#char booth

[irtel-him]

"...at the core of any nerd you will find an individual with enough passion to let something that interests them take over a bit of their personality. Nerd passion is fueled by a desire to know – to be expert, to specialize, and to understand.”

Char Booth, Reflective Teaching, Effective Learning

[nodetoself-blog]

Notes from the DLF Forum - Day 3

Even though it’s the last full day of the DLF Forum 2013 (so sad!), the exciting flow of people and ideas hasn’t slowed. Packed morning sessions had people sitting on the floor as eager attendees squeezed in for talks about designing a digital program for the humanities and honest conversations about starting and sustaining new projects (co-sponsored by the Taiga Forum that begins tomorrow). Aside from sitting back and appreciating the cool projects that digital librarians around the world are engaged in, such as the Bodleian Library’s Early Modern Letters Online and Dr. John Mark Ockerbloom’s Forward to Libraries software, attendees participated in meaty (read: borderline existential) discussions about the future role of libraries in digital scholarship. While thought-provoking ideas were kicked around, such as the suggestion that digital libraries do not truly exist yet and the possibility that the scholar librarian is an extinct breed that must be revived, discussions always circled back around to the fundamental concept that librarians support knowledge creation by connecting users to information in meaningful ways.

The closing keynote speaker, Char Booth, drove home the point that providing and advocating for user access is the most important responsibility of librarians. In a friendly and charismatic fashion, Booth entreated the audience to put time, money, and effort into communications because “your work doesn’t matter unless you connect it to people” and “use doesn’t happen unless people know about your stuff.” By bluntly addressing the challenges that libraries face, Booth accomplished her stated goal of sweeping up the carnage created during the conference (my brain, for one, exploded) and sending attendees home with a to-go box of useful takeaways. The two major points of her talk, access and advocacy, were a distillation of everything that makes libraries important and unique: we represent the consumers of information in an information age. We’re the only ones in the information industry whose reason for existing is to connect humans to information, to make information usable/accessible, and to help users create knowledge with said information. It was an appropriate response to and summation of the Forum’s sessions and working groups. The DLF community of makers and doers dispersed with an ample load of questions, cool ideas, new contacts and jelly beans to last through the DLF Forum 2014 in Atlanta – which is really all any of us could have asked for.

Originally written on November 6, 2013.

[thepinakes]

open access as pedagogy.

I’ve long preached the message of open access publication/sharing of student work via platforms like OA institutional repositories and Wikipedia as an unparalleled means to engage students and turn the “banking” model of higher education on its head. I do so because have witnessed firsthand in many learning scenarios the effect that public readership can have on the research/writing process particularly among undergraduates, and I advocate for this practice whenever possible as an application of critical and feminist pedagogy in information literacy (IL).

Read more >>>

Char Booth, Open Access as Pedagogy | info-mational: on technology, media literacy, and librarians who t-c-b.

[sherryinbloom-blog]

One of the two most inspirational librarians (in my book), Char Booth and Brian Mathews, teamed up to work on this project.  In this blog post, Mathews mentions the discussion of library as pedagogical third place....yes!

I've just downloaded their paper, Understanding the Learner Experience: Threshold Concepts and Curriculum Mapping, so stayed tuned...

By the way, this was published in April! I've seriously been MIA!

[stephenfrancoeur]

Pull quote: "In sum, publication-based assignments emphasize the responsibilities of public discourse and build learner accountability. Librarians have concrete responsibilities and opportunities on this front. We are well positioned to encourage the dissemination of student work in open forums, many of which we are intimately acquainted with and/or directly responsible for. We can identify and pursue these prospects with faculty and students and collaborate to ensure the best possible realization, and in so doing become more critically and holistically involved in the learning experience of our user communities."

[stephenfrancoeur]

Pull quote: "Our core message was that no one-shot is an island. Library instruction should be aware of and integrated within a wider learning context at the institutional and organizational levels, a process that requires planning, coordination, and reflection outside of the virtual or physical classroom (and preferably among colleagues). By taking steps to investigate and strategize in respect to a broader learning culture, even the briefest teaching interactions can be better organized in advance and have more impact during and after the moment of instruction."