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

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

Alfabetización informacional Crítica: implicaciones para la práctica educativa

Este artículo utiliza la teoría de la alfabetización crítica para definir la alfabetización informacional. Defiende que para ser educadores, los bibliotecarios deben centrarse menos en la transferencia de la información y más en el desarrollo de la conciencia crítica en los estudiantes. Utilizando conceptos de la teoría de la alfabetización, el autor sugiere modos en que la práctica bibliotecaria cambiaría si los bibliotecarios se redefinieran a sí mismos como formadores en alfabetización

Intoduction to Copyright, Copyleft: Intellecutal Property in a Digital World

Copyright | Copyleft : Intellectual Property in a Digital World was a panel discussion at the University of Iowa Old Capitol Senate Chambers, September 26, 2013