teach critical information literacy is to teach our students to think against the structures that oppress them. As librarians, we are the ones that can integrate information, metacognitive, digital – whatever you want to call them – literacies into critical literacy education. The act of teaching is a political act; the act of learning is a political act. Our students – especially those from historically underrepresented backgrounds – need this type of educational empowerment. As an instructional librarian, I strive to kindle this type of student empowerment. Critical pedagogy is vital to my education in order for me to deliver quality and personalized IL instruction to all my students.

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Not about the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy, but this video helped me think more broadly about “threshold concepts” in education.

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The Texas Information Literacy Tutorial (TILT) developed by the University of Texas at Austin from 1996-1999. Probably the first digital learning object for information literacy instruction.

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Found this in the New Media Consortium Horizon 2015 Report

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"Get Me Off Your Fucking Mailing List" is an actual science paper accepted by a journal

Sometimes I show this journal article to students during info lit workshops to talk about how it’s important to evaluate sources found on the web (instead of starting from the library website) even if they seemed to be academic sources.

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Information literacy is not a set of competencies; it is a way of being that comes from living the question.

Dane Ward

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"We want our students to succeed, but do we want the system that will enable their success to succeed as well? Some may, but many librarians committed to critical librarianship do not. For the latter group the question is, how can we encourage student success without supporting the underlying structure of the system within which that success will take place?

Much of the rhetoric of information literacy, including that of the Framework, represents the world of information (the Framework refers to it as the “information ecosystem”) as something that must be mastered by individual students making their own ways through an educational institution out into the world. Information literacy instruction is intended, positively and even progressively, to empower those individuals to succeed on their own terms to the greatest extent possible. It does this by inculcating habits of thinking and working that are most often described under the heading ‘critical thinking.’ But the problem with even some progressive information literacy rhetoric is that it does not question the fundamental units with which it is working: the individual information consumer/producer on the one hand, and the system of information on the other hand."

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What a great guide on Open Educational Resources!

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Unpacking and Stuffing Books, or, How I Learned to Love the Epigraph

I work at the Acquisitions Department of the Suzzallo Library, behind the curtains from the everydaycommotion of the University of Washington, for a guy with a ponytail.  When I first started as a “StudentSpecialist” my job was to unpack boxes and boxes of books from a greaterforce called YBP.  The YBP shipments typically arrive on Tuesdays and so every Tuesday I wait in the Receiving Room contemplating how important Tuesdays have become in my life. 

I sort the boulders of boxes in the book trucks and take my corresponding orders to the receiving worktable where I have multiple utility knives from which to choose how to slash open the carton boxes.  I really like this part of my job because it’s quite interactive, for lack of a better word, and it allows me to stand up, for the most part.  Cutting the boxes open is rather fun but I’ve been instructed severely to not damage myself, or God forbid, the books inside. Once I open a box I must take the packing paper and throw it in the recycling bin.  I like this part, too, because that’s when you get the best sniff of all the book-smelling chemicals.  If the bin is full, though, I have to take it down to the loading dock which calls for an adventure every time because I always get lost on the basement level.

Back to the boxes. After counting all the books and making sure they correspond with their invoices—or packing lists, I forget the difference—I get to touch every brand new book as I put it on a shelf, in preparation for their stuffing.  By stuffing, I mean the process of verifying that we did, in fact, received the exact book we ordered and not some type of Furby.  Sometimes books are shrink-wrapped, which makes the process either more fun or more wah-lah—that’s Furby language for funner.  

As a professional stuffer, it is my responsibility to pull out the correct routing slip for the right book, fold the routing slip in half, and insert it gently as a bookmark behind the title page. But before I stuff the book, I have to triple-check that all the “Bib Data” such as the edition and I-S-B-Number match up.  This process has become my favorite part of the job because as I thumb through most books I get to peek into all the epigraphs available.  

Epigraphs, as you might know, are the best part of a book: they are the inscription that sets the tone, the quotation that sums up the author’s humor, the poetic previews of a book, they are even better than the titles (except for some academic works like The Parallel Lives of Women and Cows: Meat Markets or Just Plain Dick: Richard Nixon’s Checkers speech and the “rocking, socking” election of 1952).  For example, I really like this epigraph: “Save the Tatas.”  Can you imagine the title of a book with “Save the Tatas” as its epigraph?

I wonder if there is a database of epigraphs somewhere in the bibliographic universe.

My most favorite epigraph, so far, is a sentence by MLK which goes “if a man is to be called a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Beethoven composed music . . .” or something along those lines. Serendipity is as noble as Martin Luther King, Jr.  And, now, I stuff and unpack like the Bard.

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Mario, el bibliotecario

Hellos! I'm starting a tumblr blog (microblog?) to share what it means, for me, to be a librarian—and all that I'm learning as I try to catch up!

I'm currently working as a Reference & Instruction librarian at Cal State Northridge (CSUN). My mom thinks that I shelf books all day, and it’s difficult for me to explain to her what exactly I do in my job—especially in Spanish—so I hope to use this space to engage with my friends (and future friends!) as I reflect on this exciting profession.

Feel free to also follow me on Twitter @andornotnear