Author: rdlankes

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Syracuse iSchool alumni Marie L. Radford and R. David Lankes to launch new book April 5 at Bird Library

Marie L. Radford G’75 and R. David Lankes ’92, G’99 will celebrate the publication of their new book Reference Renaissance: Current and Future Trends (Neal-Schuman, 2010) on Monday, April 5 at 4:00 p.m. in the Peter Graham Scholarly Commons on the first floor of E.S. Bird Library.

Radford will give a talk about what information services will look like in the years ahead. She will discuss the opportunities, challenges, and realities that librarians will encounter. She will also address topics including how librarians can maintain equilibrium amid such rapid change, how emerging technologies will continue to impact reference services, and evolving user demands, especially from the tech-savvy and mercurial Millennial Generation.

Radford is an associate professor at the Rutgers School of Communication & Information. Her research interests are interpersonal communication aspects of reference/information services (both traditional and virtual), nonverbal communication, cultural studies, and media stereotypes of librarians. She is the 2010 winner of the Isadore Gilbert Mudge Award for distinguished contributions to reference librarianship given by the Reference and User Services Association of the American Library Association.

Prior to joining the Rutgers faculty, Radford was acting dean of Pratt Institute’s School of Information and Library Science in New York City. She has published numerous books and articles in top library and information science journals and frequently presents at national and international scholarly and professional venues. She is a co-author of the book Conducting the Reference Interview, 2nd ed. (Neal-Schuman, 2009). Her latest book is co-edited with R. David Lankes.

R. David Lankes is library and information science program director at the Syracuse iSchool as well as associate professor and director of the Information Institute of Syracuse (IIS). The IIS houses several high-profile research efforts, including the Educator’s Reference Desk and projects related to the NSF’s National Science Digital Library.??Lankes co-founded the award-winning AskERIC project and served as director of the ERIC Clearinghouse on Information & Technology. He also founded the Virtual Reference Desk project and served as one of the architects of the Gateway to Education Materials, a standards-based system for describing and finding educational materials on the Internet.??Lankes has authored, co-authored, or edited 14 books, written over 30 book chapters and journal articles and numerous pieces for information professionals. He has been principle investigator on over $13 million of competitively awarded research grants, and has served as a researcher on numerous projects. He has been a keynote speaker around the globe, giving more than 140 presentations at national and international conferences.

Please note this is not the Atlas to New Librarianship that will be published by MIT Press and ACRL in Spring 2011

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The Atlas of New Librarianship to be Published by MIT Press and ACRL

I’ve made a few allusions to my next book in my presentations, and even posted a picture of the draft here. Now that it is official I’d like to be a bit more specific.

The Atlas of New Librarianship will be published in Spring 2011 by MIT Press and is co-published by ACRL. The Atlas is a thorough discussion of librarianship developed around the concept of “participatory librarianship.” The central concepts of participatory librarianship have not changed – that conversation and knowledge are core to all that librarians do. However, while you will read a great deal about participation, you will not see many specific references to “participatory librarianship.” This is intentional.

While modifiers and titles are useful in gaining attention, the ultimate success of any idea is the loss of a modifier. “Virtual reference” becomes simply “reference” when the ideas put forth are widely incorporated throughout practice. “Digital libraries” are quickly becoming simply “libraries” as they become integrated into the larger organizations and collections of a library. So too must participatory librarianship, if it is to be successful, become part of the overall concept of librarianship.

The library field is searching for solid footing in an increasingly fragmented information environment. As technology changes, budgets shrink, and use demographics fluctuate what can help guide librarians to continued relevancy and success? The answer must go beyond Web 2.0, or technological landmarks and provide a fundamental and durable foundation for the field. What is the role of a librarian in a space with no collections – or walls? How do we prepare the next generation of librarians? The Atlas seeks to answer these questions.

The Atlas represents a new understanding of librarianship based on work with organizations such as the American Library Association, OCLC, The U.S. Department of Justice Law Libraries, the Free Library of Philadelphia, and the State Library of Illinois. It is founded on the basic concept that knowledge is created through conversation; libraries being in the knowledge business are therefore in the conversation business. This concept, grounded in theory, leads to a new mission for librarians:

The mission of librarians is to improve society through facilitating knowledge creation in their communities.

This implications, foundations, and application of this mission is discussed and detailed in the Atlas.

Perhaps the easiest way to explain the Atlas is by showing how it can be applied, as I have done in some recent presentations:

Excerpt from Charleston Conference 2009:

Excerpt from Pennsylvania District Library Keynote:

In addition to a full-color 10″x10″ print version of the book, we are creating an online companion site to foster ongoing conversations around the foundations of librarianship. More details on that to come.

A special thanks to all of those instrumental in writing this including Buffy Hamilton, Megan Oakleaf, Scott Nicholson, Jill Hurst-Wahl, Michael Luther, Todd Marshall, Angela Usha Ramnarine-Rieks, Heather Margaret Highfield, Jessica R. O’Toole, and Xiaoou Cheng and so many many more. Also thanks to all my early reviewers who gave me great feedback.

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Bullet Point: Senator Joke

A state senator was driving home late one night when he realized he forgot to pick up a book his wife had needed the next day for an event. Having already passed several closed book stores he spied an open public library.

He was nervous entering the library because he had gained some fame in proposing library budget cuts, and had once called for the outright elimination of public libraries. He was quickly put at ease when the library director greeted him warmly and asked how she could be of assistance. The senator told her the name of the book he needed, and the director looked up the call number, ushered him to the book, and then checked it out and sent him on his to his wife with a smile.

Afterwards a librarian approached the director and asked “do you know who that was?”

“Yes” said the director.

“Then how could you be so nice and help him?” asked the librarian.

“I didn’t help him.” said the director.

“Of course you did, you found the book and helped him check it out.”

“If I really was helping him,” said the director “I would have told him about the lipstick on his collar.”

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Syracuse iSchool Library & Information Science program director R. David Lankes to speak at U.S. Embassy event in Rome, Italy

R. David Lankes, director of the Library & Information Science program at the Syracuse University School of Information Studies (iSchool), will speak at the U.S. Embassy Rome’s spring event “Libraries in the 21st Century.” The event will be held Wednesday, April 21, 2010.

The day-long conference is being organized by the U.S. Embassy to Italy and the American University of Rome. The conference is an initiative to engage the Italian library community in a dialogue with American peers, with the aim of sharing the best and most innovative practices taking place at American libraries.

Speakers at the event will include professionals from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), NATO, Università degli Studi di Parma, Università di Roma “La Sapienza,” Università degli Studi di Cagliari, and Università del Salento. Topics covered will include libraries as participatory places, new librarianship, social media for libraries, catalog sharing, marketing libraries, and the future of books. Lankes’ presentation will focus on how to build a new librarianship.

In addition to speaking at the U.S. Embassy event in Rome, Lankes will also give a presentation the next day in Naples at the Palazzo Donn’Anna to approximately 70 local librarians.

Lankes is LIS program director at the Syracuse iSchool as well as associate professor and director of the Information Institute of Syracuse (IIS). The IIS houses several high-profile research efforts, including the Educator’s Reference Desk and projects related to the NSF’s National Science Digital Library.

Lankes co-founded the award-winning AskERIC project in 1992 and served as director of the ERIC Clearinghouse on Information & Technology from 1998 to 2003. He also founded the Virtual Reference Desk project responsible for building a national network of education expertise. In addition, he was also one of the architects of the Gateway to Education Materials, a standards-based system for describing and finding educational materials on the Internet.
Lankes has served on advisory boards and study teams in the fields of libraries, telecommunications, education, and transportation, including at the National Academies. He has been appointed as a visiting fellow at the National Library of Canada and the Harvard School of Education. He was also the first fellow of the American Library Association’s Office for Information Technology Policy.

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More Fun Examples of Information Organization

So after the fun of Pandora to organize music, I thought you might like this example:

Flickr1
Pretty picture you say? Well, how about a couple of thousand. The wheel represents the colors used in Flikr photos over a one year span:

Boston Mag
More pictures of white snow in the winter and green grass in the summer. Check out http://hint.fm/projects/flickr/ for more information.

One last little thought…this is an example of how humans (in this case a designer) organizes a huge collection of information, not just some blind algorithm. I love how information organization is seen here as much about art as informing.