Tending the garden of learning: Lifelong learning as core library value

Lifelong Learning is enshrined in the professional practice of librarians through the American Library Association’s “Core Values of Librarianship” (2004). As a Core Value, the term is extremely vague. What do we mean by lifelong learning, and why does the term have such a powerful hold on the imaginations of educators? This paper works to understand the term by looking at one of the earliest conflicts in American educational history and philosophy: the choice between student-centered schools and employment-centered schools. During the first decades of the twentieth century, America was struggling to define its national core values. Educational theory was seen as a key way to articulate and pass on these values. One pedagogical approach involved developing schools to educate individuals to become thinking and informed citizens; another administrative approach involved creating schools as vocational institutions to educate individuals to become skilled employees. After a brief debate, employment-centered schools emerged as the clear winner. Since that time American schools have been viewed almost exclusively through a vocational lens. The implications of this decision for libraries, schools, and learning are explored.published or submitted for publicationOpe

Lessons from Forty Years as a Literacy Educator: An Information Literacy Narrative

This article summarises the author’s evolution as a writing instructor toward a career as a librarian teaching information literacy and finally as a scholar and researcher studying information literacy as an academic subject.  Changes in writing pedagogy are explored as they relate to changes in the author’s instructional practices and how they underlie an understanding of information literacy as a form of literacy practice closely related to writing.  Questions about the future of information literacy under current management philosophy are presented

Making a Third Space for Student Voices in Two Academic Libraries

When we think of voices in the library, we have tended to think of them as disruptive, something to control and manage for the sake of the total library environment. The stereotype of the shushing librarian pervades public perception, creating expectations about the kinds of spaces libraries want to create. Voices are not always disruptive, however. Indeed, developing an academic voice is one of the main challenges facing incoming university students, and libraries can play an important role in helping these students find their academic voices. Two initiatives at two different academic libraries are explored here: a Secrets Wall, where students are invited to write and share a secret during exam time while seeing, reading, commenting on the secrets of others; and a librarian and historian team-taught course called History on the Web, which brings together information literacy and the study of history in the digital age. This article examines both projects and considers how critical perspectives on voice and identity might guide our instructional practices, helping students to learn to write themselves into the university. Further, it describes how both the Secrets Wall and the History on the Web projects intentionally create a kind of “Third Space” designed specifically so students can enter it, negotiate with it, interrogate it, and eventually come to be part of it

Making a Third Space for Student Voices in Two Academic Libraries

When we think of voices in the library, we have tended to think of them as disruptive, something to control and manage for the sake of the total library environment. The stereotype of the shushing librarian pervades public perception, creating expectations about the kinds of spaces libraries want to create. Voices are not always disruptive, however. Indeed, developing an academic voice is one of the main challenges facing incoming university students, and libraries can play an important role in helping these students find their academic voices. Two initiatives at two different academic libraries are explored here: a Secrets Wall, where students are invited to write and share a secret during exam time while seeing, reading, commenting on the secrets of others; and a librarian and historian team-taught course called History on the Web, which brings together information literacy and the study of history in the digital age. This article examines both projects and considers how critical perspectives on voice and identity might guide our instructional practices, helping students to learn to write themselves into the university. Further, it describes how both the Secrets Wall and the History on the Web projects intentionally create a kind of “Third Space” designed specifically so students can enter it, negotiate with it, interrogate it, and eventually come to be part of it

Making a Third Space for Student Voices in Two Academic Libraries

The article examines initiatives including an activity Secrets Wall in which students secretly write secret during exam times and and History on the Web, librarian and historian team-taught course. Topics discussed include creation of third space for student voices, secrets wall offered at the University of Iowa Main Library to help students in final exam and secret wall as a third space for students to offer outlet for authentic self-expression and dialogic information

A curricular model in a “social justice and inclusion advocacy” doctoral concentration: Global implications for LIS

The paper presentation introduces a doctoral curricular model of social justice scholarship in library and information science (LIS). The case-study highlights global implications of a “Social Justice and Inclusion Advocacy” concentration in the communication-and-information college-wide doctoral program in the School of Library and Information Studies at the University of Alabama. Actualities and potentialities of this unique progressive collaboration are elaborated to mobilize LIS worldwide in expanding its traditional definition, scope, representation, and relevance in the 21st century. It represents global possibilities of influencing newly emerging LIS educators, practitioners, administrators, and others to integrate a spirit/ethics of social justice in their work/practice/scholarship

Poetry and the “Voice” of LIS Educators: Transforming the Fabric of Lives and More

Lost in the scope and study of library and information science (LIS) education within our hegemonic immersion in contemporary neoliberal values, structures, and systems, we unfortunately have marginally examined the power of poetry in knowledge-action discourse that shapes our directions as well as inspires those of others. An opportunity lost for the poets among us, in providing a window towards better understanding of interconnections in our life experiences and professional activities in and beyond the academy, be it in our research, teaching, service, administrative or creative activities of engagement and empowerment. This panel serves to bridge the gaps in its glimpse of how poetry can actualize its potential to enable transformations and make a difference in the fabric of our lives. Three library and information science educators (LIS) draw on their poetry and that of others to illustrate its role in their personal and professional streams of life journeys. The panel explores the power of poetry as “voice” in transforming their lives and shaping their motivations, directions, choices, and actions at intertwined personal and professional levels of intersection. The interactive panel provides an opportunity to the audience to discuss the use of poetry in its transformational potential within and beyond the academy. The panel draws on the theoretical construct of “voice” as an instrument of self-consciousness, narrative development, storytelling, and discourse analysis. The three presentations include: 1. Internal Resistances and the Power of the Local (Elmborg) 2. The Personal is Poetical (Weddle) 3. “If life gives you mangoes, make banana shake”: Poetry to Enable, Empower, and Transform (Mehra

Making a Third Space for Student Voices in Two Academic Libraries

When we think of voices in the library, we have tended to think of them as disruptive, something to control and manage for the sake of the total library environment. The stereotype of the shushing librarian pervades public perception, creating expectations about the kinds of spaces libraries want to create. Voices are not always disruptive, however. Indeed, developing an academic voice is one of the main challenges facing incoming university students, and libraries can play an important role in helping these students find their academic voices. Two initiatives at two different academic libraries are explored here: a Secrets Wall, where students are invited to write and share a secret during exam time while seeing, reading, commenting on the secrets of others; and a librarian and historian team-taught course called History on the Web, which brings together information literacy and the study of history in the digital age. This article examines both projects and considers how critical perspectives on voice and identity might guide our instructional practices, helping students to learn to write themselves into the university. Further, it describes how both the Secrets Wall and the History on the Web projects intentionally create a kind of “Third Space” designed specifically so students can enter negotiate with it, interrogate it, and eventually come to be part of it

The Right Place at the Right Time: Creative Spaces in Libraries

Purpose This essay explores the recent trend in libraries: that of the establishment of spaces specifically set aside for creative work. The rise of these dedicated creative spaces is owed to a confluence of factors that happen to be finding their expression together in recent years. This essay examines the history of these spaces and explores the factors that gave rise to them and will fuel them moving forward. Design/Methodology/Approach A viewpoint piece, this essay combines historical research and historical/comparative analyses to examine the ways by which libraries have supported creative work in the past and how they may continue to do so into the 21st century. Findings The key threads brought together include a societal recognition of the value of creativity and related skills and attributes; the philosophies, values, and missions of libraries in both their longstanding forms and in recent evolutions; the rise of participatory culture as a result of inexpensive technologies; improved means to build community and share results of efforts; and library experience and historical practice in matters related to creativity. The chapter concludes with advice for those interested in the establishment of such spaces, grounding those reflections in the author’s experiences in developing a new creative space at Virginia Commonwealth University. Originality/value While a number of pieces have been written that discuss the practicalities of developing certain kinds of creative spaces, very little has been written that situates these spaces in larger social and library professional contexts; this essay begins to fill that gap

A critical praxis in the information literacy education classroom using the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education

The University of the Western Cape Library uses the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education to introduce an alternative, nuanced approach to information literacy training by transforming librarians’ teaching praxis. The Framework presents a new perspective on teaching and learning and is built around six frames, each consisting of a threshold concept which is central to information literacy. To this end, the Library coordinated the Information Literacy Programme for the University’s Library and Information Science Department. By using a qualitative approach, this case study describes the integration of the Framework in the Information Literacy Education module to teach prospective librarians to internalise the core concepts of the Framework. The paper discusses how the Framework was operationalised to enhance students’ critical thinking through the application of formative and summative assessments and a number of student artifacts