It was nice to go over the concepts from the readings in class and be able to gain perspective on my own thoughts through what others had to say. I feel that I still have a ways to go in grasping the possible incarnations of different types of libraries (public, academic) and the services that can be offered toward education, information access, and foundation of community.
It seems that those ALA core competencies might be considered an ideal, aspirational blueprint for those graduating from accredited schools, not so much the CV sheet employers should expect when hiring new grads. Some sections can only be fully realized after an extended period of practice, and others may be easily avoidable for students who simply have no interest; my discussion groupmates and I agreed that, while we can understand the importance, none of us felt particularly enthusiastic about fundraising. Perhaps we'll be lucky enough to have employees and coworkers willing and capable of covering those duties in our future jobs...
We spent a good deal of time talking about ways of being more active in providing information and knowledge to the library's community. More and more, the librarian seems to be moving from The Original Search Engine toward the educator general; instead of teaching a room full of kids around the same age and (supposedly) education level across all subjects, librarians have single and groups of patrons with knowledge and skill levels across a broad spectrum needing instruction on, yes, information retrieval, but also potentially any subject. Kristen told us about the library that held a butchering demonstration, and there seems to be a movement, at least locally, to incorporate Maker Space into libraries. After visiting the All Hands Active maker space on Saturday for SI Service Day, I can see how well social learning and community tools fit in with the community and continued learning aspects of the library. Not that public librarians should expect to be well-versed in 3D printing, but it's a wonderful example of dedication to learning beyond school at any level.
All of this looks amazing for public and school libraries, but I'm not sure I can envision such programs being prevalent in academic libraries. But is this even necessary? I can see their future in electronic information systems and continued physical information, but how much will these institutions' service structures be changing in the foreseeable future?
I believe that librarians' instructional role is necessary in academic library...One interesting example is, my husband never used most of library services in University of Michigan until I talked about them with him. Although he has been here for more than 5 years. I encouraged him to attend some workshops and then he found our libraries are really awesome.
ReplyDeleteHard to say what the future of academic libraries vs. public and elementary school libraries will be. I tend to agree that there seems to be a pretty solid distinction between the two groups when discussing services offered and innovation. Academic libraries do seem the least (or last, maybe) likely to change. However, in a four year university setting that is not heavy on research I could see where exploring alternate teaching methods and adding new materials that promote hands on use could be useful for those soon to be entering the professional work force. The 3-D printing workshop brings to mind a vision of a ‘library lab’ or ‘labrary’, complete with various technologies that people may not be exposed to unless they take a course that includes it. With this approach I suppose then the line between learning in the classroom and learning in the library becomes blurred.
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