Lankes to Present 1st Annual ASIS&T President’s Lecture

I’m honored to give the inaugural President’s Lecture to ASIS&T September 19 at 10 am Eastern Time.

From the ASIS&T site:

ASIS&T is delighted to announce the launch of the Annual ASIS&T President’s Lecture. The Lecture will be open to the public and delivered via Zoom to ensure that all who wish to may attend.

The inaugural ASIS&T President’s Lecture will take place September 19 at 10 am Eastern Time (find your time here) and be presented by R. David Lankes, Virginia and Charles Bowden Professor of Librarianship at the University of Texas at Austin.

Click here for more information and to register: https://www.asist.org/2024/07/24/lankes-to-present-1st-annual-asist-presidents-lecture/

A Longhorn Amongst the Tulips

With the generous support of the Dutch Library Association (thank you Klaas Gravestejin), I am headed to the Netherlands for a few weeks. There I’ll be spreading the word on the importance of centering librarianship on the communities we serve.

I am so looking forward to meeting with my Netherland colleagues. The country has long been a center of innovative librarianship. From Delft to Utrecht to Amsterdam to Tilburg to the amazing National Library of the Netherlands it is honestly more pilgrimage than a trip. I even get to catch up with folks like Irene Harmsen and the cohort of Community Librarians.

I am so looking forward to seeing colleagues and making new connections.

My current public event schedule:

29th MayInnovatie Dag Prodent Fabriek Amersfoort
4th JuneVisit Dutch StoryHouse  Cultura & Zo Nootdorp
6th JuneNational Members Netherlands Library Association for PL at Beeld and Geluid Hilversum

I’ll be posting slides and updates (and probably pictures of canals) here.

A special thank you to Erik Boekesteijn of the National Library for making this happen. Honestly, hanging with him is the real highlight of the trip.

AI and Schools Workshop at Texas Library Association

Friday, April 21, 2023

9:30 am – 11 am

Room 615AB at Hilton Austin

Join us for a workshop where we’ll be delving into the crucial topic of AI literacy. Together, we’ll be designing an educational program for high school students to help them learn about the future of AI and its impact on their lives and careers. Topics include algorithmic bias, generative AI, disinformation, and self-driving cars. School librarians attending the TLA 2023 Conference are invited to join us for an exciting and enriching experience!

RSVP Google Form https://shorturl.at/eirGJ

About the IMLS LADDER Project

This workshop is funded through a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services for our project, “Training Future Faculty in Library, AI, and Data Driven Education and Research (LADDER).” The goal of this project is to prepare future LIS faculty who have hybrid expertise in leveraging libraries and AI and data science to benefit libraries.
LADDER Fellows conduct collaborative research with school, academic, and public librarians as well as the principal investigators, Soo Young Rieh, Ken Fleischmann, and David Lankes.

Here is a flyer on the workshop:

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.

Continue reading “An Invitation to the New Librarianship Symposia”

New Librarianship Symposia Invitation

I am so happy to announce a symposia series on New Librarianship.

Ten years ago MIT Press published The Atlas of New Librarianship. We are taking the opportunity of its 10th anniversary to explore some of the key issues in librarianship that have evolved and emerged since 2011 in a series of online symposia in October and November 2021. We would like to invite you to be a part.

The symposia series is sponsored by MIT Press, the University of South Carolina, the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions, the British Library, KB National Library of the Netherlands, the U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services, Gigabit Libraries Network, URFIST de Bordeaux, Enssib, and the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. We also expect more international organizations to join as sponsors shortly.

Call for Contributions

We seek abstract and creative format proposal submissions for ideas and approaches that can guide the field over the next decade and address the following areas:

  • Equity, diversity, and inclusion
  • Post-neutrality librarianship
  • International influences
  • A “new normal” agenda in a COVID-affected world 

Symposia sessions will be streamed live, free of charge, and with efforts made to meet accessibility needs. Detailed descriptions for each topical area are below.

Accepted abstracts will be presented during a symposium and published on the University of South Carolina ScholarOne digital platform. Three abstracts for each symposium will be invited for development into white papers and awarded $2500 stipends. In addition, selected presentations will be developed into commissioned essays to be included in the Atlas of New Librarianship. Submissions from library practitioners and early career faculty are highly encouraged.

Each symposium will focus on concepts that guide library practice and development, rather than focusing on skills or specific functions tied to a given institution. Participants will be encouraged to seek broad concepts and theory that ultimately determine how librarianship is defined in and outside of the context of a library, as well as beyond sectors (public, academic, school, etc.). These symposia seek the ideas that will guide the field over the next decade instead of the latest trends or services.

Abstract submissions should address one of the four following core topics:

Symposium 1: Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion: The vital need for diversity in librarianship stems from twin beliefs in the inherent value and dignity of all people and in the fact that the best knowledge is derived from the richest variety of sources. How can this be expressed as a core value of librarianship and what are its implications for the institutions librarians build and maintain? How can we address institutional racism, biases, discrimination, and inaccessibility   in library institutions, education, and practice internationally? How might we integrate principles of inclusion and universal design?

Symposium 2: Post-Neutrality Librarianship: Librarians cannot be unbiased neutral information professionals and passionate advocates for better communities. To seek an improved society calls for a vision of what “improved” means. How can librarians reconcile the reality of making service decisions in a context of limited resources with a mandate to serve the whole community?

Symposium 3: International Influences: Concepts of diversity, of service, and of librarianship itself are strongly influenced by local contexts. The idea that the work of librarians looks the same in Kenya, Norway, China, and the United States is founded on the strained concept that universal structures serve all. What in librarianship transcends national boundaries, what varies, and what is the process that connects the two?

Symposium 4: A New Normal Agenda in a COVID-Affected World: The COVID pandemic has put in sharp contrast the role of libraries in communities, and made clear how what was once considered normal, must never be normalized again. Librarians must fight for universal broadband, better workforce development, and expand democratic conversations, to ensure the wellbeing of communities and understand their roles in a crisis. What does the new normal agenda for librarianship look like? 

Paper Abstract Submissions:

Abstracts for papers to be presented during a symposium should discuss, analyze, and critique critical ideas, theories, and concepts addressed within the chosen symposium topic. Submissions will be evaluated on quality of content; theoretical, conceptual, or practical significance; relevance for practice; originality; and clarity. The maximum length for an abstract, including references, is 500 words. Appendices should not be included. No author names should be listed in the abstract submitted for review. 

Creative Format Contribution Proposals:

In addition to the call for paper abstracts, we invite multimedia contributions in visual, audio, audiovisual, or hybrid formats. Contributions should include a sample of work and a contributor statement and engage with critical ideas, theories, and concepts addressed within the chosen symposium topic. Submissions will be evaluated for quality of content; theoretical, conceptual, or practical significance; relevance for practice; and creativity.

Editorial Board Review: Submissions will be refereed by an editorial board assigned to each symposium area. Please see the “About” page for Editorial Board Member information.

Important Dates

  • June 30, 2021: Abstract submissions due by 11:59 PM EST
  • August 1, 2021: Notification of abstract and creative format proposal acceptance; notification of abstracts selected for white paper commissions 
  • October 28, 2021: Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Symposium 
  • November 4, 2021: Post-Neutrality Librarianship Symposium 
  • November 11, 2021: International Influences Symposium 
  • November 18, 2021: A New Normal Agenda in a COVID-Affected World Symposium 
  • February 28, 2022: Publication submissions due by 11:59 PM EST (GMT -5)
  • July 2022: Processing of materials, copyediting of submissions, and preparation of introductory materials, including audio introductions of selected content, will be completed and published on the University of South Carolina ScholarOne site.
  • End of 2022 (approximate): Target publication date for The Atlas of New Librarianship,Second Edition

Click here for more information and to submit your abstract: https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/newlibrarianshipsymposia/cfp.html

Starting the Spring Semester and Bringing Light

I sent the following message this morning to the faculty, staff, students, and alumni of the iSchool here at South Carolina.

I am writing you from my office in Davis Hall. It is the morning of January 11 – the first day of classes for the Spring ’21 semester. Right now, I’m the only one here, a result of the reality around the pandemic. This semester we have no in person classes – though we will be setting up a regular in-person undergraduate joint study session soon. This semester we continue to adapt to a global pandemic.

Davis Hall Ready for the Semester

I also have to admit, that after the events of January 6 in the U.S. Capitol Building, I was not anxious to have a government building unattended. It is frankly horrifying that in classes where we are studying the global realities of the pandemic, the historic Black Lives Matter protests for racial justice, and the effects of the economic realities of the pandemic on communities, we must add armed insurrection. And yet, here we are. Our faculty, staff, students, and alumni are suffering and attempting to come to terms with a world that seems out of control.

In college I had a professor who taught an evening class. He said how he always loved teaching evening courses in the Spring because they would begin the semester in darkness, and by the end light would fill the classroom as summer approached. We too can see ourselves at the beginning of this semester in the darkness of winter, and we are seeking out the light. However, it won’t be a matter of simply waiting for the Earth to turn on its axis, but rather through action. We bring about the light by embracing our mission at the iSchool: to bring meaning and justice to communities through information and knowledge. 

We do this through our teaching. We share the skills and foundations for how organizations use information resources in serving people in ethical ways. We teach librarians, web designers, business analysts, future faculty, and future information professionals. This teaching, really a partnership of learning, continues to mesh skills with perspective and highlighting all of our commitment to a more just and equitable society. 

We do this through research, discovering new aspects of the human condition in a world of connection, data, and information resources. 

We do this in our K-12 classrooms as school librarians empowering our youth with critical literacy skills and a sense of passion for continuous learning.

We do this in public institutions – public libraries, government departments, and as citizens engaging in the democratic process – by ensuring transparency, by building knowledge platforms empowering citizens to find meaning, and by constantly refreshing, reifying, and reinvesting in democracy itself. Democracy, as we know, doesn’t live in documents and laws, but in the common commitment of the governed to seek out the community good.

We do this in universities and archives. We not only preserve the past, but ensure that a living past is not forgotten and informs our future. We provide vital support to scholars and faculty taking on the pandemic, on issues of systemic racism, and inventing new technologies.

We do this in business, academia, schools, colleges, government, and in our neighborhoods. 

This past week, and indeed this past year, have seen dark times. They are getting darker. COVID cases are rising, innocent Black citizens still face unequal justice, our fellow Americans and my fellow citizens of the world are losing jobs and the security of a home. It is easy, and even understandable, that in the face of overwhelming challenges we feel lost, or hopeless, or alone. You are not alone. For 50 years this school has sought to build and empower a community – a network of professionals dedicated to bringing light to the darkness of ignorance.

Through collections, and computers, and social media, and data mining, we have been part of a half century preparation for just this time. We send out a kickass chicken into the most under-resourced schools of the state to encourage literacy. We manage libraries – engine of innovation and service in San Francisco, Vermont, Santa Barbara, Charleston, Columbia, Lexington, Oxford and throughout the world, and we will continue to do so. We have alumni in DC and insurance agencies, state government, and startups that are part of a network committed to a better tomorrow. We are woven throughout the fabric of the nation, and now is the time for us to pull together and bring the light.

If you need support, encouragement, or simply someone to listen, please reach out. And if you have the strength, reach out to your fellow students, your fellow alumni, and show them we are together.

I know we will have a strong and successful semester. That, however, is not enough. We must ensure that we have a strong and successful nation. Let us bring the light.

One Last Little Lecture

One of my favorite parts of the school year is the hooding we do for newly minted MLIS grads in the spring and fall. I’ve gotten into a tradition of giving one last little lecture at each. I created a video of this year’s for those who couldn’t make it, and am sharing it widely.

First the video, then the script.

Congratulations on this great step into your future… we just have time for one last little lecture. Because this moment is no doubt not how you imagined it. A zoom’ed hooding was not a normal thing just a year ago.

And that’s what I’d like to talk about – what is normal. Because like it or not, it is a question that will be at the center of your job for the next several years. In your classes you have been taught skills to organize information, to find information, to use information to help people find meaning in their lives and for communities to make smarter decisions. All of those skills, however, are ultimately about creating normality. How the world organizes itself, the data it collects about its operations and the choices it makes based on that data is what we come to see as normal.

Things that we take as par for the course today – opinion polls, economic numbers, credit scores – are information creations of the past century. And we see the often grim new normal of data and collected information being formed around us today: positivity rates, mortality numbers, public acceptance of disinformation. This information can be used to enlighten such as exposing the outsized effect of the pandemic on communities of color. How information is organized and disseminated can also be used to blind: attacks on our very democracy masked as benign legal maneuvers.

Make no mistake, what is and will be normal, is a choice. Not just a choice as to what people expect or accept, but in what you will do and advocate for. It is the librarians, information professionals, educators, data analysts, and researchers that you are now that will shape the new normal. It is your unique combination of skills and ethical center that must fight disinformation and reweave the connective tissue of our communities and our very democracy.

You will do this person by person, neighbor by neighbor, student by student. You will do this by never accepting that people – children, mothers, brothers, flawed and glorious all – can be reduced to a stream of data or flattened to consumers. You will do this through difficult conversations in person and in print and in Zoom. Conversations on race, on ideology, on the very nature of truth. You will do this not by being neutral, but by being transparent and an example of knowledge informed by data and information, but more importantly by your humanity.

Today we celebrate – tomorrow we begin the work of forging a new normal where Black Lives Matter. Where the fate of a student in rural South Carolina is never determined by the zip code of their birth. Where the access to life saving medical treatment is not tied to the size of a bank account, and where borders never limit the span of our imagination or friendship.

This is your last lesson then. The true value of your degree, and your education is never determined by the diploma you receive, but by the communities you improve.

One Last Lecture for the MLIS Class of 2020

Last Thursday would have been the hooding, and this past weekend graduation. While I would love nothing more than to be with you to say congratulations, I did want to use this opportunity to talk about tradition. As part of the academic tradition at the school you would have worn academic robes, and you would have to endure one short last lecture from me. While we are not gathering together, I wanted to at least pay homage to those traditions for this year’s graduates. I think in a time of pandemics, a lecture on those robes would be appropriate to talk about what we have prepared you for.

Many may have heard that academic robes are modeled on the robes of medieval monks. Monks held a special place in society in Europe – not least of which they were partially exempt from many of the daily chores of survival. They had to be literate to study and preach the bible. These two things made them ideal tutors for the gentry. They became teachers. As time progressed the gentry pooled their monies and gathered these tutors into colleges.

Some may have also heard about the hoods worn by graduates at the masters and doctoral level. The hoods symbolize where the monks would keep their food and wine. What folks don’t always know is that the food and wine were often the payment for their services. Hard currency was either hard to come by, or lacked reach for traveling tutors, so they took their payments in sustenance. The wine, fermented, was much safer than water at the time.

What many familiar with academic regalia do not know, however, is why at the big graduation ceremonies at most universities the procession of faculty is led by a mace holder. The mace is usually VERY large and ornate (check out UofSC’s here: https://www.sc.edu/about/offices_and_divisions/registrar/graduation/commencement_ceremonies/commencement_traditions/university_mace.php ). Why a mace? It seems a bit discordant at a place of higher education that a weapon opens and closes major events.

Except, think about the origin of the symbol. You are a monk. You are carrying payment in the form of gold or wine or food as you travel to many often unknown locations. You needed your robes to keep you warm, your hood to carry your living, and a mace to keep you safe. The mace has become a symbol of academic authority because it recalls that the world of the educated is not always easy and, to an extent, must be protected.

This week you graduate. You have earned through hard work and long hours the right to wear those robes and claim your place as a master of your field. You are doing this in a perilous time. No one planned this, and no one wishes it upon you. However, here you are, and you must move forward.

Many of you are going into our state’s schools. There you will face education by Zoom, and a student body disconnected – sheltered at home trying to learn while taking care of siblings, struggling with technology, or all too often struggling with a lack of access to technology. Most of your partners in this endeavor, teachers and administrators, are teaching online for the first time, and are unable to truly comfort their students, much less push them toward excellence.

Some of you are headed, if not today, then in the future, to public libraries. Closed buildings will be reopening, most likely too soon, and you will be the face of local government hopefully in a mask. You will be asked to be a place of gathering for a community that has become suspicious of touch, and who are wounded by weeks of loss and isolation.

Some of you are headed to the nation’s colleges and universities. You will be facing a faculty also struggling to teach online, and students morning the loss of the college experience. Traditional means of creating a community of learners side lined for safety.

All of you will be faced with a world no one wants and be given a choice. That choice is what will the new normal look like?

You’ve heard the phrase, the new normal. But you have almost always heard it in a negative frame. The new normal is talked about what we will give up. A new normal of social distancing, of fear of infection, of shuttered businesses. But I ask you to ask what should the new normal be? What if we learn from this horrific pandemic and work together to forge a new normal founded on the principles of equity and inclusion?

What if the new normal is universal broadband access to erase the digital divide? What if the new normal is the gathering of local voices to make governments more transparent, accountable, and tied to accuracy? What if the new normal for libraries is not just serving people at home in times of crisis, but every day serving our communities wherever they must be – the mother and father and home bound? The elderly and differently abled? What if the new normal allows us to connect the scholar to research articles and kids to story time online without fear of copyright lawsuits? What if the new normal is access to the world’s memory and opportunity as defined by desire and not a zip code?

No monk foresaw today’s academy as he walked through dirty streets of desperation seven centuries ago with a loaf of bread tucked into his sleeve and a mace in his hand. No monk foresaw the gathering of the tutors, the creation of colleges, the advancement of education and the creation of a scholarship that pushed humankind out of the middle ages to explore the globe, and the moon. And yet, that monk didn’t have to – he merely needed to continue to teach and serve.

We – you and I- do not know what literally tomorrow holds. Will there be second waves of infection? Will classes ever return to full in-person? Will the next economic boom be about technology or medicine or learning? But what we do know, is that over these past years, you have been preparing to serve and inform, and educate. You have learned skills, but also principles that uniquely qualify you to shape the future. You will be entering into organizations reeling from change, and you will embrace that change, and with calm competent compassion you will lead.

I congratulate you on your graduation. I look forward to the great things you will do. Here’s to the class of 2020.

Real Time Archives

I hope you have had time to check out librarian.SUPPORT (https://librarian.support) and the Real Time sessions. I have some great conversations and learned a lot on everything from scenario planning with Matt Finch, to Emergency planning with Jason Broughton, to universal access with Clayton Copeland, and graphic novels with Karen Gavigan.

Upcoming sessions are with Chad Mairn on how librarians can use extended realities (VR/AR/MR/360/3D), and Brad and Lucy Green on fostering literacy through music.

Check out the list of previous and upcoming talks. Also let me know if this is something to continue past April.