I use data and technology to tell stories that facilitate personal and communal transformation.
This is a quick review/reflection of the Closing Address of ILEAD USA by R. David Lankes, Professor and Dean’s Scholar for the New Librarianship, Syracuse University School of Information Studies. The talk was titled “The Community Is Your Collection” and it was absolutely wonderful.
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This is part of a series of reflections/ruminations based on my notes from the ILEAD USA experience and is posted as much for my own reflection and future reference as for the imagined reader. See all my reflections through the tag ILEAD USA.
Michael Stephens, Assistant Professor in the School of Library and Information Science at San Jose State University
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Michael has posted the slides as well as links to several articles on his website.
[I hope to come back and add my notes here at a later date – let if suffice for me just to post this for future reference!]
I’ve been thinking a bit about developing a plan and policy for the Brandel Library’s social media accounts. In the past, I’ve viewed this as an “important but not urgent” issue and I largely feel the same way now. However, I think that both for planning sake and direction I should invest some time and thought in researching other library’s policies and best practices to guide the Brandel Library’s social media in 2014.
By “policy” I mean a set of expectations that set the boundaries for acceptable conduct as well as some lofty goals for social media in the context of an academic library. I’ve started collecting some relevant policies and articles in this Zotero library and hope to keep updated that frequently.
Starting with the question of “Why?” leads me to connect our social media policy to the library’s general mission statement. Our current mission statement (as of 2012) is:
The Brandel Library supports the educational mission of the university by offering resources, services, and an environment to stimulate academic inquiry and intellectual, cultural and social exchange, while reflecting the Christian, urban, and multicultural vision of the university. This is accomplished through the acquisition, organization, and preservation of both physical and digital materials, and by facilitating their use (access) in a complex information environment through course and individual instruction. Creating awareness of and providing access to these collections are essential to our mission.
I’ve taken the liberty of highlighting certain phrases that I find particularly relevant to the library’s social media policy. Having not planned this – I’m actually relatively happy with how well library mission statement mapped to social policy. At the same time, I also see that our mission statement seems focused on our collections (and facilitating their use) and not on our our users (and meeting their needs). Something to consider long term, I guess.
Editorial confession – this draft has been pending for months. In that time, I went to the #ILEADUSA meeting and heard an inspiring talk from Beck Tench. The simplicity of her institutions social media policy has inspired me so much that I’m going to steal it directly and offer it as a first draft. Her policy is simply this:
If I recall correctly, this policy was given in a section of her talk focused on trusting people completely. I’m going to move forward with that confidence and revisit this when the need arrives.
This is a quick review/reflection of the Opening Keynote Address (given Tuesday, March 26, 2013) by R. David Lankes, Professor and Dean’s Scholar for the New Librarianship, Syracuse University School of Information Studies
The talk is titled “Awesome Librarians” here is a link to the video.
Librarians must build more than a collection: they must build communities and conversations.
This address seems directed at the I LEAD U community and he exhorts the audience to take advantage of the opportunity and to learn to enjoy ambiguity. Throughout the opening of this talk, he is focused on building awesome librarians and not just awesome projects. The projects are important but are one part of the bigger picture. He shifts the focus from products and services (websites, videos, collections) to the fundamental mission of librarians, which he defines like this:
Our mission: to improve society. How do we do it? By facilitating knowledge creation in our communities.
I was quite refreshing hearing Professor Lankes repeat the actions of libraries – improve, learn, teach, engage – because it painted such a wonderful and broad perspective of what libraries are and what librarians do.
We are here to make our communities better.
Libraries build tools to allow this happen. This personally convicted me in a number of ways; I often think that my job is to make our electronic resources more accessible, or a user interface slightly better, or hidden collections more accessible. I think Lankes would say this is fine…so long as the most important goal is guiding these efforts.
Avoid talking about “the user” – only computer scientists and drug dealers have users. Don’t call them “consumers” or “customers” either. Don’t “use” the library but “join” the library in terms of shared activity. Measure the success of the library in terms of success of the community – not in spite of the community! He claims we approach too many problems with the mindset “my community doesn’t read enough” and then try and solve the problem like that. Don’t promote collections – ask “what do you want?” and “what do you want to be?” instead. Our communities have problems – but they also have dreams and aspirations and goals; the job of libraries is not to fix the problems – it is help people achieve their dreams and aspirations and goals.
To be an “awesome librarian” or an “epic librarian” don’t just do your job – understand why you do your job! This will help you determine when something different is needed. We are about human to human connection, conversation, and learning. What does learning require? Answers to this question will vary but are the most important parts of library service.
Help the community. The is the goal. The community is the collection.
My goals for I LEAD U: one, become awesome and, two, do awesome things.
This year, I’m taking part of an exciting program sponsored by the Illinois State Library Association called I-LEAD U. This stands for “Innovative Librarians Explore, Apply, and Discover” and I’m excited to be a part of it!
Truthfully, I’m not sure what this program will entail and involve, but I’m excited about it and plan on blogging my way through the whole experience. Starting now – with this video they suggested we watch before our March meeting.
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The history of project planning – mostly a post WWII innovation designed to address modern concerns of accountability and efficiency.
What is a project? “A temporary endeavor, with a defined beginning, middle, and end, undertaken to meet clearly articulated goals and objectives.” Good projects are iterative – continually going back to look again at the problem and think creatively about the solutions. “A project is typically constrained by time, staff, technology, funding, deliverables, or all of these factors.” – These aren’t necessarily bad things – rather just the facts of life. Ultimately, limitations are what make projects interesting. Just take them into account when planning.
The part of the presentation seemed to stress that project planning is an organic process. Step 1 is obviously the beginning and step 5 the conclusion; steps 2-4 are in a dynamic relationship with each other. Projects could move between these points for quite some time before reaching their close.
What is success? This should be one of the first questions – and one that continually refined and asked again. Here are some basic questions: is it on time? is it within budget? does it work? does the community approve? Let it be good enough!
You are not going to fail.
I LEAD I is designed to support risks and big success! “Risk is the difference between the expected and realized value of the result(s) of a future event.” Risk is about uncertainty – not danger. Risk is a difference – not positive or negative. No need to avoid risk – just understand and control the difference between the expected and realized value. Where is the risk in the project – in concepts, technology, communications, and/or delivery? Who owns the risk – the project team, the user, a third party
Overall, I thought this was a good video full of interesting content. It wasn’t exactly exciting or revolutionary – but it did apply terms of a conceptional framework to ideas that I had only loosely grasped. I think having a formal structure and a shared vocabulary – like this presentation provided – will be a helpful part of the I LEAD U experience with many applications to other parts of the library.