Author: rdlankes

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Miriam Early: Bowden Capstone Scholar

This year as the Bowden Professor I funded 5 Bowden Capstone Scholars. These students are working on their final projects in the University of Texas at Austin’s Masters of Information. These posts describe the projects they are working on.

For my capstone project, I am working with the Georgia Public Library Service to provide management, training, and support for GPLS’s DigEx program, which offers administrative support for public library-created digital exhibits using the Omeka S platform, while leaving site-level control to the libraries to curate their content. I am working with three cohort sites across Georgia to assist the libraries in mounting one exhibit each, for public launch by June 1st, 2022. I am also assisting cohort members with conducting historical and copyright research, fact-checking, and editing interpretive content for the exhibits.

Part of the project will involve loading digital objects through the Digital Library of Georgia’s API into Omeka S using Python script and providing item-level metadata remediation as needed. I will also be developing additional curriculum and interactive tools as necessary to each exhibit, as well as attending review sessions with the cohort members and GPLS advisory team and providing feedback on exhibit progress and site improvements. In the final stages of the project, I will be updating the cohort user guide for future use and creating short Omeka S, KnightLab, and other integration video tutorials for contribution to the DigEx program and user community.

Miriam Early is a graduate student in the School of Information at the University of Texas. Her studies in the program have been focused on metadata theory and practice, physical and digital materials management and preservation, and exhibit development.

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Libraries Lead in the New Normal Listener’s Guide

For those of you who don’t know, I’m part of a regular podcast on libraries and society in and (hopefully) post COVID. It’ a great time with my partners Beth Patin, and Mike Eisenberg. A great graduate assistant at Syracuse, Jeanne Kambara, put together a listeners guide to all the episodes so far. So, first a blurb on the podcast, and then the guide below. Check out the podcast home here: https://www.acechicagoevents.com/libraries-lead

Libraries Lead the New Normal is a provocative podcast hosted by Beth Patin (Assistant Professor, School of Information Studies, Syracuse U), Dave Lankes (Professor, iSchool, U of Texas), and Mike Eisenberg (Dean/Professor Emeritus, iSchool, U of Washington) &

There’s an emerging new normal. 2020 was brutal and has affected all aspects of our lives. As we come out of the pandemic in 2021 and beyond, we must ask, “Are these changes temporary and short-lived or are more fundamental and long-term?” It seems like this is a good time for re-examination and possibly reset of home-life and work-life, education, commerce, social life, politics, and even recreation. We think that this can be a valuable time for life-altering, ground breaking, and transformative change.

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Libraries Leading the New Normal & Beyond

“Libraries Leading the New Normal & Beyond.” Internet Librarian 2021. Online.

Abstract: Insurrection, pandemic, racial awakening, climate crisis, a looming wealth gap. Libraries of all types are functioning in a time unlike any in history. What role can librarians play in times such as these? The answer must be to rebuild trust and reaffirm the foundations of our very democratic ideals one community at a time. Librarians are joining with those in our communities in forging a new normal that embraces diversity over division, collaboration over ideology, and seeks a unified equitable future. But how do libraries have a bigger impact, how do they ensure their communities see libraries as a major partner, and how do libraries move to next level and advance their agenda on a global scale.

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Help: Connecting Great Students to Great Libraries

The Too Long; Didn’t Read version of this message is that as part of my work as the Bowden Professor I would like to connect library science students to the real work of great libraries. To that end I am looking for projects that teams can work on in a Community Engagement course and more in-depth capstone projects that I will fund. Interested? fill out the form below.

In August of this year, I started as the Virginia & Charles Bowden Professor of Librarianship at the University of Texas at Austin. Over the past two months I’ve been developing a plan to strengthen the ties between Austin’s iSchool and the library community. I’m writing you today about two of those efforts. Two efforts that will give our library students opportunities to get real experience in libraries.

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An Invitation to the New Librarianship Symposia

Hi, my name is David Lankes. When I wrote the Atlas of New Librarianship 11 years ago my goal was to start a conversation about librarians, libraries, and their role in helping communities of all sorts make better decisions and help community members find meaning in their lives. Over the past decade that conversation has spread across the globe. It has also grown deeper with passionate new voices adding new perspectives, expertise, and challenges.

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A new normal – renaissance of the public library

“A new normal – renaissance of the public library.” Stelline Conference, Milan, Italy. Online.

Abstract: Librarians and the libraries they build and maintain must step up to save our communities.

Speech Text: See below

Script for the talk (typos and all):

Greetings all. First let me apologize that I am not in there in person. I can promise you that I am on the losing side of this equation.

Of course, we have become increasing used to this story. Projects started, moving online, slowly trying to regain normalcy and then back online. It seems all of our lives have become a series of waves, variants, and social distancing. Even as we look for the positives that have come out of the pandemic such as accelerated digitization of services and a shift in the work of librarians from maintaining spaces to content creation and community outreach, we must also acknowledge 4 million dead worldwide.

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Goodbye University of South Carolina

Today thinking about what the School of Information Science faculty, staff, and students have accomplished over my 5 years as director. A 280% increase on the undergrad program, a new graduate certificate in equity diversity and inclusion, hosting 2 national library research conferences, 6 classroom-to-school library cohorts, 8 new faculty, over a million dollars in external funding, increased enrollments in the MLIS and PhD, revised curriculum for the masters and undergrad programs, a successful accreditation, moving up the rankings, membership in the iSchools, membership in IFLA. All of this and 4 provosts, 2 presidents, 2 deans, a pandemic, and a bone marrow transplant.

That’s a wrap for me.

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“Spring” Cleaning the Website

tl;dr version: I’m going to be making updates and cleaning up files on the site. This may lead to broken links in the next few days.

I’ve had a website before we called them blogs – hell, before we called them home pages. I started my site as hand edited HTML files, mostly linking to presentations I had done. When I outgrew HTML files I built my own PHP database site…then I got busy so I moved through different content management systems (TikiWIKI anyone). They got hacked, and I kept trying different flavors, until I found WordPress, and have been pretty much twisting it to my will for the past decade.

Seriously, if you have nothing better to do check out http://quartz.syr.edu/rdlankes/ in the WayBack Machine.

With all those editors (anyone remember iWeb?) came different servers. Until about 8 years ago servers I ran (Sun Servers, Apple Servers) then ones at Syracuse’s iSchool, and finally GoDaddy web hosting.

The point is, this site has been part information dissemination, and equal part Frankenstein’s Monster for experimentation. So now it has come time to do a little cleaning. Moving things from an external site into WordPress to make backups easier, killing unlinked files, and yes, possibly even jettisoning early PowerPoint files on the wonders of FTP exported to HTML from PowerPoint. My goal is to keep as much as possible (particularly early presentations and papers), but I need to get this in hand.

So, if this week you run across a dead link – wait. If next week you run across a dead link, let me know.