Category: Publications News

So to coincide with the launch of the Atlas of New Librarianship next week at the ACRL conference, I will be releasing a companion iPad app (and website too). The purpose of this app is two-fold: to give you something of use in engaging with the Atlas of New Librarianship, and to show you what one person can do with $400 worth of software and no ability to program in C.
I do all of this to show that you can too. Librarians don’t have to become computer scientists to take advantage of the new mobile tools. To be sure, talented and dedicated programmers can make better apps – and to be equally sure there are librarians out there that already are. You need to be there too: able to rapidly prototype, specify and meet short-term needs online.

Libraries are places of conversation and learning. They are places to create knowledge, and increasingly that means building software and apps. Whereas 100 years ago we helped scholars write books, today we can help scholars, housewives, small businesses, and students create apps.

This is my app. It is not perfect. It is not the future of ebooks I have talked about in the past. It is instead an example. Join me in making it better.

While the app won’t be available until next week, I am posting a walkthrough of it here.

New from ACRL and MIT Press: The Atlas of New Librarianship

The Atlas of New Librarianship cover.

For Immediate Release
Tue, 03/22/2011 – 13:33

Contact: David Free
ACRL

CHICAGO – The Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) and MIT Press announce the co-publication of a new title, “The Atlas of New Librarianship” by R. David Lankes of the Syracuse University School of Information Studies. Libraries have existed for millennia, but today the library field is searching for solid footing in an increasingly fragmented (and increasingly digital) information environment. What is librarianship when it is unmoored from cataloging, books, buildings and committees?

“The Atlas of New Librarianship” offers a guide to this new landscape for practitioners. Lankes describes a new librarianship based not on books and artifacts but on knowledge and learning and suggests a new mission for librarians: to improve society through facilitating knowledge creation in their communities. To help librarians navigate this new terrain, Lankes offers a map, a visual representation of the discipline.

The book contains more than 140 Agreements, statements about librarianship that range from relevant theories to examples of practice; and Threads, arrangements of Agreements to explain key ideas, covering such topics as conceptual foundations and skills and values. Agreement Supplements at the end of the book offer expanded discussions. Although it touches on theory as well as practice, the work is meant to be a tool: textbook, conversation guide, platform for social networking and call to action.

This exciting new work will debut with a launch event at the ACRL 2011 conference in Philadelphia. Lankes will speak and sign copies of the book at 2 p.m. EDT on Thursday, March 31, 2011, in Room 103 of the Philadelphia Convention Center.

“The Atlas of New Librarianship” will be available for purchase at the launch event in Philadelphia and is also available through the MIT Press online store.

**

ACRL is a division of the American Library Association (ALA), representing more than 12,500 academic and research librarians and interested individuals. ACRL is the only individual membership organization in North America that develops programs, products and services to meet the unique needs of academic and research librarians. Its initiatives enable the higher education community to understand the role that academic libraries play in the teaching, learning and research environments. ACRL is on the Web at http://www.acrl.org, Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/ala.acrl and Twitter at @ala_acrl.

Now you’ve seen the teasers, come see the book! We’ll be doing a book launch at this year’s ACRL Conference in Philadelphia! Here are the details:

The Atlas of New Librarianship – Book Launch and Signing

Thursday, March 31, 2011 2:00 PM – 2:45 PM

Room: 103 C

Program Description
ACRL and MIT are pleased to unveil The Atlas of New Librarianship by R. David Lankes. The Atlas describes a new librarianship based not on books and artifacts but on knowledge and learning. Dr. Lankes will say a few words about the Atlas and will be available to sign copies.

Primary Speaker: R. David Lankes, Information Institute of Syracuse

Here is the official flyer for the Atlas with the table of contents for the first part of the Atlas. Click for the PDF (so you can actually read it).

Last of the section intros:

If this one looks familiar, you must be keeping up with the FutureReady365 blog of SLA. It turns out it was a good fit for this thread:

There are 6 threads in the Atlas (in essence chapters) that come of the mission. Here is an introduction for the fourth on communities:

Next week I’ll finish posting the thread intros, and then videos about other things in the works related to the Atlas.

P.S.

There is now a Twitter account for the Atlas: AtNewLib

The entire Atlas is based on a mission of librarians:

The MISSION of LIBRARIANS is to IMPROVE SOCIETY through FACILITATING KNOWLEDGE CREATION in their COMMUNITIES

The threads take the major ideas in this mission and map it down to why that is part of the mission, and how librarians can fulfill it.

Here is the intro to the Facilitation Thread:

Teaser for the Knowledge Creation Thread.

The point of these little videos is to set a tone for the thread, not replace it. I’m also trying to capture the tone of the text – personal and conversational as opposed to scholarly third person passive voice. As you can also tell…it is cold in Syracuse.