Category: New Librarianship

Participatory Librarianship
and Web 2.0 in the Curriculum
ALA’s Office for Information Technology Policy and ALISE

When: January 9, 2008, 9:00-11:00
Where: Room 108, Free Library of Philadelphia
Map Directions: http://tinyurl.com/3xa6pn

Thank you for agreeing to attend this meeting. Your input shall be invaluable not only to ALA’s Office for Information Technology Policy, but to your peers as well. We all wrestle with the fast pace of technological change in our research and curricula. Certainly the past two decades have challenged our schools to not only prepare librarians for a new practice environment, but to constantly place these technologies in the larger contexts of our field and society. New technologies, both the fads and the fundamental, have filled our traditional cores and electives to their breaking points. How can we decide what is durable in these new technologies? What is the proper balance between concepts and technology features? What is the overall concept of librarianship that allows us to define cutting edge, obsolete, and irrelevant? It is hoped that this meeting and the larger series of conversations taking place in LIS programs around the country, can bring some consensus to these questions.

The technology brief Participatory Networks: The Library as Conversation is a starting point for our discussion. It foreshadows a broad view of librarianship (limited to a technology lens for the brief) where librarians are not caretakers of collections, but facilitators of community conversations (in schools, cities, businesses, etc). How do we prepare the next generation of librarians to be true facilitators?

Many of us have already begun to wrestle with these issues. The point of this meeting is to share the important thinking and work you have done in your schools and libraries. I want to thank you again for agreeing to share. This meeting is not about a crisis, nor about any one technology. Rather it is part of an ongoing participatory process intent on defining the fundamental nature of libraries in a world of the ubiquitous network.

Agenda

• Welcome and Introductions
• Background on the Office for Information Technology Policy
• Overview of Participatory Librarianship and the Educational Implications
• Open Discussion of Participatory Librarianship and Web 2.0 in the Curriculum
• Wrap Up and Next Steps

Additional Materials

Participatory Networks: The Library as Conversation – OITP Technology Brief
Participatory Networks: The Library as Conversation – OITP Technology Brief Executive Overview

Additional Background materials, including video introductions, can be found on the Participatory Librarianship web site http://ptbed.org

Going to Midwinter? This might be of interest:

Best Practices in Cooperative Reference: Reference and Social Networking

Saturday, January 12

1:30 – 3:30 PM

Hilton Salon A/B

Join us for a discussion of “Reference and Social Networking” with panelists Beth Evans (Brooklyn College), Stephen Francoeur (Baruch College) and David Lankes (Syracuse University).

Stephen Francoeur will explore how libraries are offering reference services via MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, and other social network sites and what the practical, legal, and theoretical implications are for answering questions in these environments.

Beth Evans will discuss how social networks such as MySpace provide the librarians at Brookyn College with opportunities to do virtual reference in unexpected ways in unexpected places. Whether it is answering a direct query, to pushing a snippet of unexpected, personalized, library instruction, to being a knowledgeable voice in the crowd, librarians can guide information seekers online who may have bypassed other methods of reaching their library or librarian.

Who said reference has to be one person, one librarian, one question? Can reference be a social activity? How can we truly put the user at the center of reference? How can we re-imagine reference as a learning activity where the reference librarian facilitates learning? David Lankes will focus on reference as a truly participatory process and how such a process can take advantage in the latest in web technologies.

Join us for this thought-provoking discussion!

Our panelists:

– Beth Evans is an associate professor and the electronic services specialist at the Brooklyn College Library. She has her MLS from Queens College of the City University of New York, an MA from Brown University and a BA from Brooklyn College, CUNY. She was named a Library Journal Mover and Shaker in 2007 for her work with the Brooklyn College Library on MySpace.

– Stephen Francoeur is an information services librarian and assistant professor at Baruch College. He regularly writes about reference issues on his blog, Digital Reference.

– R. David Lankes is director of the Information Institute of Syracuse, and an associate professor in Syracuse University’s School of Information Studies. He was creator of the Virtual Reference Desk Project and has done extensive research into virtual reference.

Please RSVP for these events to confirm your attendance: www.oclc.org/info/ala/

ALA’s Office for Information Technology Policy and ALISE invite Library and Information Science Educators to a Meeting on Participatory Librarianship and Web 2.0 in the Curriculum.

January 9th, 2008 9-11 at the Free Library of Philadelphia
(just three blocks from the Sheraton Philadelphia City Center)

The library landscape is constantly in flux. New technologies, new practices, and new theories are the sign of an active field. However, these dynamic forces also lead to confusion and conflict. It also leads to a spate of new services and functions that are sometimes awkward to integrate into existing research, operations and curricula. In today’s world of Web 2.0, Library 2.0, social networks, blogs and wiki’s what concepts are durable and what is new that must be imparted to the next generation of professionals?
Thinking through this issue – its technological and professional implications and legislative and policy overlaps – is an example of the type of work conducted at the American Library Association’s (ALA’s) Washington Office. ALA’s Office for Information Technology Policy (OITP), a part of the Washington Office, and Syracuse University’s Information Institute of Syracuse have initiated a project to examine this issue under the rubric of participatory librarianship (http://ptbed.org). Simply put, participatory librarianship recasts library and library practice from the fundamental concept that knowledge is created through conversation. Since libraries are in the knowledge business they are, therefore, in the conversation business – in both the digital and physical worlds. Participatory librarians approach their work as facilitators of conversation. Be it in practice, policies, programs and/or tools, participatory librarians seek to enrich, capture, store and disseminate the conversations of their communities.
As part of this effort, project researchers are seeking input from library and information science (LIS) faculty and students on how participatory concepts can be integrated into curricula and to identify ongoing related research. The input of the LIS research and education community will be incorporated into a Participatory Library Starter Kit. This starter kit will present case studies from a wide variety of settings including: public, federal, and academic libraries; library vendors; and, of course, the LIS research and education community.
The session will describe the research, seek input, and provide some background information and tools from ALA’s Washington Office. It will provide an overview of participatory concepts and invite your input. Also described shall be the work of ALA’s Washington Office, share some of our policy materials and legislative information, and solicit your thoughts on which public policy issues deserve the highest priority.
Those interested in attending should contact: R. David Lankes, [email protected]

R. David Lankes
OITP Fellow and
Director, Information Institute of Syracuse
Alan S. Inouye
Director, ALA’s Office for Information Technology Policy