Valibrarian

Today is Digital Learning Day and I am whirling through tecnology tools and formats (alongside physical resources) in my school library as I seek best practices for teaching digital literacy in what has become “participatory culture”.

My 4th graders are studying poetry and I am teaching them to share through our library blog. I want them to understand the importance of striving for meaningful content, not just posting and tweeting nonstop. Digital citizenship requires us to be responsible for both our consumption and production of information. I sometimes think that because we are so excited about all the cool “Web 2.0″ applications that allow us to produce and share online, we forget to emphasize revision and reflection.

Buried deep beneath the clutter, four or five hyperlinked clicks away, is there some really important meaningful content of high quality or aesthetic appeal? For years, I have empasized process over product in education because all learning, like life, is a process. Now, in the digital age (as content floods my screens nonstop), I am realizing there has to be balance between process and product. At some point, the author or the artist must say “here is what I have done.” The goal is to say something worthwhile.

A colleague sent an email expressing concern over posts criticizing librarians for “still being involved in Second Life“.

I replied by email and she suggested I share.

I wrote:

“The ability to “fly” in virtual worlds? That’s nothing! A generation of video gamers now considers gaming a literary genre (and many are cinematic and well-researched). Virtual worlds are not video games- but this evolution of literacy changes everything. The argument that the majority of mainstream culture uses Facebook is ridiculous. The majority of mainstream culture also values convenience over quality, triviality over authority or accuracy, and self-absorbed “packaging” of our personal lives over anything meaningful.

This conversation is not about Second Life, but about virtual worlds….and they are not going away. My physical library is only half of what I do. We all have both physical and virtual lives (after the digital revolution and the toppling of the information hierarchy). The question is whether to spend my virtual life in a flat, narcissistic, space where popular culture and cute photos are streamed nonstop or seek out interesting, intelligent people on a global scale who can help me move toward a better future for this post-physical world. You all understand that…..and that is enough for me.”

Yes, I also read Roy Tennant’s blogpost when ALA closed an island in Second Life. I did not reply, mainly out of respect for this esteemed colleague. I have credited Roy Tennant as the first library professional that I heard state that in our information world today, “convenience trumps quality”. His statement was a turning point for me. I began to see a different kind of information-seeking behavior in my physical library. I began to actively explore digital literacy and changing formats.

I understand that SL is not the “be all end all” of education or libraries. Virtual worlds are just one piece of information literacy. I am humbled by the amazing colleagues I have worked with in virtual worlds and I am proud of the huge amount of effort it took to earn a PhD on the topic (not to boast because I understand I am just one small person contributing one tiny piece of the research on the future of information literacy). I have worked very hard to understand how to separate my “personal” perspective from my professional contribution to my field. My experience includes organizing five virtual world exhibits, numerous presentations, discussions, learning machinima, and networking on a global scale. I could not have accomplished any of those experiences in my physical library- even through using webinars and other distance learning tools (of which I am familiar). Second Life is only one company, which happened to provide a great array of tools for early adopters of virtual worlds. Having explored many other virtual worlds, for many other purposes (business, military, medicine, and so on), I certainly am not attached to one in particular. Slamming Second Life is not offensive to me, but putting down librarians?! Whew…don’t get me started.

For more information on my dissertation topic, I will be presenting an overview on Nov. 18th in Second Life. For information on other virtual worlds, contact me. Meanwhile, I return to my awesome physical library where I struggle to teach critical inquiry to students who want to play apps and interact on mobile devices.

On the other side of the digital revolution, as we clean up the rubble left from the toppled hierarchy of information, we stand and gaze in awe at where we now live- survivors of some kind of information disaster that we haven’t quite yet realized.  Are we in denial?  Is it similar to awakening after a natural disaster?

The old rules no longer apply.  Interconnectivity was once a quest that we never could achieve.  Now, Joe Grobelny suggests it may be quite the opposite.

Reading his post made me think about how rare it is to give someone my undivided attention.  We message, tweet, post, and cruise our devices simultaneously while communicating with each other.  As physical things become less important than virtuality, I have an idea that giving someone our true focus- completely- may soon be as valuable as gold.

A well-respected colleague recently requested help writing a job decription for a new librarian role: Publisher of Community.  I couldn’t help but think about content creation and user-generated content.  I have been creating content for my school library for 20 years, through producing a weekly edited news show called “EETV” for Ethridge Elementary TV.  The show has evolved from old VHS format to DVD and mp4 (among other file types). So, content creation has been a part of librarianship for decades.  However, user-generated content shared online has been growing like crazy since Youtube launched.

The core values of librarianship promote acquisition of the best content available and much of the user-generated content we find online today hardly qualifies as even watchable.

Our culture is becoming, we all know, a participatory one.  The library stacks are no longer perceived as top dog in information.  What Melvil Dewey called “man’s heroic deeds” in the literature of the 800 section has been pushed back behind Pinterest and Instagram.

I enjoyed the blogpost from Michael Stephens contemplating new roles for librarians. The online name I chose for myself, Valibrarian, is out-dated but (I hope) remains quaint.  We do need new titles that emphasize services we provide with better nomenclature!  One of my favorite metaphors for a library is that of a garden. One of Ranganathan’s 5 laws for library science stated that “a library is a growing organism”. I am remindeed of how the gardener plants and weeds.  So, I thought about the word horticulturist or agriculturist.

Here’s a nomination for a librarian job title:  infoculturist.  Whaddaya think?  Any more ideas?

ROI (an economics term)

I find very little Return on Investment with the time spent on Facebook.  I have never accomplished much scrolling through the contributions.

Now Pinterest and Instagram are bidding for the attention of those of us uploading photos. Digital archiving is tricky.  Flickr was one of the first to provide a space for our photos. But, I still forget sometimes where I have placed my digital content.  Is it on Flickr, my phone, my flashdrive, my hardrive, my laptop, or ….(add digital device here)?

Maybe we all need librarian skills today!  We have to choose what to archive- what to put on our devices (not just photos but all of our digital files). We decide what to put in file folders or in the cloud.  Someday, it will all be available, so I suppose we need not worry.  If the Dewey Decimal System is dead (but still a great exercise in thinking critically about information systems and cataloging) and everything is available at the touch of a finger…what is important is choosing very wisely.  We must choose what is valuable because what is available will be overwhelming.

Trivial clutter adds nothing to my life- in fact it subtracts from my time.

Then, I must ask myself, what does add value to my life?

The essentials of being human—even though I know I have become a cyborg.

Poetry, Music

and maybe just taking a walk without anything digital at all.

1. YOU are in charge of your learning.

What does that mean?  In the old hierarchy mode, an authority figure was in charge (the teacher, the press, the library, the institution).  Today, crowd-sourced content is top dog and the media news broadcast is a talk show over coffee.  Which means, you must critically evaluate all the information that is bombarding you on the web each day.

2. You must participate.
This can be problematic. Most of the experts (whom I respect greatly- see my recommended reading list) warn of the “dumbing down” of our youth through convenient internet browsing for answers and through narcissistic social media participation.  Like it or not, however, there is no going back to the old hierarchy where accuracy and authority were more important than popularity and personal interest.  Barlow and Leston end their book, Beyond the Blogsphere (2012), by stating, “When a collective force as ubiquitous as the internet continues to grow at alarming speeds and when most of its energy is wasted, some sketches of understanding need to be made so that we can begin to better understand this growing, pulsing, emerging organism called the internet.”

3. You MUST credit.
Surprise!  Plagiarism still applies! Amazingly, I see both students and teachers who do not understand that you cannot simply take a picture off a website and use it in whatever manner you choose.  The common misconception is that if someone posted it online…it’s mine!  Perhaps the rapid evolution from print to electronic media created confusion about intellectual property. But, in my opinion, the blurry line between professional life and personal life is more likely the culprit.
That’s another topic- one which I imagine others are currently contemplating.  Social media encourages the “fuzzy line” between professional and personal communication.  For the past year or so, I have been thinking that entertainment and triviality make up about 98% of social media, leaving only 2% for educational use.  In other words, you really don’t have to give  credit when the communication is just about the pizza you are eating!  (Why does eveyone love to post pictures of food?  I guess it is just part of being human. And, by the way, you must credit even the pizza picture unless you took it yourself or it is copyright free.) That 98% I mentioned is, metaphorically, a giant pizza.

Photo retrieved from http://www.public-domain-image.com/food-and-drink/pizza/slides/pepperoni-pizzas.html

Have we all become newboys shouting “Extra? Extra? Read all about it!” in reference to our own personal lives through our social media?

Seth Godin says we all now “spout and scout“.  I have been estimating that 98% of this spouting is triviality adding to the clutter that I call “the sea of chaos”– but I certainly may be way off in my calculations.

I failed at my quest to “like” Facebook and I will now openly admit that I do not.  I am trying very hard to embrace content creation with sites like Pinterest.  So far, I am finding my calculations of 98% triviality to be fairly accurate.

What to do about this tsunami of nonsense?

I am reminded of the anti-drug slogan — Just Say No!   I am no longer going to “friend or follow” trivial nonsense.  Please don’t take it personally (my dear nieces, co-workers, long-time chums).  This is not about friendship. It really isn’t. How we communicate defines us as a species.

This is about the future of humankind.

I am the child who is calling out, “Look!  The Emperor is wearing nothing at all!”

Hush!  You cannot say such a thing.

The emperor, in my analogy, is us.  Those of you scanning blogs, nings, social personal network sites, twitter, and a host of Web 2.0 user-generated content spaces (which I should name but I know people only stay tuned to a post for an average of 12 seconds) may identify with this blog post.  With our smart phones in our pockets and our many computer portals close at hand, we have built up a momentum of constant sharing.  Each of us, if we are honest, has personal interests and goals- one of which is simply to “keep up” with the current information (r)evolution.  We can’t.

Just as mankind always has, we look to each other (friend/follow) for guidance.  And in that quest to stay onboard the fast moving train, we gracefully glide from station to station (phone, computer station, portal, email check, tweet, Facebook post, network check, IM, text message).

Secretly, in our hearts, we think about getting off the train.  We remember days when an hour was spent in contemplation.  We remember things like:
the joy of making something with our own hands
reading a book
baking bread
no ringtones to distract us to some other place

The emperor is wearing nothing.
Nothing at all.
I am taking a break for a moment….just to reflect.

Sharing with me:

I learned about the power of participation from Mean Laura. Social media is only an effective tool when there is give and take. On twitter, she recently asked “In ONE word, what do you expect from 2012?”  I chose the word SHARE because I expect and hope to participate (both give and take) with others.

My good friend, the doctor of musicology, taught me that entertainment isn’t all bad and is, perhaps, as important as education.  Am I obsessed with meaning?  Must everything be significant and educational?  Go to thesaurus.com and check the synonyms for educate (edify, coach, enlighten) and entertain (delight, inspire, gratify). Words are just words but we decide the personal links to our lives.  The doctor is all about entertainment and inspiration through music.  He has introduced me to genres of great music that would have been outside my comfort zone and now has his own Internet radio show on xstream radio. What does he do with his love of music?  He shares.

And then there’s my artist friend, Zinnia, who taught me that we are all unique.  Technology is only a tool, like a fork.  You don’t need a fork to eat, but it does make it easier and more polite.  You do, however, need to eat.  Zinnia uses technology to create unique expression and to share that with others.  She helped me learn to take a risk with my own unique expression.  She does that much better than I do.  Yesterday, Zinnia let me pick a button from her bag of lovely colorful words…I chose the word share.

Note to self:  It is time to let go of the negative attitude against Facebook, triviality, superficial nonsensical information quests, and start participating in the new hierarchy.  It is time to “practice what you preach” and put people first.  The hierarchy of the past placed the experts, the sages, the skilled and knowledgeable at the top.  Now, amongst the toppled rubble on the Internet (no library stacks), we all have a voice.

Was it an illusion that the library held the answers and helped point the way to a meaningful existence?  After all, a book or a library of books is created by human beings and human thought. Oh, but it was convenient to rely on experts to sift through nonsense and provide an assortment of the highest quality of information (may there always be libraries).

We still learn, as we always have, in “collision with others” (Vygotsky). We learn because we discuss, we argue, we collaborate, we confront, and (most importantly) we share.

Learn-Learn-Learn!  That seems to be my favorite topic and, as earning my PhD in 2012 suggests, my ultimate goal.  For a year or two, I have been saying I think most people are more interested in being entertained than being educated.  The old, perhaps trite, saying holds true that the more I learn the more I realize how little I know.  Learning how to thinking critically is more important than gathering knowledge. Yet, even more important than critical thinking is learning how to share.