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September 3 - December 2, 2020
find that there is power in libraries and steel in librarians.
Today’s new librarians are not threatened or made obsolete by the net. They are pushing the net forward and shaping the world around you—often without your notice.
Perhaps the biggest “why” question you can ask, and the one at the center of this book, is why do so many people see librarianship as antiquated, conservative, and less-than-inspiring? Why is it that while folks love the idea of libraries and librarians, they are quick to limit them to books or children, or simply think of them as historical holdovers? The answer is not that these people are wrong, but that they need to expect more. Too many libraries are about books. Too many librarians are reliving history and are stuck in a sort of professional conservatism that favors what they do over why
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Too many libraries are seeking to survive instead of innovate, and promote the love of reading over the empowerment of the populations they serve. I am not claiming that these librarians are the majority, but they are too numerous and their
Here is the key to a successful library: you. In a city or a Fortune 500 company, the library must shape itself around you and the goals of your community. If your community strives for greatness, the library should be great. If you are concerned about the future, or the economy, or the state of democratic discourse in this country, your library should be concerned as well. If you make these expectations known, if you arm yourself with what is possible and not what is, then the library and librarians can meet those expectations and goals. Of course, this is a two-way street. Great libraries
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The job of the library is to fulfill the needs of the community members, not simply to house materials.
Especially imp message for when they appear as warehouses
point is that if you think of a library as a bunch of books in a building (or worse, if your librarian thinks of it that way), you need to expect more—a whole lot more. Today’s great libraries are transforming from quiet buildings with a loud room or two to loud buildings with a quiet room. They are shifting from the domain of the librarians to the domain of the communities.
Stories are how we dream and how we test our ethical bounds. A good novel can reveal fundamental truth in ways no academic tome of philosophy ever can. What’s more, the ideas and inspirations for great action often come when we least expect it.
Power of the novel. Ignore Melvil Dewey on this!
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is not the role of the library to predetermine the outcomes of reading (or inventing, or movie making)—that edges too close to telling people what to read and why. Rather, it is the place of the library to be a platform for the community members to turn their love and passion into something for the good of the community and/or themselves.
Libraries “for the people” is an old way of looking at libraries. It sees the library as apart from the community, a service the community can use and pay for, but ultimately ignore or discard. The new view is the library “of the people.”
No, you should expect the facilitation of librarians and libraries to be proactive, collaborative, and transformational. Libraries and librarians facilitate knowledge creation, working to make you and your community smarter. They do this in four ways. Libraries: Provide access Provide training Provide a safe environment Build on your motivation to learn
Here is what knowledge is not: it is not a passive and calm accumulation of facts. It is not a database of articles, or, indeed, a building full of books. It is not measured in pounds or linear feet. Knowledge is not static, not dispassionate, and definitely not cold. Knowledge is something innately human and intimately tied to the passions of the individual. Knowledge is dynamic, ever changing, and alive. Knowledge drives us to question the world, to question each other, and to question the nature of reality. Knowledge is a force that drives economies, drives art, and should drive librarians
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Knowledgr
sage on the stage has been replaced by the guide on the side. Our libraries must go through this transition as well.
In common with constructivism
stage. A good school librarian is not a clerk or limited to maintaining a collection. He or she should be an active partner in learning. A good school librarian is a teacher who helps the subject area teachers improve. This librarian—the librarian you should expect in your schools—guides students through inquiry-driven learning free from the confines and limitations of too structured, too test-driven, too one-way “teaching.”
School librarian
Notice, however, that it was not the provision of tools that made Joyce’s library a library; it was access to knowledge and the community itself. The tools of that access will change (from books to eBooks, from telephones to Skype), but the goal of access does not.
Identifying and sparking motivation to learn is the most important form of facilitation. Without it, no one is prompted to learn, and all the programs, services, and activities of the library are for naught.
No, the trick is to show the child, or parent, or member that they are part of a learning process and discovering something new—even if it is only new to them.
Today we see the novel as a vital tool to inspire girls to achieve and boys to dream.
Seeing every community member as a consumer is expecting far too little of you. You are not a consumer or even a customer of a library.
Members of an organization don’t just use the organization and leave. They vote, set policy, and help. In essence, they are part of the organization. You need to expect to be part of your library. You need to be part of the conversation of what improves society and how the library can contribute to that goal.
There are three basic ways to become a librarian: you are hired as one, you are educated as one, or you grow into being one.
However, there are some rather substantial disadvantages to hiring non-professionals as librarians. They often lack specific skills in facilitation. These can be as basic as organizing library resources or as complex as seeing the bigger picture of the libraries’ role in the community and in the larger knowledge infrastructure. Many librarians by hire come in with a building-centric and book-centric view of librarianship. The key to being a successful librarian by hire is a dedication to and support for continuous learning and training.
degreed librarians should be expert in a curriculum that: “is concerned with recordable information and knowledge, and the services and technologies to facilitate their management and use. The curriculum of library and information studies encompasses information and knowledge creation, communication, identification, selection, acquisition, organization and description, storage and retrieval, preservation, analysis, interpretation, evaluation, synthesis, dissemination, and management.”[105]
Degreed librarians are ready to work, they have a deep knowledge of the field, and they have immediately useful skills. They are experts in not only the day-to-day functioning of a particular library, but have broadly applicable skills and a wide world-view to help communities in trying times. However, library schools can also imbue these graduates with a book-and-building mentality that may limit their perspectives.
Yet these schemas and systems have also been used to create a maze of specialties and divisions within the profession. The problem lies in the fact that these tools are based on a specific approach to science and thought called reductionism.
This is why librarians, hired or degreed, must become more flexible and holistic. Yes, they need to keep their values and mission in place, but the tools and organizational forms should be fluid.
