As tagged by Ellie.

Here’s my contribution to the passion quilt meme, which is admittedly a bit depressing when compared with the others:

Platonic quilt, perhaps? It’s still good advice for the young and the restless.

Being a little slow on the uptake with my response most everyone I wanted to tag has already participated - unfortunately, the meme stops here. Except for Chad, that is.

View the original image from flickrCC.

As usual, Lia sent me something awesome weeks ago and I’m finally getting around to posting it. I think this might be one of the best, most random things I’ve seen this year:

It’s called the Open Source Embroidery Project. Need I say more?

There’s an amazing steampunk version out there as well.

(Yet another attempt at breaking the insanity-induced silence of this quarter - bear with me, y’all. I’ll be back on the ball soon).

Today a colleague recently forwarded me the link to Citricon, a new flash game developed by the Orange County Library System - I haven’t had much time to play around with it yet, but at first glance it’s quite well designed. Cute graphics, brief gameplay directions, and the difficulty level can be adjusted at the outset:

OCLS’s game-related offerings (not to mention the entirety of their website and many services) are quite ambitious, as demonstrated in part by one of Citricon’s best features - its ending screen:

Instead of simply letting you try again after you crater, OCLS has taken the opportunity to refer players to a list of other gaming-related activities and materials (most of which link to items in their catalog).

While Citricon cannot exactly be accused of encouraging a great deal of “library learning,” the question of whether and how much it should got me thinking about the gaming-in-libraries debate that’s been going on for years (I’ve largely been an observer of this conversation due to a lack of time to educate myself in gaming/learning theory, but this game inspired me to jump for the first time). I feel that this is an excellent example of using gaming as a draw and diversion-based incentive that eventually leads to other library programming, resources, and types of learning. In that sense, it is quite well done.

On the flip side, I’m of course curious about the cost-benefit aspect of designing something like this - does OCLS contract out the development of this game, or employ a full-time gaming librarian? What is their analysis of their gaming program overall? Who will play Citricon, and how will they track its use? An older post from their blog shows that OCLS has received grants in the past to fund library gaming development, but I couldn’t find much information on this current initiative.

Radical Reference has posted the results of its call-out for LC subject heading suggestions. Entries include BOLLYWOOD FILMS, EASTERN FILBERT BLIGHT, FOLKSONOMY, FREEGANISM, and GENDER DIFFERENCES, among others. Many thanks to RR for helping drag bibliographic control a little further out of the 19th century.

I finally got around to uploading my slides from Computers in Libraries…

… only to realize that they match my blog.

Check out this awesome project from Radical Reference, as written up in The Experiment:

Viva RR!

Do subject headings still matter? We say they do.

Does the Library of Congress always identify accessible and appropriately named headings and implement them in a timely manner? We say not always. All you have to do is spend one day behind a reference desk to see examples of biased, non-inclusive, and counterintuitive classifications that slow down, misdirect, or even obscure information from library users. As librarians and library workers, providing access to information is important-and classifying it in ways that are inclusive and intuitive strengthens our egalitarian mission.

Between now and Sunday, April 27, Radical Reference invites you to suggest subject headings and/or cross-references which will then be compiled and sent to the Library of Congress. You can either choose one previously suggested by Sandy Berman (pdf or spreadsheet) or propose your own.

This is a chance to positively impact the catalog of the de facto national library of the United States, which also impacts cataloging all over the world! Here’s how…

The plan
Some time between now and Sunday, April 27 at 6pm Eastern:

1. Select one or more subject headings or cross-references to suggest
2. Provide material to support your suggestion (in the form of a link and excerpted text/image)
3. Blog it somewhere (your own site; Radical Reference–if you’re a registered and authenticated user on the site, you can create your own blog post, if not, just make it a comment to this post; an online file sharing service like Google Docs or Zoho)
4. Tag it for del.icio.us: rr_lcsh2008 and for:radical_reference. If you don’t have a delicious account email me, and I’ll tag it for you.
5. If you are suggesting a subject heading not previously submitted to LC (e.g. not on Sandy’s scorecard), also submit your proposal to the Program for Cooperative Cataloging.
6. For discussion and help, join the Meebo and/or Skype chat,which will be active on Sunday from 4-6 ET for sure, and other times, as staffed.
7. If you are in the NYC area, you can come to the ABC No Rio Computer Center on Manhattan’s Lower East Side for some in person collaboration.
8. We will email a link to the tagged items to LC, print out a copy of each blog post and mail it to Sandy, and we’re kinda hoping that the members of the RADCAT (radical cataloging) discussion list will consider entering some of the suggested headings properly into the proposal for Example of a new subject heading request.Example of a new cross-references request.

and:

Here’s a link to the SACO Manual that might help everyone understand what is needed for filling out the form. The examples are really great, but library lingo-heavy.

http://www.loc.gov/catdir/pcc/saco/SACOManual2007.pdf

Much obliged to the RR folks for yet another badass idea.

I’ve been on a bit of a self-imposed break from blogging after my fingers fell off at Computers in Libraries, but this morning I read an interesting older post by Steven Bell on ACRLog that I thought merited a (long) response. In it, he critiques the growing wave of Library 2.0-esque technology classes in LIS education - specifically, those that require their students to create blogs, wikis, and such for an entire semester. Bell questions the merits of devoting so much time to learning “trend technologies” already on the road to obsolescence, likening these to the CD-rom demise of yesteryear. He instead advocates for a better integration of instructional design/technology methodology into LIS education, in order to teach library students the skills to apply and evaluate both current and future technologies.

I dance on both sides of this divide - I finished my (wholly 2.0-free) MLIS back in 2005, and am currently in the home stretch of completing a M.Ed in Instructional Technology. From this vantage point, I strongly support Bell’s call for integration of instructional design and technology (ID/T) methodology into the LIS curriculum. I’ll add a greater focus on pedagogy and learning theory to this mix - both are LIS-neglected elements featured in instructional design that merit mentioning due to their incipient value to our profession. Librarians are natural educators almost entirely devoted to the direct or oblique teaching of applied information skills, which often occurs in small chunks and/or at the user’s point of need. ID/T as disciplines exist solely to make this type of real-world education more effective, and in practice eliminate much of the “error” in the trial and error-based process of teaching and creating content for public consumption. Tight budgets and schedules are endemic to librarianship, and are as such natural motivators for us to adopt techniques that streamline our work and improve the learning experience of our patrons.

That said, I disagree with Bell’s assessment of social/2.0/etc. classes. My feeling is that rather than being pop-tech overkill, these are an important step towards integrating a broader design ethic into the LIS curriculum. They signal a experiential, hands-on focus that I wish had been available to me as a MLIS student - one that gives students the ability create and evaluate projects over time that mirror those being developed by libraries… our own version of real-world skills. What the curriculum doesn’t offer enough of is a simulation of the working environment of most libraries, which at its best includes trying out and modifying existing products to our advantage, thus creating inexpensive services from commonly accessible technological platforms.

In my opinion, both ID/T theory and protracted experimentation with social tools (or whatever the next wave will be) are equally important to learning the methodology behind sound, effective design and technology integration. [Side note - another issue is LIS education and its deficiencies in teaching hard technology skills, as in how to fix something if it breaks. Meredith Farkas ruminated recently on LIS education's persistence in "graduating public service librarians who are prepared for librarianship of the 1970s," and argued for public service staff with more technical know-how - the discussion that follows the post is excellent.] The catch is that all of the above must be done well to be effective.

Bell writes:

…right now these technologies are all the rage, and you could take the perspective that the courses are focusing on teaching students to be risk takers who can experiment, take chances, exploit new technology, etc. All good lessons indeed. But does that require a semester long course?

I believe so, because such a course is likely supported by a model that considers the appropriate application of different types of technologies - in other words, the closest thing the current crop of library students will get to instructional design and technology training over the course of their careers. ID/T on a shoestring - admittedly not ideal, but a good start. Glancing over new technologies for a week in a design-specific course would stop similarly short of equipping librarians with better design and tech evaluation skills. I believe that both approaches are necessary to make practitioners of LIS students, and I think we would be best served by asking students to create projects using trend technologies while simultaneously learning systematic, critical approaches to design. True, many of the tools they use will become outdated, but in my experience learning ID/T theory without getting your hands dirty with current applications can feel like something of an exercise.

In terms of the rate at which 2.0 technologies are outdating, I don’t think tools such as blogs and/or wikis will be going anywhere soon. Morphing, perhaps, but not cratering. Moreover, new applications will undoubtedly be built on the shoulders of those that preceded them, meaning that given the a foundation in current social apps LIS students will have the ability to anticipate what upcoming approaches might look like, and the basic skills to modify and adapt these as needed. Library school doesn’t tend to train us to be programmers, so gaining practical experience with lo-fi user-generated tools instills students with what I consider to be an extremely practical introduction to what they’ll be doing on the job - namely, evaluating technologies for their best purposes. LIS graduates need to know how to practically integrate into libraries that, more often than not, use some instance of every 2.0 technology under the sun to varying degrees of effectiveness. They should above all have enough experience to know when these tools aren’t working and how to go about fixing them - important aspects of both creative, experimental librarianship and ID/T pedagogy.

I’m currently in the middle of Bell and Shank’s recent book, Academic Librarianship by Design: A Blended Librarian’s Guide to the Tools and Techniques - it’s proving to be a much-needed and intelligent foray into the process of joining ID/T with academic librarianship. Those interested in applying design thinking to their work as university librarians would be well served by reading it.

Yet another example of indignant librarians doing free inquiry a good turn - it appears that the recent revelation about the federally-funded Popline (Population Information Online) database’s use of “abortion” as a stopword has been addressed, and fast. American Libraries reports on the effective response to this disturbing news.

ACRL has released the archive of media culture guru Henry Jenkins’ Springboard Webcast, in which I jaw briefly and also managed to liveblog earlier this month. Also, you can listen to a podcast interview between Jenkins and David Free, College & Research Libraries News editor.

In my opinion, Jenkins is the academic producing work with the most relevance to librarians, period. Way beyond academic librarians, too - he often focuses on youth cultures, which is reflected in his talk. Not only are his scholarship and various education/research initiatives breaking ground in media culture and emerging literacies, he recognizes and addresses the pivotal position of libraries in the process of educating people to be effective information consumers and media participants. If you haven’t read his white paper on participatory culture and teaching new literacies yet, you definitely should. Like, now.

A friend just sent me this libraries-in-movies Entertainment Weekly article in honor or National Library Week - 18 Sexy Trips to the Library Stacks, which includes, of course, the likes of Emilio Estevez pot-smoking in the AV room in Breakfast Club:

Only about three are actually sexy in any way. As far as real-life stacks shenanigans go, I’m sure what we don’t know could fill many, many volumes.