As I read through the ALA's Core Competencies, I found myself thinking that the whole thing seems like a tall order. Of course, I was able to come up with ideas and knowledge I have studied or at least touched on in my courses for the eight groupings, and I thought of SI courses that I have taken or read about as I read through the individual competencies. But what, I think, trips me up is the sort of "comprehensive vagueness" which, while I understand as necessary for the brevity and lasting validity of the document, causes me to quickly lose my mental grasp of what abilities I should expect myself and others to amass before graduation.
Something I found interesting; I am aware that the MSI program as a whole is ALA accredited, which means that I could have continued my former trajectory toward a concentration in human-computer interaction and been able to fulfill a job posting's ALA-accredited program graduation requirement despite being decidedly lacking in many of the competencies listed.
The textbook readings were helpful in my discovery of the differences in archives versus libraries: the emphasis on direct human interaction and guidance. Two of my courses last semester were focused on human behavior, but these were design courses, so it was interesting to see what concepts were brought up again and what aspects of active education I could see building upon some of the more basic principles of perception and performance. I specifically recall learning about the decision-making patterns of experts in a reading for my cognate course, Cognitive Ergonomics, in the context of designing systems that provide these leaders with the appropriate information to make those decisions both soundly and quickly. From an education perspective, we can use our knowledge of experts' mental organization and action patterns in order to facilitate an appropriate information base and structure in the minds of future experts; building internal instead of external thought and decision support.
Reflecting on the need for education reform from broad-but-shallow subject coverage to more directed structuring of a basis for recognizing and understanding recurring, influential concepts is a good way to consider useful ways to guide users and patrons through information outside of schools, or perhaps to organize displays or materials. The thought is daunting, at the moment, from my viewpoint as a new libraries convert, but I am excited to see what direction we will take from here.
I like your idea to take what we read about education reform and apply it to how we organize and display our materials in the library. It somehow reminded me of a display concept called "clustering," which has become fairly popular with the rise of Common Core. Basically, it involves making clusters of 2-4 materials that offer a broad range of perspectives about a particular topic. I'm wondering, though, if this qualifies as "broad-but-shallow" subject coverage or not, or what displays that support more in-depth study might look like.
ReplyDeleteI too have thought about the fact that, upon graduation, all SI students will have met the educational requirements for becoming a professional librarian. Since this group includes me, I thought taking one course that covers a host of LIS material like SI643 would be an appropriate and useful part of my education. Reading the ALA Competencies only strengthened this belief. For me it was a great starting point for the course to become grounded in what the big picture goals of LIS are. Even though they are somewhat vague, they kind of got me excited for libraries, information, helping people, etc..
ReplyDelete