Expect More Second Edition Now Free to Download

There has been a lot of interest and use of my book Expect More globally. In 2015 Expect More was updated into a second edition with the support of some fabulous library partners. Today we’re making this new edition freely available to download. You can still purchase paper copies of the print book.

In addition to the free online text (and links to translated versions) I have put together a series of videos talking about using each chapter in the context of community conversations.

A VERY big thank you to the partners who made this possible:

Lead Library Partners

  • Cuyahoga County Public Library (Ohio)
  • The Northeast Kansas Library System
  • RAILS (Reaching Across Illinois Library System)

Library Partners

  • New York State Library
  • ILEAD USA
  • Maine State Library
  • Topeka Public Library (Kansas)
  • Chattanooga Public Library (Tennessee)
  • Fairfield Public Library (Connecticut)
  • Enoch Pratt Free Library (Maryland)
  • F. Franklin Moon Memorial Library, SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry
  • The Califa Library Group
  • Fayetteville Free Library (New York)
  • State Library of Pennsylvania
  • Toronto Public Library
  • California Library Association

Commercial Partners

  • Tech Logic

Education Partner

  • Syracuse University iSchool
  • Dominican University’s School of Information Studies
  • University of South Carolina’s School of Library and Information Science.

SLIS Update

Ehsan Mohammadi with students

Greetings my SLIS friends.

The end of the academic year here at SLIS is upon us, and it has been quite the year. Here are just some of our accomplishments:

  • In the Fall we hosted a meeting for the Institute for Museum and Library Services that gathered nearly all of the accredited library and information science programs in the country.
  • This lead to a fantastic effort by the faculty and our doctoral students to submit proposals to IMLS. We put in 9, and 5 have been invited into the second round of proposals. Some big congratulations to Jennifer Arns, Liz Hartnett, Clayton Copeland, Vanessa Kitzie, Lucy Green and Edward Blessing!
  • Karen Gavigan is on her third round of Library of Congress grants for teaching with primary sources.
  • We hired on 3 new members of the faculty in the areas of international librarians, youth services, and school librarianship.
  • We brought on 4 new staff members.
  • We made major progress on renewing our library science curriculum, an effort you will be hearing more about in the coming months.
  • We experienced double digit growth in our undergraduate program.
  • We put in place a new curriculum of the undergraduate information science major and an undergraduate minor in informatics.
  • We submitted a manuscript written by numerous SLIS faculty, students, and staff on the Knowledge School concepts.
  • We started a cohort program to fill the urgent need for school librarians in South Carolina. We have partnered with the Charleston County Schools in the Spring for the first cohort, and will be beginning the second cohort with the Florence 1 School District this week.
  • We have seen a major uptick in applicants to our doctoral program.

In addition to these, we are working closely with our colleagues in the School of Journalism and Mass Communications to develop new academic and research programs along the theme of Data, Media, and Society. These programs will marry excellence in data with knowledge of the communications industries. The knowledge school of thought will also be strongly present with an emphasis on ethics and positive community impacts in the use of data and algorithms.

Overall, we are seeing growth in students, research, and ultimately in reputation. The word is out that SLIS is creating the next evolution of library and information science education. Faculty are working in South Carolina schools, libraries across Europe, governments in Africa, and with associations in Asia. We are supporting literacy at home, and redefining librarianship globally.

This is nothing new for SLIS of course. You have been a part of inventing distance education and marrying impact and service with scholarship. We want you to be part of the next evolution of SLIS innovation. We are looking for your ideas, your stories, your feedback as we expand. Let us know your success stories. Let us know your ideas. Connect and be part of the new school of thought that seeks smarter communities and more meaningful lives.

 

I have cancer again.

I have been diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, specifically Diffuse Large B-Cell Lymphoma. For those keeping track at home, this is a different cancer than I went through before (that was Hodgkin’s). I will begin a combination of chemo and immune therapy in the next week. The prognosis is good. While it is an aggressive cancer, it is treatable, and indeed, curable. After three rounds of chemo over the summer there will most likely be some spot radiation then more chemo. If that doesn’t do the trick there are several “plan Bs.”

The reason I am making this public is that I will not be accepting new travel or speaking engagements until further notice. I plan on keeping my current commitments this fall and have been in touch with the organizers. Also, I’m about to lose what little hair I have left and am seeking sympathy 😉 I am continuing as director of the University of South Carolina’s School of Library and Information Science with the support of my faculty and dean. I worked through the last set of trials, I plan to do so here as well.

Getting my third cancer diagnosis is scary (though technically I can now be called a lymphomaniac). But I am privileged to have a flexible job, supportive colleagues, an amazing caregiver in my wife, and health insurance (which should be a right not a privilege…come on America). If you want to know how you can help, the short answer is give blood.

SLIS Update on School Library Program

Karen Gavigan teaches the Charleston Cohort

Greetings Friends,

I just wanted to send an update on some activities of your knowledge school. This month has been a lot about school libraries and the librarians that make them effective. SLIS had a great presence at the South Carolina Association of School Librarians (SCASL). Heather Moorefield-Lang presented an amazing keynote address to over 500 South Carolina school librarians. She got a well-deserved standing ovation. As you can imagine, it was peppered with some great one-liners.

We are also having a great response to the Library Scholars program that partners with school districts to transition teachers to certified school librarians. Our first cohort started this spring with the Charleston County School District. We were able to bring all 10 students to SCASL and they proudly showed their Garnet colors. We are in the process of signing up the Florence 1 School District for the Summer and are in conversations with 4 other districts! Here’s a story on the Charleston cohort: http://www.sc.edu/study/colleges_schools/cic/library_and_information_science/news/2018/slis_launches_library_scholar_program.php

In other fantastic news, our own Lucy Santos-Green co-authored an amazing piece of research with Melissa Johnston. The article published in School Library Research – a highly respected school library academic journal-is titled Still Polishing the Diamond: School Library Research over the Last Decade and provides a terrific overview of research in the field.

Our dedication to school librarians as agents of transformational change and student success is also seen in our hiring. I am thrilled to announce that Valerie Byrd Fort is joining the faculty. Valerie has a distinguished career as a school librarian and has taught many classes with SLIS as adjunct faculty. Starting in the Fall she will come on as a full-time instructor and will lead Cocky’s Reading Express for us. We are also searching for a new tenure-track position in school libraries, and the Augusta Baker Chair in youth literacy and diversity. Where other LIS programs around the country are shrinking or even closing their school library programs, we are investing in ours.

This is also a perfect time for our investment in the school library program, as there is an acute need for school librarians in South Carolina and the Southeast. If you didn’t see the article on the need for teachers and school librarians in the State newspaper, here’s a link to the article and quote I’d like to draw your attention to:

Effort to keep S.C. teachers in the class after retiring moves forward

Read more here: http://www.thestate.com/news/politics-government/politics-columns-blogs/the-buzz/article206103649.html#storylink=cpy

Here’s the quote:

“Just in nine (school) districts in my neck of the woods, 75 percent of our library media specialists are within five years of retirement,” Fanning said Thursday. “There’s only one library media program in the state of South Carolina — and that’s at USC (the University of South Carolina) — and they’re not cranking out enough even for my nine districts.”

Fanning, is Senator Mike Fanning, D-Fairfield

For me this story emphasizes the need for our school library program, confirms the importance of our cohort program, and gives us an opportunity to reach out to the legislature. 

So, to our school library students and alumni, thank you for your support and continued feedback. The work you do is vital to our communities. Know that SLIS is there for you and wants to be a partner in the success of educating the next generation. We heard a lot of great ideas at SCASL and are already following up (think student teacher orientation).

The mission of the knowledge school continues.

Please Join me for SCASL for a SLIS Update

Going to the South Carolina Association fo School Librarians? Come and hear what the University of South Carolina’s School of Library and Information Science has been up to and provide feedback.

SLIS Update and Feedback Session at SCASL

Come and hear what the School of Library and Information Science is up to and share your thoughts. David Lankes, SLIS director will be talking about the new Library Scholar Program that is working with school districts to form cohorts to move teachers from the classroom to school libraries. http://www.sc.edu/study/colleges_schools/cic/library_and_information_science/news/2018/slis_launches_library_scholar_program.php

Come and provide feedback on a major revision to the LIS curriculum and share your ideas on improving the program.

Wednesday 1:45PM – 4:00PM
Hyatt Regency Downtown
220 N Main St
Greenville, SC 29601

German Edition of Expect More Named 2017 Book of the Year

Germaqn Language Cover of the Expect More Book

PASSWORD-Online, the German online magazine, has chosen the German Edition of David Lankes Expect More as the “book of the year 2017.”

A very special note of thanks to Prof. Dr. Hans-Christoph Hobohm and his team of translators. He and his team went well beyond simply translating words, but did an amazing job translating and promotion the spirit of Expect More and pushing for transformed libraries in Germany.

Website Updating

I’ve been having some tech problems with my site for a while now (sorry if it has been slow to load). It seems I’ve figured them out, so a lot of changes I made to try and workaround the site (like a new theme with way too big a picture of me on the homepage) can now be done away with. So I’ll be updating the look to the site in the next few days. All the content will stay in place and links won’t break. Let me know if you see problems.

My Remarks on Library Neutrality for the ALA MidWinter President’s Panel

Here are my remarks for Jim Neal’s Presidential Program was “Are libraries neutral?” I was on the “con” side of the debate. tl;dr version – no they are not.

The video of the session should be available soon, but some of the participants have posted their remarks (I’ll add as they come online here):

Chris Bourg (con): https://chrisbourg.wordpress.com/2018/02/11/debating-y-our-humanity-or-are-libraries-neutral/

Jamie LaRue (pro): http://www.jlarue.com/2018/02/are-libraries-neutral.html

Emily Drabinski (Responder): http://www.emilydrabinski.com/are-libraries-neutral/

Kathleen McCook’s Booklist (Responder): http://hrlibs.blogspot.com/2018/02/neutrality-and-people-presidents-program.html

My Remarks

My fellow librarians I want to get up here and deliver an impassioned speech, full of alter calls and homilies on how you cannot be passionate advocates for the good of your communities and still claim to be neutral. I want to appeal to your emotions and throw out tweetable lines like “I’d rather be damned for honest efforts to improve the world, than lauded for my objectivity.” I want to point out that freedom of speech, that we take as a given, was once a treasonous concept and has never been equivalent to endorsing speech nor a guarantee from consequence of that speech. I want to remind you that you became librarians to make a difference, to uphold a core of values and that you are professionals, not neutral clerks in a library machine.

I want to do that, but I won’t. It would make us feel good. Well, it would make me feel good. But it would ignore the very real consequences of accepting that librarians, and the libraries that we build and run, are not neutral organizations. Nor will I have a philosophical debate on whether human neutrality is even possible as my colleague has already done so including citations to studies and better thinking than I am capable of.

Instead, I will make a single proposition, and ground it in the pragmatic nature of our profession.

Continue reading “My Remarks on Library Neutrality for the ALA MidWinter President’s Panel”

South Carolina is Hiring Again: Tenure Track School Library Position

School librarianship is central to the mission and work of the School of Library and Information Science at South Carolina. School Library students make up nearly 40% of our graduate class. In addition to this position we already have searches underway for the Augusta Baker Chair in digital literacy and youth and an instructor to work with our South  Carolina Center for Children’s Books and Literature. We run projects like Cocky’s Reading Express to encourage literacy in the neediest schools in the south. We have grants from the Hearst Foundation to develop community literacy initiatives that team teachers, school librarians, public libraries, and civic institutions. We have begun  Library Scholar program that teams with school districts to create cohorts of transformation teacher librarians from the teaching ranks. Our first cohort is with the Charleston County School District. Where other programs are shrinking or eliminating school library programs, we are growing ours.

If you are looking for the place to advance school librarianship scholarship, teaching, and advocacy you will find no better place. If you are interested, you will be part of building a vision that is transforming library service around the globe.

I and a number of faculty will be at ALISE and MidWinter if you’d like to talk.

Here is the job announcement: Continue reading “South Carolina is Hiring Again: Tenure Track School Library Position”

Happy New Year, The SLIS Mission Continues

Ehsan Mohammadi with students

Happy New Year. It is a time many take stock and resolve new actions for the coming year. This is particularly true for SLIS. In my Thanksgiving message, I talked about some of the great work and achievements of SLIS over the past year. For the new year I’d like to talk about resolve, and moving ahead.

Many see a school as a sort of repetitive machine that offers classes, graduates students, and then starts again. SLIS is not such a machine. SLIS is on a mission. We seek to improve the world one community at a time. To a group of students, faculty, staff, alumni, and partners on a mission a new year is a time not to dwell on the past or seek to tinker with a process – it is a time to rededicate ourselves to our endeavor.

We improve communities in our classrooms preparing a missionary force of librarians, information scientists, and scholars that will go out into society and help businesses, towns, government, and more make smarter, more knowledgeable decisions. We do this in our offices, centers, and studies seeking to understand how the world operates and improves. We do this through our literacy efforts bringing the power of reading to our most vulnerable citizens – children. We do this in talks and papers and lectures and videos and books.

Being on a mission is hard work. It takes constant effort to seek out the new and better. It takes work to face down the problems of the world and seek solution. It is a hard choice we make. Librarians see our communities struggle and yet must still see the hope in their aspirations. Our information scientist must constantly weigh what is technically possible with the costs of preserving privacy, security, and our ethics. Scholars must seek the truth in a world too ready to dismiss expertise for self-interest. And yet we must continue to do so. We have a mission.

The mission needs all of you. In the weeks and months ahead you will hear a steady stream of calls for help and unity.

You will hear about a new Library Scholar program we are beginning with the Charleston County School District. SLIS is partnering with the Charleston schools to prepare a cohort of school library leaders focused on Charleston’s school libraries, but connected internationally. We hope that Charleston Library Scholars will be joined with cohorts from other school districts, public libraries, and other institutions across the state and nation.

You will hear about a process to examine our LIS curriculum. Librarianship is a living and vibrant profession. It serves communities in constant flux. Our curriculum must continue to be dynamic and rigorous. We will be reaching out in the coming months to alumni, students, and our partners to ensure a responsive and innovative program. We seek to marry theory and practice in a true learning laboratory.

You will hear about an effort to restructure our National Advisory Board. While all of you are encouraged to share your thoughts and ideas, the NAC has served a vital formal role in the school. At the urging of the NAC we are going to set up a more structured and powerful advisory system.

You will hear about a new mentoring program for our library students. Our Diversity Leadership Group has already begun this work, but it needs all of our involvement. We will connect incoming students with our school, public, academic, medical, and special librarians as well as creating deeper connections into archives and cultural heritage.

You will hear about a growing undergraduate program. Built on the foundations of our library program, the undergraduate degree expands our footprint on campus, provides resources to the entire school, and prepares the CIOs, the mayors, the provosts, and professionals that in turn support our librarians. In a year the program has doubled, and this year we will be expanding the minor in information science to explore emerging opportunities in the Information Age such as data science, social networking, and the implications of large scale algorithms.

And yes, you will hear about calls for support. Your generous contributions support scholarships, help develop new scholars, and bring much needed service to needy schools.

So, here’s to a happy new year. Here’s to an ongoing conversation that we call a school. Here’s to a mission that can sustain us in good times and bad. This year and the years ahead will see new faces join the mission, and familiar colleagues take the mission to new communities. That is how it should be. The mission is larger than any one of us.

Today we celebrate, remember, evaluate, and rest. Tomorrow? Well, we have a world to save…one community at a time.