We have been fortunate that as our university moves online, we were already there. We are, however, working hard to ensure that our students can access our courses online with a particular eye to emergent digital divide issues.
I spend a fair amount of time talking about how the School of Library and Information Science seeks to have an impact in the community. We don’t just want to teach change agents, we want to be change agents – faculty, students, staff, alumni.
To that end I am happy to announce some of our efforts to support our communities.
We also know that a lot of libraries around the world have closed their physical spaces and a lot of library staff are working from home. To support librarians using this time to work on skills and engage in professional development I am proud to announce SLIS has teamed up with Public Libraries 2030 to put together Librarian.Support, a site (and to be clear one we are building as we go) to highlight some professional development resources from SLIS. Our focus is on preparing folks for better libraries after the virus.
We are adding resources as we go including archives of webinars, lessons from our online courses, guides to good learning resources, and we want to add more. Once agin this is a fluid effort, so all are welcome to contribute and please be patient.
Starting this Tuesday, March 24th I will be doing open support sessions every Tuesday and Thursday at least through April. I’ll be inviting faculty, staff, and great librarians from the field to join me in a call-in-style class/show. I’ve already had folks like Erik Boekesteijn for the Royal Libraries of the Netherlands, Karen Gavigan SLIS Professor and genius in everything graphic novels, Marie Østergaard director of one of if not thee most innovative public library in the world Aarhus Public Libraries in Denmark, and Kim Silk Strategic Planning & Engagement Librarian at Hamilton Public Library agree to join me for shows. The idea is a real-time conversation that you can join to ask questions and join the conversation.
9-10 Eastern Standard Time and archives of the conversations will be posted on the Librarian.SUPPORT site. It should be great to get a global view on librarianship. We can have up to 150 folks join the live sessions.
If you have a topic you or your library would be interested in, or want to be a guest, please email me at [email protected]
Folks, this is an extraordinary time. Borders are closed, National Guards activated, quarantines enforced. Everyone has every right to be anxious. I have found that in times of anxiety it is best to do something – anything. Let’s use this time, if we have the resources, to first take care of ourselves, and then teach each other.
The following is an update I sent to our alumni. It is a version I sent off to our LIS students.
Greetings Friends,
As you may know the university has extended Spring Break through next week and is then going online with all of its courses (graduate and undergraduate) for two weeks after that (through April 3). For the latest information on the university’s response please see:
To be clear, this is the authoritative source for information. I haven’t emailed you before because the school has to wait for the university’s lead.
I wanted to reach out to see if you had any questions, and make you aware of a few things:
Next week is an extended break for the students, but busy for the staff and faculty. We will not only be adjusting dates and materials for course, but many faculty will have to move in-person classes online, and that will take work.
The university guidance also means changes in scheduled events. The Deans and Directors lecture on April 3rd has been indefinitely postponed. This includes the award ceremony and the Beta Phi Mu installation. We are working on a new date for these, or alternatives.
Right now hooding and graduation have not been effected, but the situation is “fluid.” As I learn something, you’ll hear it.
Offices and administration remain open at the university. Some staff and faculty will be working from home, particularly if they are in a high-risk group such as immune compromised. Also folks traveling may have to self-quarantine.
Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns. If I don’t have answers, I’ll track some down.
And now a personal note. We got this. We as a school, as faculty, as students, as staff, we have this. We know how to work online sure, but more importantly, we know about using knowledge as an antidote to fear and misinformation. Some of you may find all of this an over-reaction. Some of you may have a heightened sense of anxiety in these uncertain times. I had a bone marrow transplant 18 months ago, so as someone who is immune compromised, I get it.
The answer is not to disconnect from community while we may shelter away physically. Some of our students are already working in libraries, all of them are being prepared to support communities. Right now what they’re feeling (anger, relief, anxiety, confusion) is being felt by the 3rd grader in a school library. It is felt by a spouse browsing the health books. It is felt by students in Thomas Cooper, or the person self-quarantined at home. Soon it will be their role to reach out to all of them. To let them know they are not alone. To provide what information we can, and all the compassion we have. In these times of conflicting stories the role of a librarian and an information scientist is to be trusted and caring.
I will send updates as I have them.
__
R. David Lankes Professor and Director
803-777-3858 [email protected] School of Library and Information Science College of Information and Communications University of South Carolina
Welcome to the new look of my site. It is very different than my last configuration. All the content is still there. All the links still work. The main navigation menu under my big mug is exactly the same. It just gets rid of the more static front page.
To be honest it’s not as pretty as my former layout and the home page is not as good in highlight projects and presentations (sell those books!).
So why the change? Well the main issue was a hack that would repeatedly put links to viagra and college essay writing sites into my old theme. I got tired of trying to track down the injected code. Also, the previous site had a management overhead in making highlights and such. Now that I have, you know, a real job time is tight.
When I looked at my traffic it was coming from social media that sent out direct links (to say a presentation or blog post) or it was coming via a search engine to a direct page. So I did some simple user-based design.
If you hate it, let me know. Enough voices that actually care and I will put in the effort to spruce it up again. For now, enjoy the content.
Also, thanks to Jessamyn West I decided to throw up a couple of “hero” pictures that randomly rotate at the top. Yes, some of them are older pics of me, but either they’re fun (keep an eye out for “Freaked Out Dave”), or I just like them.
Finally, I apologize if you landed on this page looking for viagra or good sites to write your college essay.
Greetings all. I think it is useful for folks to share what we learn as we travel. We can identify broader opportunities and learn about a broader landscape than we could on our own.
The past two weeks I have been in Europe. On the 15th and 16th of January I was part of two meetings. The first was with a group called Public Libraries 2030. It is a not for profit created to promote and support public libraries in Europe. They have built up an impressive roster of elected representatives to the EU Parliament that pledge to support libraries.
PL2030 also runs a number of funded projects with backers like the EU, Google, and Microsoft. They host an annual gathering for librarians and members of parliament called Generation Code: Born at the Library that is an interactive exhibition showcasing the top innovative digital exhibits from public libraries across the EU.
Aside from a general update meeting, we were writing up an Erasmus + proposal around building mentorship and projects for new librarians (with an opportunity for our students to participate).
The second meeting was with the Royal National Library of the Netherlands, the Berlin Public Library, several library organizations in the Netherlands, and Italy. We discussed setting up a system of projects across the EU on common themes that would also train new librarians and library science students principles of community-centered librarianship.
While I was there I also met with the instructor of a course in Community Librarianship that we at the University of South Carolina have teamed up with on the professional development front.
These projects have special significance for the Netherlands as they no longer have any library science degree programs. Hopefully something like this could serve as a foundation for one.
Thanks to School of Library and Information Science Fellow Erik Boekesteijn and to Lily Knibbeler Director General of the National Library for hosting us.
I also had the great joy of seeing the first draft of the Dutch version of the New Librarianship Field Guide (already sold out) and some of the students that are using it as a textbook. Special thanks to Gert Staal for his work in translating the book!
This week I have been in Norway. I was invited to speak at the wrap up conferences for two very interesting and important projects.
The first was a project across Scandinavia and Germany to study the effects of “digitization” on the public sphere called ALMPUB. Digitization here is not about scanning documents, but converting analog functions to digital like paying taxes, getting government information, e-commerce and the like.
Since 2016 the project team has been reviewing policies, conducting surveys and doing anthropological observation of folks in Libraries Archives and Museums. I strongly urge you to read the following report. It shows that as digital requirements have accelerated, so have use of analog public service agencies like libraries, museums, and archives. One hypothesis is increased digital has people seeking out the physical aspects of community.
Audunson, R., Aabø, S., Blomgren, R., Evjen, S., Jochumsen, H., Larsen, H., Rasmussen, C., Vårheim, A., Johnston, J. and Koizumi, M. (2019), “Public libraries as an infrastructure for a sustainable public sphere: A comprehensive review of research”, Journal of Documentation, Vol. 75 No. 4, pp. 773-790. https://doi.org/10.1108/JD-10-2018-0157
One of the highlights of the trip was to meet, dine, and talk with the great Professor Ragnar Audunson of OSLOMet.
A VERY interesting thing that is happening in Scandinavia; the library legislation that mandates public libraries in Norway and Finland both have convening and facilitating “democratic conversations” as part of the law. Public libraries of all sizes are currently building projects and programs to meet the mandate. It should be very interesting to watch.
While in Oslo I got to tour the newly renovated branch libraries and the new central public library.
The two branches we visited had experienced 200% usage jumps after the renovations. The first was all about light and openness.
The second branch was all about being a living room and club in the middle of a gentrifying neighborhood. Karen Gavigan would have loved it. A large part of the collection (like up to 70%) were graphic novels. They hosted an annual con there as well as two stages set up for live performances and music. The upstairs was dedicated to kids. Thee two libraries demonstrated in the most beautiful way how libraries should reflect their communities.
Then it was off to the new central library being built (I wasn’t allowed to take pictures because this is for the people of Oslo and they are really the first to experience it – love that). It is an amazing structure. However, what I found interesting was that only 50% of the collection from the former central library will be making the move. The rest have been handed to the National Library if they want them. The plan, by the way, is not to make room for newer materials, the plan is for a collection at the halved size going forward.
My last day in Oslo I gave a lecture to the library science program there (also an iSchool). They are talking about the fact that libraries are not required to hire librarians (those with a bachelors or masters) and some libraries are hiring folks from other fields (not familiar at all huh). They were very interested in the new curriculum we developed at SLIS both the process and the outcome, and the idea of a core course around communities.
My last stop in Norway was for a project funded by the National Library of Norway and headed up by the Tønsberg and Notteroy public library (about 1 1/2 hours by train south of Oslo). Libraries across the country surveyed the general population about where they got their information. It then examined the current tools and methods reference libraries use in answering questions. Lastly it engaged a marketing firm to think about a campaign around information consultants/reference librarians. The hope is possibly to build a national reference service.
I cannot express to you just how amazing the Tønsberg public library and those that work there are. It is literally built on the site of a former monastery and viking graveyard. The have kept the foundation stones for the monastery as a feature of the building, and carved replicas of the viking funeral boats into the floor. It is an amazing example of incorporating and honoring their past with their future.
A very special thank you to Britt Sanne and director Tone Eli Moseid (who introduced me to the life of a viking).
So there you are. I really think I am in love with Norway and certainly with the Norwegian library community. Thank you all for your hospitality. Apologies for errors and omissions – just let me know and I’ll fix them.
The School of Library and Information Science hosts a hooding for those graduating in the Fall and Spring semesters. It is an important small gathering of graduates and family. I take the opportunity to give “one final lesson.” Here are remarks for this hooding.
Welcome to the last graduating class of the decade. I fear you’re not quite done yet. There is only time for one last lecture.
As I was preparing my remarks, I found myself thinking about global issues. Divided politics, monetizing privacy, the growing specter of artificial intelligence developed outside of social responsibility, growing economic disparity, dogs and cats living together – mass hysteria. A little Ghostbusters humor for you there.
I started to write the now formulaic doom and gloom and your job is to save it message. But, as I learned in a very personal way this semester, this is not how I need to send you into the world. Our communities don’t need you to save them – they need you to inspire them. Our students in the poorest and richest school need an ally to accept them as they are, lift what burdens you can, and let them know they are worthy and important. Our neighbors need a partner and a friend to learn and dream with them. The doctors, lawyers, engineers, professors, and public servants need an expert that not only serves but makes them better. Our elected officials need role models in integrity and trustworthiness.
Just as you don’t need to be reminded that the world can seem overwhelming, neither do our communities. They need a light to shine a way forward, not spotlight challenges.
So here then is my final lesson for you. Fight injustice, fight inequity, fight apathy, but do not be consumed in that fight. No one is served by a librarian lost in despair.
In a recent interview Paul Bloom a Yale psychology professor made a distinction between empathy and compassion. Empathy, he pointed out, is taking on other’s emotions as our own. To be empathetic is to feel the pain of others as our own. Empathy can be exhausting and depleting. It can also be debilitating. Imagine, he pointed out, the oncologist that has to constantly feel the fear of her patients, or the social worker lost in feelings of hopelessness of his clients.
Bloom argues that that doctor and that social work, need to be compassionate, not empathetic. You need to be compassionate and understand the struggles of those we serve but not be debilitated by it. Preserve your optimism and use it to lift up those around you. Your professional responsibility is not to suffer, but to prevent suffering. Your professional responsibility is not to despair, but to bring hope to the despondent. Seek out those in need and remember that what they need is assistance and support and celebration in addition to service and dedication.
Every great librarian I know has a story – a moment when they made a difference in someone’s lives. For some it is the glow in a child who has been shown the best book ever. For some it is the student who passed a class, or their part in a scientific breakthrough. They can be large moments or intimate connections, but they are all anchors. They anchor us to why we do this and an appreciation of the good we do.
“Never Neutral, Never Alone.” Transforming LIS education for professionals in a global information world: digital inclusion, social inclusion and lifelong learning IFLA Satellite Conference. Vatican City (via video).
Abstract: Library science is getting harder to teach. The variety in libraries of all types is increasing as more and more mold themselves to their communities rather than field-wide norms. How can library science education change to meet the new variety, and the variety in a post-neutrality world.
It is time to have a frank conversation about LIS education. The problems with how we prepare librarians are often phrased as a gap between theory and practice. The argument goes that library schools are not producing graduates with a real-world practical skills; instead focusing on generalities and theory. This is a perennial argument, and if there was a library school in ancient Greece, I’m sure Dewey’s Socratic equivalent would be criticized for not preparing students to argue effectively in a marble building as opposed to a brick one.
This theory/practice gap, however, is not the real problem. The real problem is that no one knows what new librarians need in the second year of their career, much less their 25th. There is no common entry point, because there are fewer and fewer commonalities between libraries. As libraries of all types are organizing themselves around the local needs of a community – be it a town or a university or a school or a hospital, the differences in working environments for librarians is changing not only quickly, but diversely. What once was applying a standard set of reference skills to an owned set of databases, or applying cataloging skills to local classes and codes, is now about community outreach librarians knowing the unique culture of a city, or a user-experience librarian learning the realities of undergraduates in a particular school at a particular time.
The libraries that we hold out as global exemplars like Dokk1 in Aarhus, or LocHal in Tilberg, or San Giorgio in Pistoia, or the libraries at University of Michigan or there at the Vatican with its petabyte data center and global digitization initiatives are as diverse as they are impressive. No one school can prepare all starting librarians for all libraries. This doesn’t even consider the inclusion of archives, special collections and research services that are not even connected to traditional library institutions.
The standards and competencies we develop will continue to become more general, and more focused on lifelong learning and community engagement areas. Where once we could define cataloging skills down to the standard, we now must recognize that information organization can take the form of MARC, RDA, FRBR, Dublin Core, or just general concepts of the semantic web. Theories of classification still apply, and still must be taught, but the specific skills that accompany these skills are now purely illustrative. Where once we taught reference as a series of genres like atlases, and encyclopedias, today we teach learning theory and pedagogy. These are important areas to teach, but they will never meet the mark of first year practical skill.
Before I jump into thoughts on addressing this situation, let me say these are good problems to have. The reason there is no canon of skills is that librarianship is a vital and dynamic profession. The reason there is so much diversity in the field is because the need for librarianship is growing. The communities we seek to serve are becoming more diverse and varied because we are at least attempting to go beyond real barriers of class and race. If all we were doing was preparing spare parts for a handful of libraries that hadn’t changed in decades, our stable and satisfying curriculum would be the surest sign of the impending death of libraries.
No, the answer is not to try and develop a single standard for all, but to create continuous systems of learning that are agile, connected, and embedded. The library education of tomorrow, and increasingly, today, must smash the divide between the “real world” and the “academic.” It must also break the idea that one degree at the outset of a career is sufficient preparation for an entire lifetime of serving a community. Lastly, it must also fully embrace that we are preparing librarians, not library workers. And accept that librarians are not neutral, and must develop skills that are as much about resilience and self-examination as they are about how to run an organization.
Let me take these ideas in turn. I’ll begin with agility. What is an agile system of library education? It is one that is constantly seeking out not only best practices in librarianship, but innovative ones. It develops a curriculum and means of delivering that curriculum that are flexible and can be deployed quickly. One example of this is in Norway where the Akershus University College of Applied Science’s Department of Archivistics, Library and Information Science holds a biannual conference for its alumni and other librarians. It is a chance to not only bring in the latest thinking from the field, but to connect and listen to graduates and what they need.
At the University of South Carolina, we are pairing every library science degree with a specialized certificate that documents areas of focus such as data science, health information and so on. However, we have structured the certificate so that the specialties can change from year to year. We see students getting certificates in artificial intelligence and librarianship, library construction and design, and service to refugee populations. The list of specialties will be long and change year to year, student to student, as the world these librarians seek to serve changes.
Which brings me to my second new “standard” for library science education – connected. I would love to say my faculty represented hundreds of specialists all expert in the latest develops in the field. They do not. They are scholars with specialties and a broad view of the field, with an ability to connect practice with larger concepts. However, our alumni and the institutions they work for, and that we partner with, do represent hundreds of specialists developing and deploying innovative services in communities across the globe. Library schools must be a part of creating a network of libraries directly engaged in the education of new librarians.
This goes well beyond a set of adjuncts who teach a few classes, or internships, or field trips. We must develop a network of libraries that share both in the responsibilities of education and the funding of such systems. The library science school of tomorrow is truly a hub that delivers a core of library concepts and research skills, and then connects students with developing innovations in the field. Your faculty may be on the tenure track or working the reference desk. Your mentor may have the tile of professor, or librarian, or archivist, or programmer. The hub ensures rigor in the learning, but more importantly ensures cohesion in a student’s degree.
The dynamism in the library profession can be clearly seen in the enormous offerings of professional development. A librarian could spend a week just sitting in webinars and online workshops in just about any aspect of the library profession. Our library associations, our vendors, our universities, our publishers, our libraries are in the midst of an amazing creative rush of developing online education. However, there are no real attempts to coordinate and link all of these together into a coherent understanding of the field. Faculty in the library school of the future will spend as much, if not more time evaluating portfolios of these diverse online resources as they do teaching classes. The days when the expertise of a field was contained within a single library school are gone. The days when the totality of library expertise could be represented in a single faculty are gone.
We must look to other models of how we prepare professionals, hence, “embedded.” That network of libraries and expertise we build must also be seen as places for residencies where we embed students for direct, contextualized learning. The advent of online education has made place irrelevant in many of our programs. You no longer have to move to Columbia to get our degree. However, in making this shift, we have also lost the power of place. We must now join the power of place with the flexibility of online.
Students will no longer move to Columbia because that’s where the faculty are, they will move to Aarhus, and the Hague, and Taiwan, and Charleston because that’s where innovative practices are being formed. Taking a page from the medical residence, we are turning our network of partners into residency opportunities for our students. Libraries can use these residencies to attract the best new librarians to job openings, and the students gain authentic specialized knowledge on top of the core we provide. And hosting these residencies is an opportunity to expand the learning of the students to the learning of the whole organization.
In Charleston South Carolina, the local school district pays for 10 in-classroom teachers to get their master’s degrees and become school librarians. The funds for these cohorts are then re-invested in the school district. The tuition of the students pays for national speakers, onsite workshops, even open course development that are provided to the entire district. This creates a sustainable means of continuous library education well beyond the granting of a degree. By enrolling 10 teachers, the district enrolls the whole district in library school.
And what are these students learning in their residencies and in the network? They are learning to be librarians. Not people who work in a library, but a set of values, research skills, and a mission they will take with them to jobs in libraries, or the technology sector, or the banking sector, or government. They will be going into these libraries, and businesses and governments a point of view. They are not neutral deployers of skills, they are professionals on a quest to improve communities through learning. They will go not as parts of a system, but as advocates for inclusion, privacy, access, and openness.
In order to prepare these librarians, we must develop a curriculum of self-reflection and analysis. We must address, in the curriculum, self-care, vocational awe, resiliency, and self-awareness. These are not soft skills, but techniques that allow our librarians to assess, engage, and adapt to community needs and realities. It is no longer acceptable that we send out librarians into communities prepared to answer reference questions, but unable to process the poverty they may find there. It is no longer acceptable to train academic librarians to recognize gaps in the collection, but not to recognize student homelessness. It is no longer acceptable to train archivists who do not understand the politics inherent in controlling the memory of a community.
Analysis cannot be limited to the individual and introspection, however. Methods of analysis – of research- are necessary. No matter the environment our new librarians find themselves, they will need to know how to understand a community, how to assess services, how to collect, analyze, and protect data. Participation is a goal, and we shall never know how well we are matching that goal without instruction in research methods – instruction that is embedded in real communities with real questions, and contextualized methodologies.
And so these are my new metrics for evaluating the effectiveness of a library science program:
Agility – what ongoing methods are in place to identify, evaluate, and prepare students for developments in a rapidly changing profession?
Connectedness – who are the partners networked with the program and its faculty to ensure direct connection of the classroom to the field?
Embeddedness – what are the program’s ability to deliver authentic field experiences to students that allow them to contextualize theory and research methods?
Resiliency – how prepared are librarians to face, understand- that is analyze-and solve the problems in a community in line with the professional mission and values of librarianship?
Today the librarians we prepare are building makerspaces, they are crunching masses of data in civic redevelopment projects, they are saving tweets for posterity, and housing masses of research data. Our graduates are delivering knowledge and food to rural communities left behind in an information economy. They are supporting the research of Nobel laureates and citizen scientists fighting for clean drinking water. They are fighting for access to the world’s knowledge in developing economies and bring dignity to marginalized communities. They need a strong platform to prepare them for this work and then support them throughout that work. Library science programs can be that foundation, but not alone. We must connect the innovative librarian stifled in a large bureaucratic library with an innovative librarian revolutionizing a small town a continent away. And connect them both to scholars and the means for continuous learning.
Library schools are a vital part of the reinvigorated library profession. Yet, just as we have seen the road to success for libraries is in adapting to and including the community, so too must our schools become open platforms orchestrating participation and adapting to the community of our alumni.
Posted below you will find a copy of a letter from Dr. Fred Roper, Jack Bryan, and myself requesting input on a new name for the School of Library and Information Science. Many of you will be receiving this letter in the mail, but I wanted to make sure it was distributed as broadly as possible.
“The Knowledge School: or Why Teaching Library Science is Getting Harder.” École de bibliothéconomie et des sciences de l’information, Université de Montréal. Montreal, Canada.
Abstract: A school of thought represents a shared set of approaches, beliefs and values shared by a diverse set of players. A prime example is the Chicago School in architecture that wasn’t a department, but a shared vision of architects, engineers, and city planners. In this presentation, Lankes discusses the merging knowledge school and how it is shaping the field globally.
