linked to the lodge

For my Virtual Symposium, I explored three of the most important impact points for me from this course, and shared how this semester culminated in my favorite project, the Inspiration Report/Action Brief.

Link to Video Transcript. 

In Your Room exhibit sample:

In our Infinite Learning module, I was really impacted by both “library as classroom” and “learning everywhere.” On the one hand, I provide instruction within a library, so the classroom angle appeals to me. But on the other hand, within infinite learning, the piece about life literacies really resonated with me. I left home very young and the information I needed to navigate the real world was not provided to me in public school. Financial literacy, for instance. Planning a full week of meals with limited waste. Getting stains out of upholstery. Making informed life decisions about college, housing, relationships, you name it. Maybe this experience is what drew me to teaching in the first place. I’d always wondered how my peers seemed to just know how to do things I’d spent years trying to figure out. And now on the other side of those years, I wonder about how to best connect others to those skills and literacies. 

The Digital Promise article “The Library as a Gateway to 21st Century Skills” outlines the kind of programming that can be helpful for bridging the gap between people and relevant skill sets. “Basic digital skills are not just something to be done in addition to teaching academic skills,” says CPL Deputy Commissioner Saenz. “They are the gateway to all kinds of learning” (2016). I love this attitude because it gets at the core of the learning experience for many people, myself included– we don’t know what we don’t know. On my own in my late teens, half the battle was figuring out what I didn’t know– I couldn’t articulate the questions I needed answered, and most of the time had no idea where to direct them. 

Today, as a brand new homeowner, I feel the same kind of trepidation. I hope I’m asking all the right questions, but it’s hard to tell. This is where programs like Howard County Library’s tool checkout come into play. Dr. Stephens discusses the importance of “unexpected collections”  like these. Access to tools I might not even know I need epitomizes the Infinite Learning model. 

As I scrolled through the other options on the Howard County Library homepage, I discovered they also check out toys, which was one of my favorite discoveries in this module. We don’t often think of play as a need and toys as tools used to meet that need. But the option to access toys for free could change the daily experience of both the child and parent. Play itself is educational, and also fits nicely into the topic of Infinite Learning. 

Lastly, the resources I read about in this module brought to mind Buy Nothing groups. For anyone not familiar, I urge you to check out this very cool grassroots movement in which you can borrow items from neighbors and volunteer items of your own. I used my local Buy Nothing 

Facebook group when I needed tire chains for a day, a weedeater, a certain wrench, and more. In the absence of the kind of services Howard County Library provides, Buy Nothing is a nice safety net. But I can’t help but wonder what kind of Infinite Learning options could open if these groups collided with my local library. 

 

References
Benson, J. (2018, July 6). 5 Things You Didn’t Know About Howard County Libraries. Howard County Dads. https://howardcountydads.com/2018/07/06/didnt-know-hoco-libraries/

Stephens, M. Hyperlinked library learning everywhere. (2024). Panopto. https://sjsu-ischool.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=012f4ddc-7161-407c-b277-af34011b768c

The library as a gateway to 21st century skills. (2023, April 10). Digital Promise. https://digitalpromise.org/2016/01/28/chicago-public-library-the-library-as-a-gateway-to-21st-century-skills/

Storytelling was a huge part of my early childhood. Born to a preschool teacher mom and poetry-obsessed grandmother, one might say I hit the story jackpot. When we weren’t reading or telling, we played the back episodes of Prairie Home Companion on cassette tapes checked out from our library. Some years after I left home, NPR began airing the Moth Radio Hour, and I often found myself parked and waiting for a story to finish before getting out of my car and moving on with my day. 

I was especially moved by our module on the Power of Stories. I’ve learned in the past about the Human Library but was excited to see Aarne-Skidmore’s 2021 follow-up in our module reading list. Tracking both the short and long term impact of the Human Library reveals that it’s not just a fun program. Aarne-Skidmore writes, “It was frequently mentioned that being faced with another human being inspired [participants] to reflect on their own biases and resulted in an increased sensitivity towards the diversity that exists beyond physical appearance” (2021). 

I’m seeing a connection between this mode of gathering information from HL participants and Dr. Stephens’ Narrative Inquiry which shuns the standard survey structure in favor of a more open-ended conversation. In the Human Library, “conversations have no prescribed direction and develop organically, making each loan period unique” (Wentz, 2013). Similarly, Stephens describes Narrative Inquiry as a “flexible interview format to collect information about unique, personal experiences… NI encourages a full spectrum of unique responses and brings to life the story of individuals” (2020). 

As a quiet, and rather bookish person in LIS, I sometimes feel the need to “defend” libraries as a place that is more than just a story warehouse. “It’s not just books– it’s research! It’s preservation! It’s community! It’s connection! It’s… it’s… it’s–” so many things. But in reflecting on this module, I’ve realized that it’s all stories. As Dr. Stephens writes, “Libraries have always been about access to the stories of the world, collected, cataloged, and placed on a shelf waiting to be discovered” (2019).  

 

References
Aarne-Skidmore, A. (2021). New study on the impact of the human library. Human Library. https://humanlibrary.org/new-study-on-the-impact-of-the-human-library/

Stephens, M. (2019). Wholehearted librarianship: Finding Hope, Inspiration, and Balance. ALA Editions.

Stephens, M. (2020, April 9). Office hours: Narrative inquiry – Tame the web. https://tametheweb.com/2020/04/09/office-hours-narrative-inquiry/

Wentz, E. (2013, May 29). The Human Library: Sharing the Community with Itself – Public Libraries Online. Public Libraries Online – A Publication of the Public Library Association. https://publiclibrariesonline.org/2013/04/human_librar/

This Director’s Report covers the topic of DCPL’s Memory Lab and how the Memory Lab Model is being used in a variety of community archive spaces even outside of the Memory Lab Network. The report specifically covers the Queens Memory Project which is a collaboration between Queens College and Queens Public Library in an effort to record local history as told by the people who lived it.

My focus was drawn to this example because my initiative also involves an academic library collaborating with local orgs. I’m proposing that College of the Sequoias (COS) create a community archive space which would serve both on and off campus community members. COS has long served the larger community by inviting local residents to attend events on campus, and it’s become part of the COS brand.

I’m also drawn to creating an archival community space because this area is rural and has a high need for technology literacy instruction. This archival space would allow residents to digitize their own aging media formats (VHS, photographs, cassettes, etc.) while learning a new valuable skill. It’s an added bonus that the area also has a rich historic legacy which has only recently gained some publicity. Ideally, the space would serve the needs of both private parties and public entities (such as the Visalia Heritage Foundation) by digitizing both private and public histories.

View my Director’s Report here.

For this project, I wanted to focus on the trend of immersive experiences, and find a way to incorporate participatory service. Most immersive experience focus on consumption of some specific content. In my report, I mention my own experience at the Vincent van Gogh immersive exhibit as an inspiration for this initiative. While I loved visiting the exhibit and was deeply moved by the experience, it would not qualify as a participatory service. I was also drawing on our coursework around the power of stories and wanted to experiment with bringing community stories to the fore of an immersive exhibit.

The In Your Room exhibit is a single room immersive experience, hosted by the library, which tells the stories of anonymous community members. I created this initiative with my local community college library in mind, but it’s applicable to any space which serves a small community. 

Students and staff are invited to respond to the prompt “What’s your story?” in 20 words or less. Stories are screened by library staff, and given to the IYR team. This is a student-led team, organized by the school’s visual and performing arts department. The team integrates the text of stories into moving, ambient images, accompanied by similarly ambient music. The final display is projected onto all four exhibit walls.

Specific details are outlined in my report HERE. 

I also created a two-minute sample projection of anonymous stories submitted by my own acquaintances which can be viewed HERE.

 

 

My attention was drawn immediately to our readings on ChatGPT for a number of reasons. In addition to academic librarianship, my background is also in classroom teaching, and I’m interested in ChatGPT for the role it will play in library instruction of the future. I’ve taught at the adult level, but more recently I was a high school English teacher at an academy where “ChatGPT” was a bad word. And not without good reason. Teachers, myself included, were floundering to protect the academic integrity of our students, while also instilling a sense of responsibility and pride in their own original work– As Moriarty puts it, “Writing makes you smarter. Writing makes you unique. ChatGPT makes you sound like everybody else. Which, I guess, makes you forgettable” (2023). 

A fellow teacher sheepishly suggested that perhaps we could learn more about ChatGPT and its possible uses in a way that might actually help rather than hurt the classroom, but the idea was never taken seriously. So much fear-mongering exists within education when it comes to new technology, but this was my first time experiencing it on the teaching end. Moriarty writes that “cheating” or the compromise of academic integrity will quickly be addressed by ChatGPT detectors, and that “students asking ChatGPT to do their homework for them” will quickly become a moot point. As an academic librarian whose instruction often revolves around plagiarism, I do sincerely hope that will be true. But for the duration of my employment at the academy, it wasn’t. Many kids slipped through the cracks, and without administrative support, teachers were at a loss.

Still, I love Moriarty’s optimism for the future. I loved his idea about using ChatGPT as a brainstorming tool, offering suggestions and writing prompts to spark a student’s original thoughts. I am thinking about the potential uses of ChatGPT for research in the library. I also loved Fisher and Head’s comparison of ChatGPT to the early days of Wikipedia, noting that Wikipedia is now recognized as an appropriate “tertiary source”– sounds a lot like Moriarty’s idea (2023).

Others, like Tufekci, see ChatGPT as an opportunity to expand the flipped classroom: 

“In flipped classrooms, students wouldn’t use ChatGPT to conjure up a whole essay. Instead, they’d use it as a tool to generate critically examined building blocks of essays. It would be similar to how students in advanced math classes are allowed to use calculators to solve complex equations without replicating tedious, previously mastered steps” (2022). 

I am imagining how this could also be true in a research setting, specifically in aiding students with the creation of their research question, queries, theses, as more. In the library, I see huge potential for ChatGPT (and future tools that like it) to help shape the general direction of research rather than becoming the enemy of research altogether. Overall, this was a fascinating and eye opening module and topic for me. 

Edit:

Lastly, I want to include something else that stood out to me in this module (that I will take with me into future academic library settings). The way the NMC Horizon Report reframes challenges impeding technology adoption in academic and research libraries is incredibly helpful and sheds light on the “problem” of ChatGPT in the classroom. In my limited experience, I would say this issue falls somewhere between solvable and difficult. To borrow language from the chart within our module, this is a challenge which we understand and adopting this technology would improve digital literacy, however solutions do seem elusive on a larger scale. Educators are much more focused on the banning of this technology in order to cling to the status quo. Meanwhile, a paradigm shift towards inclusion could result in successful adoption and implementation of ChatGPT as a powerful learning tool in the classroom.

References

Fister, J. & Head, B.  (2023, May 4). ChatGPT is reshaping information infrastructures (opinion). Inside Higher Ed | Higher Education News, Events and Jobs. https://www.insidehighered.com/opinion/views/2023/05/04/getting-grip-chatgpt

Halprin Jackson, J., & Moriarty, T. (2023, May 4). Chatting with ChatGPT: Deep Dive in Five with Tom Moriarty | SJSU NewsCenter. https://blogs.sjsu.edu/newsroom/2023/chatting-with-chat-gpt-deep-dive-in-five-with-tom-moriarty/

Tufekci, Z. (2026, December 15). What would Plato say about ChatGPT? New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/15/opinion/chatgpt-education-ai-technology.html

 

Our module on Hyperlinked Environments made me think about the role of academic libraries in connecting students, not only with resources but with each other. I had too much to say for a blog post, and opted for a long-form video instead. References at bottom of page.

 

References

Ahari, J. (2023, November 7). Suicide Prevention in the Library – Ithaka S+R. Ithaka S+R. https://sr.ithaka.org/blog/suicide-prevention-in-the-library/

Edwards, M. (2021, September 24). New suicide prevention resource collection. The Daily American. https://www.dailyamerican.com/story/lifestyle/2021/09/24/meyersdale-public-library-hosts-suicide-prevention-collection/5802163001/

Laerkes, J. G. (2016, March 29). The four spaces of the public library. IFLA Public Libraries Section Blog. https://blogs.ifla.org/public-libraries/2016/03/29/the-four-spaces-of-the-public-library/

Matthews, B. (2017). Cultivating Complexity: How I stopped driving the innovation train and started planting seeds in the community garden. Virginia Tech. https://vtechworks.lib.vt.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/4c33041c-b2bc-4215-9231-aedaf0dcd8e3/content

Spice, L. (2019, September 6). Carroll University launches food share program. Carroll University. https://www.carrollu.edu/articles/alumni/2019/09/carroll-launches-food-share-program-for-students

Stephens, M. (2016b). The heart of librarianship: attentive, positive, and purposeful change. https://www.amazon.com/Heart-Librarianship-Attentive-Positive-Purposeful-ebook/dp/B01L2WLCK6

Suicide by Age – Suicide Prevention Resource Center. (n.d.). https://sprc.org/about-suicide/scope-of-the-problem/suicide-by-age/

In this module on Hyperlinked Communities, I took an interest in the ways different organizations serve their communities across the globe. One such example is the concept of “libraries as nodes in a community network” (Williams, 2021).  This prompted me to take a deep dive into the work of Internet Society.

Internet Society’s Zimbabwe chapter can teach us all a thing or two about true connectivity. Hailu describes how Murambinda Works, a Buhera internet cafe launched in 2002, has become a vibrant staple in community connectivity by offering tech literacy resources which transform community members from information consumers to instructors themselves– “Murambinda Works introduced a training on computer literacy aiming at building the capacity of teachers in ICT. The training was given across the entire district of Buhera covering close to 218 primary and secondary schools” (2018). 

What are the implications for library service everywhere? As a librarian residing in the United States, I see people become jaded about what’s possible in the arena of service. And I don’t just mean the general public’s perception of the library. Even as LIS professionals, it’s easy to feel trapped by the kind of status quo attitudes maintained by administrative policy. We can easily lose sight of what might be possible for us and for our communities. 

Further exacerbating the issue is the gatekeeper mentality which proliferates our field, reinforcing concepts of hierarchy which the hyperlinked library seeks to upend. I keep returning to the same questions. If we see libraries as beacons in darkness, can we then give a torch to our users to carry into the night? It’s true that even my rural local library in central California’s farmland offers tech courses. But what would it be like to empower our patrons? How can library service go beyond the information need and make our patrons nodes of connectivity themselves? I don’t have any cut and dry answers to my own questions, but I do know that such a path for libraries can exist, forged by programs like the Murambinda Works. 

 

References

Hailu, B. (2021, March 25). Murambinda Works Community Engagement Workshop in Buhera: Meeting Challenges with Opportunity – Internet Society. Internet Society. https://www.internetsociety.org/blog/2018/12/murambinda-works-community-engagement-workshop/

Williams, A., & Muller, C. (2022, November 29). Libraries are bridging the digital divide – internet society. Internet Society. https://www.internetsociety.org/blog/2021/03/libraries-are-bridging-the-digital-divide/

“So what will you do when libraries become obsolete in the next few years?” 

Last year, I was minding my business in the corner of a Christmas party when a family friend I’d just met posed this question. For a moment, I was too stunned to answer, and when I came to my senses, the only counterpoint I could manage was, “Have you been to a library recently?” 

So much of the way we value libraries depends on our mutual agreement upon what libraries are for. As Dr. Stephens mentioned in a previous lecture, public conceptions about libraries are frequently reduced to “book warehouses,” which would make us, as information professionals, wardens of these warehouses. I think we’ve likely all laughed at pop culture portrayals of librarians at some point or another, and it’s fun to poke fun! But librarianship is about so much more than guarding books, gatekeeping information and, as Dr. Stephens describes, worrying about what might go wrong in the library instead of thinking about what could go right. 

@lcplibrary

…and what a GOOD job you do at “Book!” #barbie #barbiemovie #library #fyplibrary #librariesoftiktok

♬ original sound – RA10

So, what could go right, exactly? Alongside this question are other complementary ones posed by Steve Dennings– “How can we delight our users and customers?”– and Dr. Stephens – “What can you do to encourage the heart of your library users?” (Dennings, 2015; Stephens, 2016). 

The answer to all of these questions may very well be connection, not just to resources but to each other. 

To explore these questions outside of our class, I watched a 2024 webinar hosted by Brooke Doyle and Jennifer Peterson of OCLC, titled “Libraries Foster Social Connection: Responding to the Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation.” This webinar focused on the Surgeon General and World Health Organization’s recent cautionary statements about the adverse health effects of social isolation and loneliness. Doyle and Peterson posit that libraries have a unique opportunity to become community centers supporting health and wellbeing, aligning with the Surgeon General’s Advisory, “National Strategy to Advance Social Connection.”

“Why libraries?” Doyle asks, mid-presentation. Her answer: “Because libraries foster social cohesion” by attracting and serving people from all walks of life. The webinar explores several examples of “socially cohesive” library programming beyond just book clubs, including yoga, new parent groups, coffee & conversation, grief cafe, whole family literacy, intergenerational technology assistance programs, animal-based interventions, and more. The key, Doyle says, is to try different strategies for connection to learn what best serves your community.   

When libraries are embedded in their community, they meet needs that transcend the “book warehouse” trope. Centers for social cohesion, for wellness, for connection will never become obsolete.

References

Denning, S. (2015, May 1). Do we need libraries? Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2015/04/28/do-we-need-libraries/?utm_campaign=ForbesTech&utm_source=TWITTER&utm_medium=social&utm_channel=Technology&linkId=13831539

Doyle, B., & Peterson, J. (2024, January). Libraries foster social connection: responding to the epidemic of loneliness and isolation [Video]. WebJunction. https://learn.webjunction.org/mod/page/view.php?id=7928

Stephens, M. (2016). The heart of librarianship: attentive, positive, and purposeful change. ALA Editions.

Hi everyone, my name is Bethany. I chose this course because I loved learning about information communities with Dr. Stephens at the start of my program. I found the culture of that course to be inspiring, and wanted to learn more about connectivity both within the library and between the library and various communities it serves. I’m excited to spend time learning more about the role of emerging technology in building these connections, and as Dr. Stephens quoted in the opening lecture, “the key to jobs in the future is not college, but compassion.” I’m looking to work in academic libraries, specifically at the community college level because I enjoy having a foot in both the community and academic worlds. I’ve previously worked in juvenile justice libraries with incarcerated youth, and at the NewSchool of Architecture and Design library in San Diego. I’m looking forward to exploring how the hyperlinked library can create opportunities for connectivity among students and the community. I love multimedia collage as a hobby, so below is a small something I pieced together in response to this week’s reading and lecture.

 

(WordPress does not love YouTube Shorts).