What I Learnt from My Reference Class (#605thurs)

To be honest, I was a subscriber of the "Reference is Dead" theory before I took the reference course this semester. Part of the reasons may be that I was not a person who would ask any question to any librarian in person in a library. Moreover, at least in China (and maybe partly in the US), the low usage of reference service in libraries is a fact.

It's very interesting that in last week's #libchat discussion on Twitter, a question "Is reference dead?" was raised up. I believe saying anything is dead is hard, because "being dead" has many possible meanings,  which must be defined before it makes any sense. For example, when we say "print books are dead", do we mean printed books are obsolete (which is certain not the case), or will be totally obsolete, or will be largely obsolete, or all the print books are or will be somehow destroyed literally? (And in this case, neither of the possible explanations may not be accurate enough, which is another story though.) And in the "reference is dead" case, too, there may be different definitions of this expression, from no one is using reference, to reference is not longer sustainable for libraries, to reference is not relevant to the members, etc.

But what was really interesting about the #libchat discussion last week is that, it showed how different libraries are or could be in everything. The reference services can be either very popular (so popular that marketing is not even necessary at all), or seasonal, or totally obsolete and then was cancelled. The diversity between different kinds of libraries and individual libraries, which comes from the combination of the different ways the communities and the librarians perceive the libraries and services the libraries offer, is another difficulty for such statements about something being dead.

What makes thing even harder to be predicted is the larger landscape, which I dare not dig deeper in this post. But just like Keri said, "Ready reference is pretty much dead", certainly, because of Google and other social media platforms. However, after taking this course, I do realize that there are some values in the library reference service, regardless of the larger landscape and the future of library reference.

Maybe the biggest value of library reference work that I failed to realize is its representation of the human side of the library. Technology can be too cold and intimidating to library members. In order to be a community center, the human side of the library cannot be more emphasized. After all, not everyone is becoming a Cyborg.

Still another value that is represented in the library reference work is librarians' information expertise. We have the abilities to find, evaluate and use information effectively, we have the vision to use these abilities to help other people and improve the world in a proper way. That's why we are the supermen/superwomen in the information world. That's something we can and should be proud of ourselves. That is our identity no matter we are doing what work in what environment, library reference being alive or dead, libraries being alive or dead. That's why Dave Lankes said "An empty room with a librarian is a library."

I really love the final assignment of this course to do a pathfinder of the topic we are interested in. I kind of regret that I chose a topic that is too academic, "historical anthropology", because it seems that non-academic topic may be more helpful and relevant to the world. As a library student, this assignment reminds me that being a librarian means combining the information skills with the interests I have and share all these products to everyone. Pathfinder is one and only one of the means to do that. But that, being a librarian, is awesome!

How Libraries Respond to Hurricane #Sandy or the #Election: A List from #IST511

This is a summary of the 511 class in November 13th. In the class, the different assignment groups talked about what they found for the assignment of "How Libraries respond to Hurricane Sandy or the Election". Below are the list talked about in the class:

Hurricane Sandy:

• Offering power, heat and Internet
• One awesome example is the Princeton Public Library in NJ. People uploaded videos to Youtube; or read this report from School Library Journal.
• Offering entertainment
• Little Free Library after Hurricane Sandy
• For example, this report on BoingBoing talks about a FLF in NJ.
• Collaborating with FEMA to offer assistance to the victims
• For example, in Queens Public Library or Cape May County Library
• Offering storytime
• A really awesome example is from Queens Public Library
• Donating food
• For example, NYPL donated food to New Yorkers in need after the hurricane
• Bookmobile
• An example comes from Brooklyn Public Library who offered bookmobiles to the affected area.

Election:

• Library card as voting ID
• For example, in Memphis, TN
• Having panels on voting issues
• An example is the Towson branch of the Baltimore County Public Library
• As a part of the "Searching for Democracy: A Public Conversation about the Constitution" Project in San Diego Public Library, local author Mark E. Smith talked about why we need to stop voting
• Pathfinder
• Tulsa City-County Library's pathfinder
• Political Cartoon
• Library of Congress' political cartoon exhibition
• Mock election
• One really serious example is the mock election conducted by The John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.

Besides all these awesome discussions, Dave asked a very interesting question: how can a library do beyond the building, in other word, being proactive? I don't think I can answer this question right now, but I do think it's important that librarians try to act more proactively rather than just respond.

Kudos to all the classmates in 511!

A conversation about LIS education and library practices

The relationship between LIS education and library practices (what the relationship is, what the relationship should be, et al.) is one of the most heavily discussed topics in this field.

Andy Woodworth's blog post "Ten Things You Won’t Find On Your LIS Class Syllabus" is the last article I have ever read and made me think a lot about this topic. You can say that I have been thinking about the gaps between LIS education and the every day practices until now. And this blog post is kind of a brief reflection on this topic. In his post, Andy offered a lot of his suggestions to LIS students about the aspects that LIS education fails to cover, for example, the "new vs. old librarians" meme, many of which are very interesting in the light of New Librarianship.

Several days ago, I posted this question on Facebook. My question was:

There is definitely a gap between library science education and every day practices. But what's that?

A number of replies were received, including:

• Business/financial training
• Management
• Actual hands on practice
• Conversations/collaboration with practitioners and marketing
• There is a disconnection with what the field actually needs right now
• Community engagement/public affairs

From this list, you can see the inputs from both library students and library practitioners. You can say that all these ideas are very important. I interviewed a manager in Bird Library several weeks ago. The lack of management training is one of the topics he mentioned during the interview. And I have been wondering about the business model (economics) of libraries, behind the huge dispute around eBooks and other topics. However,\ the most interesting reply I got was from Aaron Tay, a senior librarian from Singapore. He asked, was there really a gap?

I don't think there is a standard answer to this question. People from different backgrounds definitely have different opinions. His answer kind of reminded me of the blog post written by Prof. Lankes about how librarians should be positive about our expertise and future. In this sense, I feel so lucky that I am in SU. I can see people around me are trying the best to engage with libraries and library practitioners in the real world. Prof. Lankes himself has a close relationship with the practitioners. Moreover, 511, which is like the most realist class I have ever taken (or a "worldview" class as what Prof. Lankes calls it),  is also a very practical one, in which we need to finish all kind of tasks in groups, some of which are tied closely with the real world, like MOOC.

But I do think that, even in here, there may still be a gap between what we are doing as a student and what we are going to do as a librarian. Last week's 605 was one of the few cases where I have sensed the gap. Mallory and I gave this presentation about database for the reference class. I think this class is very practice-based; however, when I read the textbook, I cannot stop doubting that some of the information is out-of-date or maybe too idealist. So we tried to make this presentation practice-based rather than textbook-based. There were some differences we can observe, which I hope I can talk about in the future.

I have been a librarian. However, sadly, my past experiences cannot help me a lot in this issue. First, I worked in China. Second, the librarianship in China is not as professional as in the US.

I think this question will be one of the questions that will haunt me a lot in the future. However, hopefully, I can become a better librarian in the future after I try all the means to answer it.

On Oakland's people's library

I may have read this piece of news earlier this week, but when I read about the story that the people's library in Oakland was shut down by the police yesterday, I was both excited by the efforts of the volunteers who established the library and was kind of sad about the result.

According to the news, some activists in Oakland took over the building of an abandoned library in the morning of this Monday, which was one of the Carnegie's donations originally established in 1918 and has been closed since 1970s until this Monday.

After occupying the library, the volunteers coming from everywhere filled the library with donated books and erected banners to make it working again. But that's not all. They tried to get the community to engage! According to one of the occupiers' narration:

the organizers also put out a press release, went door-knocking in the neighborhood to inform and invite the community, and built a gardening program that invited youth to come and develop the blighted space.

And they even planned to host a poetry reading program according to the news! In short, they did it, and they did it like awesome librarians.

As I mentioned earlier, I have been reading Professor Lankes' Atlas of New Librarian recently. This event made me excited not only because it is a perfect example of how libraries can help to improve the society in a broader sense, but also because it illustrates what librarians are.

Definitely, librarians are not only those people who work in a library. On the one hand, if one is working in a library in a "wrong" manner, I don't think he is qualified to be a librarian (I am certainly not unbiased toward this issue). On the other hand, as Professor Lankes puts, people with an MLIS degree, no matter where he/she works, he/she can still do the job like a librarian. But here, this story may extend Professor Lankes' statement further. Because there is little information about these activists' professional backgrounds, it's safe to assume that little of them have a MLIS degree. So we can say, even if you do not work in a library nor have an MLIS degree, you can still be a librarian by doing things like this, to sharing information to promote knowledge creation in your community.

Sadly, according to the news, this library was closed by the police last night. But on the other hand, even this library being open for less than a week, we can still expect the little changes it posed to the local community and the society as a whole will turn out to be something great. Just like we can see the influences of Occupy Wall Street Library in this library by its name "people's library", we can expect this library inspire other people to make our society better in the future.

For more information, you can follow Twitter hashtag: #peopleslibrary