photo by Ellie Collier / CC-BY-NC

I play Magic. It’s a fairly complicated card game which calls on many of the same skills needed for games like chess or poker. Poker has suits, Magic has colors. And I hate playing black. Unlike other colors, when I play a black card I often have to sacrifice a few of my life points or one of my other cards. Good players know that this instinctually painful cost is often negligible compared to the positive effects of the card. But my gut reaction is still a big knee jerk “NO!”

I’m suffering loss aversion and I would be well-served to pause and analyze the situation.

Magic isn’t my only bit of nerdom. My partner and I play a lot of games. We host regular game nights and play just the two of us several times a week. His favorites are German-style board games which rely heavily on strategy and resource management. After a game, he and some of his friends will often point out which decisions were likely the most pivotal in the outcome. It always seemed placating to me, an emotional self-defense justification for not winning, but he insisted that studying your mistakes is the best way to learn.

What’s all this got to do with libraries? Well, the only way to avoid loss aversion is to know about it. To know when to trust your instincts and when to doubt them you need to spend a lot of time thinking about how you think. And it turns out the best way to become an expert at something is to spend a lot of time studying your mistakes. These are the first of several lessons in Jonah Lehrer’s How We Decide that immediately made me think of current library hot topics like “transparency” and “perpetual beta.”

In How We Decide, Lehrer spends a lot of time talking about experts in high tension situations, but there’s still plenty that can be applied to the library, which is what I’ll be doing with the remainder of this post. In the interest of full disclosure, I was not drawn to this book on my own as I was with Made to Stick. This review is the result of a request from fellow Lead Piper Brett Bonfield. (Yes, we do take requests for post topics, or at least I do.) Its relevance to libraries didn’t jump out at me as immediately as Made to Stick’s did, but it did give me many ideas for my interpersonal relations, both at work and at home. For one, I’ll be asking my partner to help me study my gaming mistakes more often.

I was particularly impressed with the quality of the writing in How We Decide. It opens with a detailed first person narrative of Lehrer’s experience piloting a Boeing 737 over Tokyo when one of the engines catches on fire. It turns out to have been a flight simulator, but you’re already hooked. Lehrer continues to introduce a number of incredibly engaging professional scenarios and scientific studies and repeatedly calls back to them to reinforce his ideas. He seamlessly jumps between analogy, example, research study, and overarching theory. His main argument is that the age-old dichotomy between the rational and emotional sides of the brain is not only false, but destructive. His overall advice is to think about why you’re feeling what you’re feeling, to think about thinking and become a student of your errors. In that very first story Lehrer pulls you into an emotional state then takes you back through the experience to try something different, which is exactly what he continues to ask of you throughout the book.

Your emotions are super smart, if you train them

Lehrer explains that conscious thought is only a small part of what the brain does. Our orbitofrontal cortex is responsible for integrating much of our subconscious analysis into our decision making process. The orbitofrontal cortex “connects the feelings generated by the “primitive” brain—areas like the brain stem and the amygdala, which is in the limbic system—to the stream of conscious thought” (p. 18). These feelings are actually a summary of data processed by our subconscious, transmitted to our orbitofrontal cortex and interpreted as an instinct or gut reaction. It often provides a highly accurate shortcut to a drawn out conscious analysis. What makes expert chess, poker, and football players able to trust their instincts is that their instincts are finely tuned by a constant focus on mistakes. These players know that “self-criticism is the secret to self-improvement; negative feedback is the best kind” (p. 51).

While I’m not suggesting you point out every mistake each of your colleagues or students makes, I would propose you try it on yourself and encourage it in others. We already know that students learn better when they are active participants in the learning process as opposed to passive recipients of information. We can insert that active learning even earlier in our instruction process by moving from having students apply what we’ve just shown them to having them reason through and come up with the solution on their own.

Taking it one step further than merely analyzing our mistakes, Lehrer argues that mistakes aren’t things to be discouraged: they should be cultivated and carefully investigated. A crucial ingredient in education is the ability to learn from mistakes. This grabbed me both from an instruction standpoint—we should be cultivating those critical thinking skills—and from the idea of perpetual beta. I think a valuable question worth asking is, “will it take more time and effort to set up a committee to evaluate every possible scenario before launching a new service or to troubleshoot after?” The answer will definitely not be the same for every situation, but look for opportunities to jump in and learn as you go.

Lehrer explains a study by Carol Dweck which shows in startling statistics how important it is to cultivate an attitude of learning through analyzing our mistakes. Dweck had 400 fifth-graders take a puzzle test. The children were given their scores and praise in the form of one of the following two sentences: “You must be smart at this” or “You must have worked really hard.” The children were then offered the choice to attempt a of set of puzzles similar to the ones they had just taken or a set that were more difficult, but from which they would learn a lot. Dweck expected the different forms of praise to have a modest effect, but the results were dramatic. The children praised for their effort nearly all chose the harder test while those praised for their intelligence went for the easy one. Later, when given a test written for eighth-graders the children in the hard-working group were excited by the challenge while the smart group became easily discouraged. The last set of tests were the same difficulty as the first. The hard workers saw an average score increase of 30% while the smart group’s scores dropped by nearly 20%.

“Instead of praising kids for trying hard, teachers typically praise them for their innate intelligence (being smart). Dweck has shown this type of encouragement actually backfires, since it leads students to see mistakes as signs of stupidity and not as building blocks of knowledge. The regrettable outcome is that kids never learn how to learn…. The problem with praising kids for their innate intelligence—the “smart” compliment—is that it misrepresents the neural reality of education. It encourages kids to avoid the most useful kind of learning activities, which is learning from mistakes. Unless you experience unpleasant symptoms of being wrong, your brain will never revise its models. Before your neurons can succeed, they must repeatedly fail” (p. 52-53).

Often times at the reference desk we are as much counselor as information specialist. After much conscious effort, I have gotten better at verbalizing my search strategy as I work with students. One of the benefits has been helping students learn that for more complicated topics refining your search terms is often an iterative process. I remember working with a student on a particularly finicky subject. The fact that I (the expert) did a search and got zero results, then tried again with a different term, and again with a third phrase before hitting on something that got us usable articles, was validating and enlightening for the student. She went from feeling stupid for not knowing the right magic word to learning a process she’ll be able to apply to every search in the future. It’s not about being smart, it’s about making the effort and learning from the failures.

Your emotions will also sabotage you

Many of our gut reactions are actually our vast amounts of experience (learned from mistakes) processed by our subconscious and passed up to our conscious mind via emotion. But we all know that we can’t always trust these instincts. Lehrer covers the most common cases where our emotions lead us astray. One example is the loss aversion I mentioned at the beginning of this post. We put more weight on bad than good. Lehrer states that, “in marital interactions, it generally takes at least five kind comments to compensate for one critical comment” (p. 81). The only way to avoid loss aversion is to know about it.

The way to regulate our emotions is to think about them. “If the particular feeling makes no sense … then it can be discounted” (p. 107). Lehrer suggests that you consciously question your emotions. Think about why you’re feeling what you’re feeling. You may still go with your instincts, but by taking the time to think it through you may just catch yourself falling into a trap.

“Patients who have undergone cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), a form of talk therapy designed to reveal innate biases and distortions of the human brain, have also been shown to be less vulnerable to these same biases. Scientists speculate that these patients have learned to recognize those maladaptive thoughts and emotions that automatically occur in the responses to certain situations. Because they reflect on their thought processes, they learn to think better” (p. 242).

This message really struck home with me. Knowing you’re being irrational is only the first half of overcoming a misguided emotion. The second half is knowing why. While I wasn’t calling my hatred for black Magic cards “loss aversion,” I did realize I was being irrational. I knew the better players knew more than I did, and I trusted that they had a more appropriate sense of which cards were better and worse. But learning that this is a typical reaction and, more importantly, understanding why it is a typical reaction, pushed me over the top from trusting the better players to actually “getting it” myself.

The importance of regulating our emotional responses struck me especially for its use in interpersonal relations—our dealings with our colleagues, our managers, our staff, and our students. Lehrer includes a great quote from Aristotle, “Anyone can become angry—that is easy. But to become angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose, and in the right way—that is not easy” (p. 107). This bit of advice was well timed for me. I had been getting more and more stressed at work over the course of a few weeks. I knew I needed to address it, but hadn’t decided how. In the end I realized I was taking too much personal responsibility for something that I shouldn’t have. That realization allowed me to actively decide where I wanted to continue to be involved and where I would choose not to invest my emotional energy. When you have a strong emotional reaction to something or someone, think about why you are so upset. Often realizing exactly why you are having a strong emotional reaction is enough to give you the tools to deal with the issue.

Relying solely on rational thought will also sabotage you

For starters, that’s how professional athletes crack under pressure and experienced performers freeze on stage—by thinking too hard about things that are typically automatic.¹ Lehrer’s tip—don’t think of the details of what you’re doing, but instead think of a descriptive adjective, words like smooth or balanced, that evokes your overall goal.

Choking isn’t the only danger of thinking too much. You’re also in danger of overloading yourself. You have a limited amount of working memory. The prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain responsible for active analysis and decision making, can only handle so much information at one time. I was interested but not overly surprised to read that a bad mood is a rundown prefrontal cortex.  That’s all the more reason to make sure to regularly take time to yourself and especially to take the extra time to clear your thoughts before sending that impassioned email.

Lehrer explains how our rationality can become a liability, “since it allows us to justify practically any belief” (p. 206). He cites studies where republicans misremember the deficit under Clinton, Christians chose not to push the button to alleviate static over an atheist broadcast, Israeli intelligence disregarded its own information leading up to the Yom Kippur War, and pundits on both sides consistently showed correlation between high confidence levels and incorrect predictions. In all of these situations each group was mislead by its own certainty and ignored contradicting evidence.

Lehrer argues that, “the only way to counteract the bias for certainty is to encourage some inner dissonance. We must force ourselves to think about the information we don’t want to think about, to pay attention to the data that disturbs our entrenched beliefs” (p. 217). In addition to working to develop our own internal dialog, “we can create decision-making environments that help us better entertain competing hypotheses” (p. 217). Abraham Lincoln is famous for his cabinet full of rival politicians. His ability to tolerate dissent and foster diversity was an enormous asset. He encouraged vigorous debate and discussion before making any decisions. Airlines have implemented a highly effective decision making strategy called Cockpit Resource Management (CRM). They discovered that many errors were at least partially due to the “God-like certainty” of pilots. “The goal of CRM was to create an environment in which a diversity of viewpoints was freely shared” (p. 253). Hospitals have also adopted CRM with great results.²

“The reason CRM is so effective is that it encourages flight crews and surgical teams to think together. It deters certainty and stimulates debate. In this sense, CRM creates the ideal atmosphere for good decision-making, in which a diversity of opinions is openly shared. The evidence is looked at from multiple angles, and new alternatives are considered. Such a process not only prevents mistakes but also leads to startling new insights” (p. 255).

While it would be wonderful if we all worked in supportive, collaborative environments where constructive criticism and active dialogs were encouraged, the truth is that it takes a lot of effort to create and maintain that atmosphere. Anyone can take the first steps. I am particularly excited to have our E-Resources Librarian as my partner on the student technology use survey my library will be doing this semester. I know that I have a definite bias towards looking out for those left on the far side of the digital divide so her focus on technology integration provides an excellent balance.

Lehrer suggests being your own devil’s advocate. This is another place where you may be able to look for additional external substitutes. When we were working on our pitch for the student technology survey we wanted to be ready for any question library management might throw at us, but we weren’t entirely sure what those would be. Our college has an internal grant proposal process. By completing the grant proposal we were prepared to answer questions about goals, objectives, timeline, budget, and how the project tied in to the library and college mission. We didn’t win the grant, but management approved and funded our project.

A brief aside

After explaining how our emotions can stand in for our experience, and when they shouldn’t, Lehrer concludes that how we decide should depend on what we’re deciding. But before detailing his final conclusions he explores morality. Moral decisions are unique in that they require the brain to take other people into account rather than act on purely selfish motives. Moral decisions are strongly based in sympathy. It’s part of the reason we are more moved by the plight of one child than by statistics about millions. Statistics don’t activate our moral emotions. It’s also why my college’s I Am ACC campaign is so much more moving than a list of statistics about the importance of community colleges.

At this point I do want to warn any sensitive readers—and I include myself in this group—there are some upsetting animal studies described in Lehrer’s section on morality. If you’d like to avoid them I suggest you skip about 3-5 paragraphs (sometimes more) any time monkeys are brought into the discussion. You won’t miss the gist of the lesson and there are compelling (and less graphic) human stories that still back up the message.

Deciding how to decide

Throughout the book Lehrer repeatedly emphasizes that the most important thing is to think about how you’re thinking and study your decision making process so you can learn to make better decisions over time. Make an effort to see the situation as it is, not as you want it to be. I’ve run into a related statement at faculty gatherings at my college that has really stuck with me: Teach the students you have, not the ones you wish you had. In my community college we are seeing more and more students who are less and less prepared to do college level work. I often hear disparaging remarks towards the K12 system or pining for the academic rigor of the past. But just as often I hear faculty explain how proud they are that so many more students who wouldn’t have considered college a possibility in the past are now enrolling. These faculty challenge us to do everything in our power to meet students wherever they are along their path of educational development and help them reach their personal goals—which may or may not be a four-year institution.

Lehrer closes with an analysis on how to put all of this science to practical use in your life. If you have significant experience in the domain in question (your own personal preferences fall into this category), even if it is a highly complicated issue, you’re best served by collecting all the relevant information, then setting it aside and letting your subconscious decide. For all other situations you should at least question, and possibly ignore, your emotions. They’re particularly dangerous in situations that you’ve never encountered before. “Emotions are adept at finding patterns based on experience… but when you encounter a problem you’ve never experienced before, when your dopamine nuerons have no idea what to do, it’s essential that you try to tune out your feelings” (p. 128).

Postscript

While not covered in the book, one of the strongest lessons I took from it was the importance of how, when, and from whom you hear a particular message. As I read through this book I kept running into things I had been told before, but had dismissed initially. My partner had explained the importance of dissecting your plays in order to improve, but I thought he was just trying to make me feel better whenever he pointed out certain things were chance. My mother (a psychologist) had suggested I try to identify the reason behind the particular emotional reactions that were triggering my stress, but in the moment I was worked up enough that I didn’t see how that could possibly help. The next day when I read the same advice in Lehrer’s book it clicked. (I called Mom to share the laugh.³) It’s impossible to be calm and rational all the time, but by being aware of potential cognitive biases, we can more easily recognize when we are falling prey to them and incorporate good advice when we are calm enough to take it in.

Study Questions

Lehrer’s final message is another call to think about thinking and to become a student of your errors. My personal goal this year has been to focus on improving my teaching, so this semester I’ll be applying that lesson to my instruction sessions by writing out my reflections after each class. Here are some suggestions for other areas to focus on, based on the studies Lehrer describes.

• Can you find places in your teaching to let students try something on their own without instruction, help them verbalize what did and didn’t work, and allow them to try to come up with reasons why?
• Can you set aside time after your sessions to critique your own teaching? Or after a program to critique the planning process or the execution? Or after a year purchasing for a new fund area or interacting with new faculty? What worked, what didn’t, what will you do differently? What are some of the other things that you do often that could benefit from reflection?
• How can we encourage ourselves and our students to see mistakes as learning opportunities rather than failures? Can we work encouragement and instruction into the zero results pages of our catalogs? What can we do to help mold our workplaces into environments where we encourage sharing our failures and our learning process as much as we encourage sharing our successes?
• Are there people you can partner with in your institution that can help balance any of the biases you know you bring to the table? Are there other resources you can use as your own devil’s advocate?

Thanks to Brett Bonfield for the book recommendation and edits and to Kim Leeder and Rachel Slough their feedback and edits.

1. Rachel Slough pointed out that Barry Green’s Inner Game of Music also supports this idea in the “performance” context–and that under pressure we tend to become overly critical.
2. “Before CRM training, only around 21 percent of all cardiac surgeries and cardiac catheterizations were classified as “uneventful cases,” meaning that nothing had gone wrong. After CRM training, however, the number of “uneventful cases” rose to 62 percent.” (p. 255)
3. On a related note, I remember learning about emotions in elementary school and being told that we choose our reactions. No one can “make you” angry/happy/sad. I refused to believe this until after college. In that same call my mom reminded me of another helpful way to phrase the same thought, “Don’t give anyone that kind of power over you.”

Wordle cloud of participants' goals

Setting the Stage

Last fall, as a part of the Texas Library Association’s “Transforming” initiative, my library held its own transforming retreat. Austin Community College (ACC) Library Services has gone through a hiring spurt recently, adding 10 new full time librarians in just the last three years. This retreat brought together all 23 of us from across our seven campuses. We were told to bring any and all wild creative ideas. As is so often the case, we also brought some fairly practical ones. One of these was a request for training on how to teach. This came both from new librarians with no formal training in instruction and from veteran librarians who were interested in learning the current theories and best practices.

As a result, during the Spring semester of this year our dean, Dr. Julie Todaro, called a group of us together to begin planning an immersive teaching training program, aimed primarily at the newer librarians to get them comfortable and up to speed. After the initial brainstorming session (which was comprised mostly of the newest hires), a smaller group (with a higher ratio of more seasoned librarians) was designated as the planning team. This included three members of our Teaching Team, our Public Relations Facilitator and myself (as the representative from the Staff Development Team).

This post will walk you through our process in the hopes that you will find both inspiration and information to help you create your own training programs.

Getting the Team Together

The first step was assembling the planning team. While I wasn’t a part of this process, I can tell you some of the obvious considerations.

Do you have staff with relevant experience or expertise? Two members of our planning team had been through ACRL’s Immersion Program.

Does your library already have teams or committees that focus on certain areas? At ACC we are one library spread across seven campuses and (with a few exceptions) all of us hold the title Reference Librarian. Rather than having titled positions in charge of the various aspects of daily library life, each librarian is a member of at least one cross campus team. I am co-chair of the Staff Development Team, which is charged with identifying professional development needs and providing access to appropriate training. Our Teaching Team focuses on information literacy instruction. In addition to coordinating study guides and interaction with faculty, one of its many charges is to identify relevant information literacy training and development curriculum and coordinate librarians’ participation in these opportunities. Our PR Facilitator was also included in the planning team. Her initial inclusion was based on her past participation in the ACRL Immersion program, but as I’ll discuss later, it was incredibly beneficial to have someone who was able to contribute experience in marketing and event planning.

Planning and Decision Making

We started with some of the basics already assigned to us. For example, you will need to consider what you want your focus to be. We concentrated on pedagogy and theory. This was to be a grounding in the current understanding of teaching and learning and accompanying best practices. This was not the place for discussing our library’s programs and practices (although we did design a follow up forum for exactly that purpose). You will need to determine who should participate. Ideas that floated around in our discussions included: making it completely voluntary, requiring applications, and making it mandatory for everyone. Ours was open to all librarians but mandatory for the librarians who had been with the college for less than 5 years. For us, that turned out to be 12 participants plus two facilitators whose professional experience varied by decades – a good mix!

With our focus and audience selected, the team met to begin brainstorming, breaking down topics and creating timelines. We contacted colleagues at other institutions to find out if they had done anything similar and what their process had been. We read through syllabi and handouts from workshops, seminars and new faculty orientations.

We debated how much time we should devote to the program and settled on two days. We felt one day wasn’t enough time to cover everything we wanted to, but more than two days would be difficult for staffing and scheduling. We also struggled with when to hold the training. We had originally thought early August would be a good and relatively slow time, but realized some librarians would be off contract. However, if we postponed until the fall semester it would have a large effect on reference desk coverage. My campus, for example, had all three of our full time librarians in the required attendance category. Based on those two factors, we decided that the first week of the librarians’ return from summer session, which is also the week before classes start for the fall semester, although not perfect, would be the best possible time available to us and allow the most librarians the chance to participate.

Our next decision point was where to hold the camp. We considered our state library association’s facilities, our business center’s training rooms, and campus activity rooms. A high priority was that the atmosphere should evoke a feeling of being ‘away from the library’ so as to encourage the immersion experience. My vote went to my favorite faculty lounge, the one with the wood panel walls, comfy chairs and great views. As a much more welcoming place to spend our time, this is where we ended up.

Presenter AJ Johnson

Moving from logistics into content, one thing that emerged fairly early was the idea of a culminating activity. We felt that it is important to provide an opportunity for the participants to immediately practice the skills they had learned. After various iterations we settled on a five minute presentation with an assigned topic. We brainstormed a list of typical class assignments. At the first day’s lunch break, the librarians would select their assignment out of a hat and a number from a second hat to provide the presentation order. They were welcome to draw again, trade, or modify their assignment if they didn’t like it. We prepared more topics than there were attendees to facilitate swapping. The idea was to give a starting point to make it easier, not to tie them down. They would have two hours at the end of the first day to prepare their presentation. They could work alone or in groups and we would provide computers. There would be an extended lunch/work session on the second day to incorporate what they’d learned that morning after which they would give a five minute presentation as though the rest of us were students and that was our assignment. They needed to address at least two learning styles (one was written on the assignment, the other was their choice) and decide what assessment they would use (they didn’t have to actually create or administer the assessment). The idea was to give participants a chance to practice designing an active learning exercise while considering a variety of learning styles and then share that exercise with the group.

We also knew we wanted to assign some readings for people to go through before camp in order to get everyone on the same page and to spark conversation. We ended up selecting a few chapters from What the Best College Teachers Do, a book that had been handed out at recent ACC faculty orientations, and one that I cannot recommend highly enough. We also agreed that it would be worthwhile to have everyone read through the ACRL definition of information literacy as well as an alternate definition, both of which were emailed to participants prior to camp. We recommended participants join ACRL’s information literacy instruction list serv [ili-l], but didn’t require it.

Wordle cloud of participants' teaching strengths

The ReBoot schedule that we settled on included several opportunities for sharing perspectives, getting to know each other, and defining our context. To facilitate this we designed a pre-camp survey with a variety of ends in mind: to help us in planning, to get the participants thinking about teaching and learning and to create our icebreaker activity. To help in our planning we asked the participants about their prior teaching experience. To help get them geared up for camp we asked the participants  to describe their teaching philosophy and to set a camp goal for themselves. We also asked them to describe their strengths and weaknesses as a teacher and to share some of their favorite analogies to use when teaching. To create our icebreakers we turned the strengths and weaknesses into Wordle clouds and posted the analogies around the room on large pads of paper for comment. After the icebreaker the facilitators (Melinda Townsel and Red Wassenich, with 18 and 25 years at ACC, respectively) welcomed everyone, went over the schedule, the definitions of information literacy and the pre-survey responses.

Ellie Collier leads a discussion on campus differences

We felt it was important to begin by focusing on what we know about the students we would be teaching. Our dean, Dr. Julie Todaro, presented an overview of ACC’s student population. We also watched some quick informal videos created by one of our facilitators, Melinda Townsel, asking ACC students about their own research methods and a short documentary, Private Universe, which deals with the concepts we (wrongfully) assume students already know and explains how teaching methods can create those misconceptions. Red Wassenich, our other facilitator went over some recent ACC information literacy assessment results and I led a discussion about campus differences with participants giving a summary of their campus population. For example, my campus has a higher proportion of students in English as a Second Language and developmental courses coming in to the library as well as a noticeable number of students who don’t have computers at home.

The bulk of the camp focused on cognitive development, active learning, learning theory, learning styles, and assessment. We considered having the participants break up into groups, research the topics ahead of time and present to each other. We also brainstormed people and groups we thought might be willing and able to present on these topics. This included psychology and education faculty, trainers in the college’s professional development department as well as fellow librarians at neighboring institutions. In the end, we were lucky enough to have a great number of incredibly talented librarians in the Austin area that were highly knowledgeable in the topics we wanted to cover and specifically how they apply to academic libraries. We also invited Dorothy Martinez, an ACC faculty member who teaches developmental reading and teacher training.

Which brings us to another issue: budget. We were not given an explicit budget, but were given some guidelines. For example, we were told it would be very hard to justify any food expenses, but we could provide a copy of the “textbook” to all attendees. We wanted to keep the group together through the lunch break to ensure continuity and allow for more sharing of ideas and strategies but didn’t feel comfortable asking everyone to bring their own lunch both days. We debated a number of options, including doing a pot luck or providing pizza and asking everyone to chip in $5. In the end, our generous dean personally covered the lunch expenses as well as breakfast treats for the two days. A note from the PR Facilitator: Don’t underestimate the time it will take to make lunch arrangements! Do a pre-event survey two weeks out, giving a few choices for box lunches (first day) and pizza toppings the second day. Make decisions on the aggregate results for pizzas with veggies only or some with meat. If at all possible, find vendors that deliver.

Speakers are another potential expense. Our speakers were all able to attend as part of their regular work duties, but funding would have been a consideration if we had gone with our initial learning styles idea, which included the respected but proprietary Kolb inventory ($125 for 10 surveys plus the travel cost of a trained analyst). By choosing a free learning styles inventory we were able to invite our speakers to have lunch with us and provide them with a small thank you gift (we chose travel mugs with a positive teacher message from Positive Promotions). Using local presenters provided much more than budget relief. A number of them stayed to see each other’s presentations and participate in discussion. It provided a wonderful connection between each of our institutions and inspired plans to collaborate more often.

Participants Barbara Jorge, Adrian Erb, Molly Dahlstrom, Linda Clement and Steve Self

An issue that came up later in the process was that of partial participation. We had a few librarians that were interested in attending just for one or two topics, or wanted to come to all of it, but didn’t want to give the presentation at the end. We felt strongly that a fundamental part of the camp was that it was an immersion, where participants interact and collaborate intensely. I also felt that it would send a negative message to say that those who have been here longer get special treatment and don’t have to fully participate. In promoting the training camp we had tried hard to communicate that we truly wanted a mix of ‘new to ACC’ librarians and veterans and that the presentation would be a wonderful opportunity for them to immediately practice what they had learned. We reassured the reluctant presenters that it would be a non-threatening environment with no grades or formal evaluation. Ultimately, however, everyone who expressed reservations about fully participating chose not to attend.

What’s in a Name?

One of the many important contributions of our PR Facilitator was her explanation of the importance of a name for the training – in her words “a hook to hang everything from.” We threw out tons of options and debated their relative merits. We were particularly interested in making this a collaborative and participatory endeavor that would be equally stimulating for experienced and green librarians alike. Our final choice “[RE]BOOT CAMP: Share some. Learn more. Teach Better.” set the theme of learning as a group for the rest of our promotion. Our flyer, which included our dean’s face merged with a pointing Uncle Sam, listed who had been drafted and encouraged veterans to re-enlist. One of the facilitators even wore fatigues.

Practice What You Preach

Actions speak louder than words. The fact that all of our presenters used excellent pedagogy, including starting their presentations by stating their learning objectives, speaking to different learning styles, and using active learning, solidified those strategies far more than just having been instructed on their importance. A number of participants mentioned this aspect in particular in their evaluations. Not only was the content valuable, we had role models for teaching excellence.

Since one of our focus areas was assessment, we made sure that we offered both the pre-camp survey and an opportunity for the participants to assess the camp. The Teaching Team and Staff Development Team will use those results to help structure future trainings.

Provide Recognition

Another consideration stressed by our PR Facilitator is the importance of thanking both your presenters and your participants for their contributions and of providing a few moments to recognize each other. Each of our presenters was thanked in front of the group and given a small gift. At the end of the camp we had a very casual graduation ceremony. Each participant had his or her name called and was given a small gift (the same travel mug that the presenters were given) as well as their certificate signed by the planning team and the dean. In keeping with the boot camp theme the certificates (with a ‘Stars and Stripes’ motif in a cover with embossed gold stars) were awarded to “Eagle Squad” and “Falcon Squad” members depending on whether they had been with ACC for more or less than five years.

Facilitator Red Wassenich and participant Steve Self

Keeping the Momentum

It was very important for me personally to ensure that the excitement we created at camp not quickly fade away as we disbursed back to our separate campuses. On our evaluation form we asked, “What can we do within ACC Library Services to foster and maintain the ideas/tips/techniques we learned at camp?” We received excellent feedback and as a result we now have scheduled monthly discussion forums that provide an opportunity for our librarians as well as other library staff to come together to discuss procedures, best practices, tips and tricks, etc. We have brainstormed and voted on topics (not all teaching related) and I was thrilled to see our first forum, which focused on collection development, was impressively well attended. Future forum topics include presentation skills, electronic resources, and our college’s student success initiative.

Loose Ends and Final Thoughts

I’d like to close by sharing some overall suggestions and reflections.

Have a Plan B. You can’t plan for every possible curve ball, but thinking of as many as possible ahead of time, and how you might address them, can alleviate a lot of stress. We had two last minute issues come up with our location. The first, a previously unannounced fire drill set to happen about an hour into the program, ended up being rescheduled before we even decided how we would handle it. The second, the unforeseen closing of the library due to A/C maintenance, meant that we no longer had access to the computers and printers we had planned to use to have the participants fill out and score their learning styles questionnaires. This news came after we had already scheduled lunch arrangements with vendors close to our chosen location. After a minor panic, the planning team decided we could work around this by using the faculty computer center and the library laptops rather than move to a new location.

Be sympathetic. Remember to extend the same courtesy to your colleagues that you do to your students. I am forever grateful to my reference instructor for ingraining in me the cognitive, affective, and behavioral aspects of the reference interview. I happen to be very comfortable speaking in public, to large groups or small, to friends or strangers, however, the presentation aspect of the camp was a looming issue for a number of our librarians. The idea of teaching to their peers was quite unnerving to some. I failed to give that issue due respect. It might have been better to provide the librarians with the full details of the assignment earlier in the process, to listen more sympathetically to their fears, and to respond with more empathy. Another approach might be to provide a session on overcoming presentation anxiety prior to the camp, or making that topic a part of the camp.

Make time for reflective writing throughout the process. Include guiding questions such as, “How will you use this in your next instruction session?” or “Why is this important?” Some of our presenters did this, and my notes and retention from their sections are far superior to the other sections where I either chose to just listen and rely on the handouts, or scribbled furious notes which have since lost their context.

Specifically focus on getting one-shot instruction sessions right. Talk about working with faculty, especially those with no assignment or bad assignments, to create a valuable library experience. Spend time discussing how much to realistically cover in one session. Emphasize strategies for helping students get the basics. Our cognitive development section touched on this when our presenter pointed out that most of the ACRL information literacy standards are well above the developmental level of most of our entering students and it was a real eye opener.

Plan follow-up standalone workshops open to all staff. Some examples we thought of include: using LibGuides as teaching tools for individual classes, profiles of community college students, presentation skills, and scheduling video taping or observations of teaching sessions.

Your turn

Have you planned or participated in something similar at your institution? What did you do differently? How did it work out? What would you like to get out of this kind of program? Share your successes and frustrations in the comments.

[RE]Boot Camp Resources

• Schedule (.doc)
• Invitation (Google Doc)
• Pre Camp Survey (Google Form)
• Information Literacy Definitions (.doc)
• Learning Styles Inventory (website)
• Presentation Prompt (.pptx)
• Post Camp Evaluation (Google Form)
• Completion Certificate (.png)
• Textbook: Bain, Ken. What the Best College Teachers Do. Cambridge: Harvard, 2004.

Many of our participants commented on how impressed they were with the presenters, so I’d like to also give many thanks to: A.J. Johnson (University of Texas at Austin), Barbara Jorge (Austin Community College), Liane Luckman (Texas State University), Dorothy Martinez (Austin Community College), Meghan Sitar (University of Texas at Austin), and Dr. Julie Todaro (Austin Community College) and to our planning team: Barbara Jorge, Pam Spooner, Melinda Townsel and Red Wassenich.

Photo Credit: Andy Snow Photography

Welcome to a special audio edition of In the Library with the Lead Pipe. Ellie Collier talks to Char Booth, E-Learning Librarian at the University of California at Berkeley and author of Informing Innovation: Tracking Student Interest in Emerging Library Technologies at Ohio University, a book length research report recently published by ACRL and available as a free download.

We’ll be talking about Char’s path to librarianship, the importance of mentors, the process of writing and publishing her book and much more. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Transcript:

Welcome to a special audio edition of In the Library with the Lead Pipe. I’m Ellie Collier, reference librarian at Austin Community College and I’ll be talking to Char Booth, E-Learning Librarian at the University of California at Berkeley and author of Informing Innovation: Tracking Student Interest in Emerging Library Technologies at Ohio University, a book length research report recently published by ACRL and available as a free download which is linked to in the transcript.

We’ll be talking about Char’s path to librarianship, the importance of mentors, the process of writing and publishing her book and much more. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Ellie: For starters, can you tell us a little bit about your background? Your path to librarianship? What you maybe did with undergrad or other jobs or interests that sort of took you here?

Char: Sure, my path to librarianship was actually kind of short in a way. I left Texas to go to Reed College when I was still pretty young. I got a history degree up there. It’s in Portland, Oregon. And, like many people who graduate from liberal arts colleges, I had no idea what I was going to do. So I spent about a year just temping at Portland State University, trying to figure out what I was going to do. And my mom and I have this really good relationship. She’s a smart lady, and I was trying to figure out what to do and she suggested “Why don’t you look at library school?” And I thought, “Uh… No.” But then I looked into it and it was actually a strangely perfect fit. Sshe was just trying to get me back to Austin and the iSchool at UT Austin is where I ended up going. So, that was basically my path. I wish it was more dramatic, but that’s it.

Ellie: That’s a very direct route, yeah. I just read that great post you wrote on advocacy on info-mational, which included your plans to sort of let that genuine passion you have shine through whenever you’re talking to faculty. So where along that very brief path did that passion develop?

Char: What I was talking about is that I think a lot of librarians who work in higher education have … it’s not necessarily an inferiority complex, but we sometimes get a little bit self conscious when we interact with faculty in terms of how we advocate for libraries. We usually go about it really practically, “I can do this for you, I can do this for you.” But some of us feel a little bit shy about talking about our convictions as librarians. I think that most of us have very strong convictions about being librarians. We might feel a little bit of vulnerability around that, but I recently have had some conversations with professors, faculty members, and graduate students at Berkley and elsewhere that have really let me know that showing people the veracity of my passion about librarianship and my advocacy for it really can help them get insight into what brings people to academic libraries, what we can do for them, what we can do for students – the real breadth and depth of our profession as opposed to people’s impressions of it, which are never correct. They’re just not complete, they don’t have enough depth. So, anyway, all this passion really came from my experience at Reed College with the research culture there and the library culture there. It’s an extraordinary undergraduate library. It supports students. Kids at Reed are invariably super nerds and we’re really self-interested researchers. We all have to do these really intensive senior theses and we live in that library. And they’re really sweet to us. The librarians are extraordinary. They let people drag cots in there. And when we all graduate we burn copies of our thesis in front of the library and it’s this crazy revelry. It just really instilled this idea of a research culture and libraries supporting students and I’ve never forgotten that. It’s what I aspire to.

Ellie: That’s fantastic!

Char: Oh my god, yeah. It really is. It’s amazing, I miss it.

Ellie: I’m one of those anomalies, I think, that I managed to get into library school having almost never entered any school library. And I’m in community colleges now, and I love it, but yeah, I think I went into my library twice at Penn State, ever, the whole four years.

Char: You know what’s funny, I was always in the library at Reed, but it was really the place of it that I loved. I didn’t take enough advantage of the reference librarians there, which I find really ironic now, but I was just, “Oh, I know it all. I can do it. Whatever.” And then I realized how ignorant I was. It’s kind of incredible how much I didn’t know at the time. So that’s really filled me with this desire to help kids know that they don’t know everything, especially smart kids. And I’m at Berkeley now, and they think they know what’s going on, but they totally don’t.

Ellie: So you went and got a second masters in instructional design. So what led you to that degree and what’s that brought in to your work as a librarian?

Char: Oh so much, so much. I’m so glad I did that honestly. I got a second masters, it’s a Masters in Education, and it’s focused on instructional design and Computer Education and Technology, so this idea of bringing technology into education and how you teach that and how you learn about that and all those things. I got that degree at Ohio University in their College of Education while I was working as a reference and instruction librarian there from ‘06 to ‘08. Ohio University is an extraordinarily supportive library system in terms of professional development. They’re excellent. They basically paid all of my tuition, save maybe…

Ellie: Nice.

Char: …5-10% of it. Very nice. And I just worked really hard on it. I discovered that I’m really fascinated by learning theory and pedagogy and all of these things. And it gave me a lot of practical skills: in flash design, in instructional design, and all of these things that, had I known they existed in library school, or had they been subjects that were available in my program I really would have gone after. But I just didn’t know that’s what I needed to do. I also met a lot of K-12 educators who are full time teachers. They have a lot of strategies on how to motivate people. They have a lot of insight into how people learn. I just realized that I had not been taught enough about teaching to be a librarian. I think that’s an endemic problem in library education. We’re not taught to be educators even though that’s what we are. I think that in order to thrive we’re going to have to focus more on that in general.

Ellie: And that ties back too, to what you were saying about talking to faculty and I think it was Emily that commented on your post too that being able to speak their language just helps so much.

Char: Oh my god yes, totally. Totally. And librarians are really good at speaking other people’s language. That’s what we do. That’s what we do at the reference desk. That’s what we do when we catalog books. That’s what we do when we design all these different information products. We’re very good at having insight into other people’s interests, research cultures, disciplinary vernaculars, all of these things. We’re adaptable to that. And tying that with the educational missions of libraries is very natural. And it helps us advocate for what we do because we can couch it in terms that are understandable, not only by different disciples, but different levels within those disciples. Higher education institutions are giant complex hierarchies and you’ve got to be able to get at each level of that hierarchy in order to really be useful, I think.

Ellie: So speaking of Ohio and of all these sorts of different areas we pull through, I know that you are a Texan at heart. And so now you’re been off in rural Ohio, now you’re off in Berkeley. What’s it been like going such different places? What sort of culture shocks, if any, have you run into?

Char: Have I run into culture? Yeah. Are you kidding? No, there’s no difference between Ohio and Berkeley, I’m sorry. [laughter] Yeah, totally! I think a lot of us who are kind of early career librarians, you know, will go, get our first job and it might be somewhere interesting where we never thought that we would live. Case in point, Ohio? I didn’t really know much about Ohio. Or the University. It was a job that I got and man was I lucky because it was a perfect fit. It taught me an extraordinary amount about my own interests, how to be a good librarian because I was supported and mentored by everyone I worked with. Extraordinary place. I cannot say enough positive things about it. It’s a model institution. I also really had the opportunity to get outside my urban self. And learn that there’s really no sense in thinking that one can only live in one kind of place. It’s that same kind of ethic of adaptability. I ended up adoring living rurally. It’s been actually a bigger culture shock moving to this urban area where, apparently everyone wants to live, but it’s a real challenge. It’s a very competitive culture out here in general because it is so desired. The opposite was true in this odd way in Ohio, but it was so wonderful to live in a place that was really built on community and making relationships that lasted and were supportive and it was just such a friendly and kind place to live. And it was just gorgeous. And institutionally every university has a different institutional culture and I’m really fascinated by that. And just the idea of regionalism in general. So, I really am interested in the places that I work and my goal is always to love my job, so I only go places that I truly believe that I can do that. I think in terms of development in one’s profession, it’s excellent to work for different types of places because it gives you such a better perspective on what you can offer, the kinds of problems that can develop, the kinds of things that can develop to address those problems and it’s good, not always to move too much, but different types of experiences are really important. But, in terms of comparing things to Texas, I mean, there’s really no comparison.

Ellie: Of course, of course. So, switching gears, you were named a Mover and a Shaker and you were selected for the first class of ALA’s Emerging Leaders. What motivated you to try for those opportunities?

Char: When I applied for Emerging Leaders it was super early on in my career at Ohio University. I decided to apply for it because I’m the kind of person that just goes for professional development opportunities because I like to learn about stuff and I’m really a very collaborative person and I thought it would be a good way to get insight into the hugeness of ALA, which can be really inscrutable when you’re getting started. ALA’s this giant organization, you don’t even know where to turn in it if you want to get involved. So I applied for that. I was encouraged to apply for Emerging Leaders through a couple of different mentorships that I’ve had. I’m also a person that really believes in forming professional connections and being mentored. I naturally gravitate towards mentorships, in terms of me being a mentee, because I really respect the knowledge of people who have been around the block a few more times than I have in terms of their careers. It’s really, really important to perceive how we can create mutually beneficial professional relationships. And I’m not talking about some kind of noxious ladder climbing here. I’m talking about getting good work done, learning from people and having that be a really validating personal relationship builder in your career. And, I don’t know, I’ve got really good manners so people tend to like that in the folks that they work with. So, anyway, I think that one of my strongest mentors from library school, Dr. Roy, who is ALA past president, I think she encouraged me to do it, which is great. I like to have an impact on the things that I care about. he way you do that is by taking those kinds of opportunities when they come to you. Emerging Leaders was a really good experience for me. And of course it’s always about the people that I end up meeting. I was able to meet and work with Jenny Levine, who writes The Shifted Librarian and who’s an amazing person and one of my closest librarian friends now. She was one of my project groups’ in Emerging Leaders contacts within ALA. So that was awesome. That’s the kind of thing that happens when you do things like Emerging Leaders or you get nominated to be Mover and Shaker. At the reception at the Mover and Shaker thing I met Michael Stevens and Meredith Farkas. I work with them both, I love them both. And that’s how it goes. So it’s all about making personal connections out of professional opportunities and doing so in a way that is genuine and respectful and intent on the greater good. I think that’s really, really critical.

Ellie: I want to second what you were saying about networking, not in that awful way.

Char: Because it sounds all circuit boardy. It makes people seem like implements that have these connections that may facilitate things and make things happen. But really it’s another aspect of enjoying the work that you do and making the work that you do have more impact.

Ellie: Yeah. And, I mean, I would even call probably almost everyone that I’ve met in those opportunities and remained friends with, friends, so to me, even though, I know that it is networking, it never feels like it at the time, it never has any of those sort of negative connotations. Yeah, I just sort of want to replace that with the idea of friendship.

Char: Absolutely, and when you’re getting started, networking is a terrifying concept. I would hear the word networking, I’d be like, “Oh my god, I don’t know how to do that. I don’t even have business cards, how am I supposed to network with anyone?” Networking, all it is, is building relationships that originate in your genuine interest in what you do.

Ellie: Well said.

Char: and finding other people that can help you do that. And that you can help do that. And it’s awesome. So, I’m all about that. You have to learn how to communicate well. It’s about being nice and not being opportunistic.

Ellie: Yeah. So you do tons of stuff. You’ve had all these presentations, the Cyber Zed Shed, you Skyped into a presentation, I’m sorry I don’t have which one in front of me…

Char: Oh man, that was scary.

Ellie: You’ve done ACRL, Computers in Libraries, Future of Libraries. I’m sure I’ve missed some. How did you get hooked up with some of those? How have they impacted your career?

Char: I just applied for them. A couple of the presentations I’ve done have been invited but most of them are the kind of thing where you submit your proposal and they accept you or reject you. And I’ve got plenty of rejections. It’s about, does your idea fit the program and do they have space for you and all that stuff. And I’m weird, I like to present. I really, really like it. I hated it when I started. I was as nervous as anybody else, but I’ve just grown to love being in front of people in a way that is challenging to me and hopefully engaging and interesting for them in terms of the content that I’m talking about. It’s a great challenge and that’s really what it’s all about. So most of them I applied for, a couple of them I’ve been invited to. It’s amazing to watch a good presentation and I try really hard to give a good presentation. And it’s an excellent way to kind of develop my skills in presentation technology and different ways to try to express ideas. I’m really interested in visual design too, so when I make a presentation I like it to be pretty beautiful, I try. So it pushes you forward. And again, it’s a great way to connect with people and hear really good questions and think about the things that you’re doing in ways that you wouldn’t have ever thought about because you get this feedback from other institutions. You talk for 20 minutes about something that happened at your place and then 10 people come up asking questions through their institutional lens. And [you realize], “Oh my god, that’s a completely different working culture, I never anticipated that problem. In that context it would work totally differently.” It’s so important. Presenting is very fun. It was never something I had to do for tenure. It just kinda happened. But you do have to have that professional development support. It’s expensive to travel. One of the reasons I was able to do that, I should just mention this again, is that OU gave such extraordinary travel funding. As long as you’re involved, as long as you’re presenting, as long as you’re active in the things that you are doing, they would fund you. The same is true at Berkeley, maybe to a lesser extent. OU is really out of the ballpark in terms of what they do or did for people. The funding situation all over the country is a little dicey right now, so I may be speaking of things that are not quite the same. But that was a great opportunity for me.

Ellie: Do you have any favorite conferences or presentations you’ve given?

Char: I like ACRL a lot. My first presentation, the one that really gave me the idea that I could enjoy presenting professionally at conferences and that it was a thing that I wanted to continue doing, was Cyber Zed Shed back, I think it was in, was it ‘06? ACLR ‘07? It was the first thing I ever presented and I was scared out of my mind but it went really well and I enjoyed it. I like the vibe at ACRL. I gave a presentation at the last one in Seattle. It was extraordinary. It was excellent. The audience was great. I cracked them up the whole time, which was rad. I like ACRL. I do.

Ellie: Nice. So also speaking of all of the stuff that you do, how do you stay sane? Do you make an effort to divide your personal and professional life out? Do you blend it all together?

Char: You really want to know what I do? I get up at 4 or 5 in the morning every day.

Ellie: Oh my goodness.

Char: That’s what I do. So I don’t really work much at night. That’s how I divide my personal and professional life. I don’t work at night, but I certainly work at 4 or 5 in the morning. I write a lot and if I have a presentation I’m doing or something, that’s when it gets done. The early morning hours are really good for that because there’s really no other distractions. It’s very quiet, it’s a very focused time and I’m obviously a morning person. So that’s good. You can’t be happy professionally if you’re not happy personally. So, you can’t just privilege one and not the other. Yes, I work very hard, but I also have a lot of interests and I care a lot about librarianship. I care a lot about what I do. So it brings me great personal satisfaction and joy and I’ve met a lot of people in my profession that are true friends and that do what I do, but I have plenty going on outside of that. And that’s good.

Ellie: So you’re getting up super early in the morning, is all of the sort of stuff we’re talking about stuff you take care of during that time or is any of it on work time?

Char: I’m really busy at my job. I have an amazing job. I do a lot of really interesting things and a lot of them involve a lot of networking and outreach and meetings and building different collaborative partnerships at Berkeley. It’s difficult to do anything but my job at my job. That said, I am encouraged to work on the types of writing things that I work on when I can. It’s not discouraged by any means. I have a lot of support from my administrators, from my bosses and I work for some pretty awesome people at Berkeley. So, if I have the time, it’s not like the time is not mine to work on professional stuff, but I’ve got a lot of irons in the fire. That’s what important at my work, but yes, I am supported in my professional activities as well.

Ellie: Excellent. So talking about writing, ready to transition into the book a little bit, can you talk about the process of writing that, a whole book? And was that one part of your work at Ohio or again, sort of totally extracurricular?

Char: The book that I just published through ACRL, it’s available as a free download with a sample research instrument, a sample questionnaire, if anybody wants to download it and try to do the same environmental scan about students and technology, that’s available. You can also purchase a hard copy, but it’s definitely meant to be accessible to the widest possible audience.

Elile: That’s fantastic.

Char: That project originated as local research at Ohio University. I was on this technology team and I worked with my manager, another mentor of mine, Chad Boeninger, who’s an extremely smart librarian. He has a blog called Library Voice that’s really excellent. He really had this idea that we should get better grounded in the technology and library culture of our actual institution in order to develop better technology products and I completely concurred, so spearheaded this long term research project and the report that I produced for that. I was also simultaneously working on it as my master’s report for my education degree. Those two documents merged, and then I expanded them a lot and ended up writing on that for another 6 to 8 months and published that as the actual book/research report through ACRL. So, it was a document that had a long life span and a lot of different iterations that really helped me get excellent insight into what I was trying to say. It’s local research findings, but it’s couched in this language of how to research your own institution to understand what it’s trying to tell you about what it needs from its library, not just in terms of technology, or this kind of minimum insight into the students that you’re serving. “Do you like the library? Yes or no?” It’s about really getting a handle on the culture in which you exist because that’s the culture that you serve and it’s different than any other library culture on the planet because that’s the way it works.

Ellie: I think that’s fantastic.

Char: What I’m trying to do is inspire people to couch themselves in that culture. You reflect it, those are your people. Don’t stop looking at national studies, read the national studies and then use their research instrument to inspire your own research. See if your people are a reflection of those people, or if they’re not a reflection of those people. Then you can build products that respond to their requests. It’s very important.

Ellie: I think it’s great that you touch on that. I find that a lot being in a community college setting, where they talk about, well, incoming freshman this… I’m like, mmmm, yeah… not my audience… So yeah, thank you for that.

Char: Part of the reason I wrote this report in such detail and tried to really show how specific the library culture at Ohio University was is because people arrive at different institutions of higher learning based on a variety of different factors, their class privilege, their prior academic performance, their location, their region… It’s this really complex demographic and social and cultural admissions process. So that creates these little microcosms that are completely unique and that libraries can learn to respond to. And work with. And understand. Instead of just saying, “We’re the library. You need some help?” Being a person that’s interested in that kind of regional, institutional, organizational culture, I think we should learn how to gain better insight into it. And ongoing insight, not just a one shot survey, but figure out how to figure out your context.

Ellie: Mmmhm. And so, moving on with the process of the book, what was the publishing process like? Did you approach ALA? Did they approach you? What was the timeline for publishing? We already talked about writing, but…

Char:  I’m working on a different book project right now on instructional technology, pedagogy in libraries, reflective practice, all of those different things. That book I was approached by ALA editions to do as a consequence of being named a Mover and Shaker, which is something that I think is a common experience for folks that get that award. They get a lot of publication opportunities out of it. Which is great. But, for the research report, I just cold called Kathryn Deiss at ACRL. Cold emailed I guess you could say. I had met her through Jenny Levine and I thought maybe the project might be of interest to her. I had the good fortune to also be edited in that process by Joan Lippincott, who’s really an amazing thinker in our profession in terms of these issues of technology in libraries and integrating our institutions into the institutions that support us and things like that. So, it was a really serendipitous process. The entire publication timeline, I guess was about August to April. So however many months that is. I can’t count very well apparently. But I had already been writing on it a while, as I said. A document existed, it just needed to get shipped into shape so to speak. So, I revised it, I worked on it. Did a lot more analysis. Formatted the document itself. And they let me design the whole thing. Which is an incredible experience by the way. Cover to cover. I designed that book. And it was wonderful. Thank you Katherine, thank you Joan. Thanks to Dawn Mueller at ALA. All of them were great during that process.

Ellie: So you designed it into the PDF too? How did it come about that they offered the free version?

Char: Well actually, I pretty much insisted on that. I always imagined it as a free download. I didn’t even think that it was going to be in a print publication version, but one thing led to another and it ended up being a good length for a soft cover research report. So, that’s fine, but I always imagined it as a free download. I really considered that it’s primary form. And of course it’s great that it’s available in a different format, but in my mind it originated as a web based document, download.

Ellie: Alright, so, moving on. I know that the TechSource people are going to cover a lot more of the content of it, so I just want to latch onto the one idea that sort of struck me, which was that one of the most interesting aspects of that Skype project was your open, transparent reporting on the decision to sort of reevaluate the service. And I really like this shift towards publicly discussing and learning from projects even when they might be deemed failures. At my college we’ve been doing an IM pilot through Meebo, and we’re considering dropping that for various reasons. Can you talk about the decision to reevaluate the service and who all’s involved in that and what sort of feedback it was met with?

Char: Sure. What you’re talking about is this experimentation that we were involved in at Ohio University with Skype, using Skype for different forms of public service. We created a video call kiosk and did a pilot with that and we also set up what we called Skype In Reference on our reference desk, so people with Skype accounts could call and talk to a librarian that way or chat with them. The survey project came out of the fact that we were able to do so much experimentation at OU. The working culture is really supportive, a lot of people with a lot of creative energy in terms of creating library services that are worthwhile and innovative and just trying out all these new products, it was really fun. But at the same time, the more products you create, the more time it takes to staff them and the more that you want to make sure that they’re actually working out for you. And the Skype project was basically the first thing that we had done that was … You might call it ahead of it’s time, you might call it misdirected, you might just call it too much. So, it was a lot of work to create and staff, and it drew on our relationships with the systems department and it was a great experiment, but at the same time, the video kiosk wasn’t used consistently enough to really merit us being on it all the time, in terms of our talking heads on the screen. Our decision to reevaluate the service is this idea that a lot of people talk about, having things in constant beta and changing them up. It’s really about the flexibility to address the inevitable problems that come up. The fact that we are able to do that so transparently at OU is what gives us the motivation to talk about it and say, look, this is how we changed things, and this is how we tried to address the fact that the service wasn’t used enough. This is the model that we took on to try to mitigate those problem. When you work with emerging technology in libraries or in higher education or wherever, you’ve got to be able to switch gears when things don’t work right. We’re all treading new ground, not only in the technologies that we’re using, but like I said with the specific institutional cultures, different types of IT relationships. You can’t rely only on the testimonials of others. You’ve got to figure out your own context before you know how to make something work. So that was really where this idea of gaining more insight into people and what technologies would work and what would not work. That’s where the idea originated. To stop creating services from the seat of our pants and start trying to do it from a more informed vantage point. And the service being reevaluated, it’s an ongoing process. More people continue to adopt Skype and they’re still offering the service at OU in different forms, but they’re reevaluating having Skype be the element on that information kiosk that is called when someone says “ask a librarian.” They might just switch it to text chat because it’s easier for people. So it’s really you want to triangulate what’s the way people want to be able to contact you and go there instead of just the thing you think is cool at the moment.

Ellie: Amen. That was my last official question for you, other than sort of, what’s next on your list? Do you have any latest technology thoughts? Something that’s caught your interest that’s fun? That you’re working on now?

Char: So much actually. I mentioned before that I’m writing another book on library education. A lot of what I used to do at OU had to do with emerging reference technologies and now I have a lot more to do with teaching and learning and technology in those areas and those aspects. They all kind of blend together, but I’ve been really doing a lot more instruction and a lot more training and thinking about how to get people to use different types of learning technologies in libraries and how to connect the research mission of Berkeley with the Berkeley libraries via different technological means, so that’s on my mind right now in a lot of ways. In terms of what I’m doing outside of my immediate job, I’ve been thinking a lot about different types of interactive technologies. The iSchool at Berkeley is really excellent and it’s not really in the library paradigm anymore, but there was an exhibit on tangible user interfaces, student projects, this kind of hyper interactive type of design that involves a lot of immediate user feedback and very tangible, very kinesthetic technologies and they’re very interesting. I’m interested in seeing where that type of design goes for classroom interaction. I’m going to be keeping my eye on that for a while. Also, a colleague of mine at UCSD, a friend and colleague and also my perennial editor, Lia Freedman, and I are talking over this project that we want to call Bibliovox, which is this idea that it’s important to tell library stories in a way that retains our institutional memory and does what I was talking about earlier about talking about our passion, exposing a little bit more of our personality rather than just this caricature that a lot of people have in their minds about who librarians are and why we’re led to this profession. I think that we’re a profession of people who care deeply about what we do and about each other and about our patrons and about information and knowledge and research. And we are good people and there’s a lot of stories that need to be told. So what we’re thinking about is creating this online podcast archive if you will. Maybe a blog that people can call into, answer a specific question, or create podcasts of each other talking about their memories about libraries, their inspirations about the profession, how they think it’s changing. It’s kind of inspired by that project StoryCorps that you’ll periodically hear on NPR. So that’s another long term idea. And I really would like to try to think about how to replicate the research I did at OU across the University of California libraries. Who knows if that will happen, but it seems like it would be a really valuable project. I guess that’s another professional thing that I’m interested in doing and hopefully achieving. So, yeah, there’s a lot of stuff going on. But that’s the way I like it.

Ellie: Excellent. Is there anything else you want our readers to know that I didn’t ask?

Char: I’ve talked a lot about different types of working cultures and how I really think it’s very important to try actively to enjoy your job and to create a positive working culture at the place that you find yourself. I feel like this is worth mentioning because I talk to a lot of people right now who are getting out of library school and are having a really hard time finding jobs. I think a lot of us are getting funding cuts. A lot of us are worried about freezes and layoffs and all those types of things. During this type of time it can get pretty hairy inside academia and it can get really fierce and it can get kinda ugly. I think that this type of crunch time is a really good opportunity to try to foster more supportive workplaces and workplaces that give a lot of opportunities for internal professional development and collaboration. If you can’t go gallivanting around the country, see lots of different conferences, there’s plenty of stuff you can do locally to train each other and work with each other and build the relationships that make workplaces pleasant as opposed to unpleasant. Maybe this is just my cult of manners thing, but I really believe in it, why go to work at a place that doesn’t feel good to go to work at? It doesn’t make sense to me. I really think that people should cultivate an ethic of professional, collaborative, supportive collegial ethic. I think it’s absolutely essential. So mind your manners basically. Thanks mom!

Ellie: Indeed. Well thank you so much Char, this has been fantastic!

Char: Thanks for the interview. You’re a friend of mine, so it’s kind of funny to be in this situation. I’ve been really fortunate to work on projects that I really really care about and have had the opportunity to think really hard about and it’s awesome to be able to talk about them. If anybody reads the report and has any questions about it, just please let me know. I’m a nerd and I love talking about research. Just hit me up, my email’s in the back. All right?

Ellie: Thanks for tuning in and as always, we welcome your comments.

by Flickr user foreversouls

In researching this piece I found that much has been written about librarian/faculty relationships. I found articles on working with faculty to build assignments and even whole courses from the ground up. I found articles on the importance of collaboration and establishing positive relationships. I will not be reiterating those well made arguments.

Instead, I will be asking (and answering): what do you do after that student walks in, assignment in hand that you know just isn’t fair to them? I’m writing not as a veteran, but as a new recruit, someone who, until a few months ago, never even considered the possibility of talking to faculty about their assignments. I had heard of librarians providing assistance in designing library related assignments, but never offering unsolicited feedback.

I remember both the assignment that opened my eyes to this possibility and the one that was my personal tipping point. The eye opening experience occurred at my moonlighting gig at a four year institution. We kept getting students who had the same (admirable) weekly assignment: find and read a newspaper article covering the event they were studying that week. The article (or possibly other primary source document) had to have been written during the time of the event and from the perspective of the people involved. We had been doing fine helping them find historical and foreign papers as needed, until they came to the Ottoman Empire. And it didn’t stop there. The class was a survey of world history. They continued to have topics that simply might not have ever been documented by the people involved, unlikely in newspaper article form, certainly not in English, and may not have ever been translated into English if it did manage to get written down and preserved. African events were also particularly difficult. One of the other reference librarians called the teacher to explain that for many of these events it was going to be exceedingly difficult if not impossible for students to find the required articles. In the end, the faculty member agreed to allow the students to use international English language papers if necessary.

This was a revelation to me. The moxie! The nerve! The courage! Who was she to tell a faculty member there was a problem with her assignment? Course assignments are the purview of the instructor. How did she have the self-assurance to consider it her place? How did she have the skill to affect change and the finesse to do so without offending? And yet when the librarians told me the assignment had been modified they said it as though this were an everyday occurrence, that they discuss assignments with faculty all the time and the faculty are usually responsive. This wasn’t covered in library school and it isn’t common practice at my day job, so I was struck in particular that the librarians did not think this was anything special. To me it seemed incredibly liberating to take action rather than be silently frustrated. The seed was planted.

My personal tipping point happened when a student came in to me at my community college job and needed to have at least one print article. I started with my usual, “the library databases have the same articles and still totally count,” but she interrupted me. No, actually, her teacher had specifically said that those do not count. She had to physically touch the original source. At my college we have almost completely transitioned to online versions for our articles. Luckily it turned out she just needed one print source, it didn’t have to be a journal article, so I was able to help her find a suitable encyclopedia article.

I had encountered the “must have a print source” requirement before, but this was the first time I had a student tell me that the teacher had explicitly said the library databases did not count. My first thought was to assume the requirement was an attempt to force the students into the library. Personally, I was more impressed that the student had already found a number of scholarly articles in our databases. But then I wondered whether this was another case of lumping everything “online” into one category of “to be avoided” and perhaps not realizing that it is the same article regardless of format.

I sent out requests to my librarian friends and asked “How do you talk to teachers about their assignments?” Read on to find out. I’ve amalgamated their responses and organized them around some of the typical problems I’ve encountered to provide you with readily adaptable scripts which you are welcome to use. (Note: You will see some repeated sentiments as many of the arguments can and do overlap.)

The Scavenger Hunt

Scavenger hunt assignments are frustrating for everyone. Looking up trivia is not the same as conducting research and without a meaningful application of the process of using the library anything they learn through the scavenger hunt is less likely to stick.

“Resentment toward rather than appreciation of library research is the likely result of these assignments. Library assignments are more meaningful if students use the information they find for an authentic task related to the topics covered in the course.”¹

Outdated scavenger hunt assignments are even worse. Here’s one way to approach a faculty member with an outdated scavenger hunt assignment:

We had some of your students in the library today working on your scavenger hunt assignment that familiarizes them with library resources. We are excited that you are giving out an assignment like that, but some of the activities in the assignment are a little dated, since the scavenger hunt seems to be from 2004. Some of the paper handouts referred to in the assignment are now online. One of my librarians, [name], said she’d be very happy to get with you to help you update the assignment so it would be a bit more useful for your students. You might also want to look at the Info Game on the library web page. It’s something you could use as well. Library Services tries to get away from the scavenger hunt concept and I think [name] could help you come up with some excellent alternatives. She’s one of our most imaginative young librarians! You can reach [name] at [email] and [phone number]. We are very happy that you are using the library with your students!

In the interest of full disclosure, that email did not get us a reply. Being more comfortable with email myself, it tends to be my default communication method, but most likely a phone call or office visit is the better approach. However, I think the script is still worth sharing. The general tone and sentiment shows appreciation that the faculty member uses the library and lets her know that some of the questions are no longer applicable. It also offers assistance in the updating process. And as one of my respondents told me, “It doesn’t always work.”

“No Online Sources”

This is a nuanced declaration and a number of the headings below touch on some of the different aspects. Setting aside online library resources for a moment: a flat ban on anything found online not only eliminates a large number of incredibly useful sources (census data, CDC info, LOC historical documents, etc.), but it also discourages using and developing critical thinking skills.

In college, we try to focus students on *critically thinking* about authority and appropriateness. We’ve found that limiting students to print resources hurts their ability to find the resources they need, and they are not able to support their research project as well as they could if they were able to use the best sources regardless of format.

Of course there is always the question of what exactly the faculty meant by “no online sources.”

“The Internet” vs. Web Based Academic Resources

Often the student, the faculty, or both don’t differentiate between the free web and resources that the library has purchased, but are available electronically. The argument above about the value of allowing use of the free web notwithstanding, it may be necessary to clarify the instructor’s definition of what constitutes an “online source” and to ask that faculty member to assure his or her students that the library’s electronic resources are allowed.

I was helping one of your students recently who needed a print resource for an assignment and I thought there might have been a misunderstanding over the definition of what constitutes an “online source.” My understanding of the definition you’re using is that you exclude sources found in library subscription databases, not simply those found on web sites through Google or another search engine.

I’d like to assure you that the online articles and ebooks found through library databases are content that the library has purchased and are indeed the exact same content found in the print versions. As you may know, libraries are increasingly receiving journal subscriptions only electronically and discontinuing expensive print subscriptions. Among the many reasons for the current trend towards receiving these articles digitally is that it provides a better value for our students – one purchase makes all of the content available at all of our campuses and extension sites, rather than having to purchase separate print subscriptions for each of them. We are also able to provide access to a vast number of resources that we wouldn’t have physical space to store.

Because of this, students will often find the full text of the article in the database but we will not have a current print subscription of the same periodical title. In addition, as students are learning to evaluate information and sources, they may be confused as to why a scholarly source in a subscription database does not meet the assignment requirements. Finally, there is no easy way to lead students to print-only articles because our databases serve as indexes and many of them contain or link to full-text online.

With all of this in mind, I wondered if you would be willing to expand your definition of an acceptable source to include sources found in library subscription databases.

“I want to be sure they’re using the library” or “I just want them to have the experience”

As more and more resources go online and as libraries push to create virtual branches and online portals, physically coming in to the library becomes less and less necessary to complete a research paper. While my knee jerk reaction is frustration towards holding on to nostalgic perceptions of library as place, in reality, these are exactly the faculty that I should most appreciate. They value libraries and want to pass that on to their students. They’re on our side! Unfortunately, requiring a print source doesn’t necessarily achieve the intended goal. Instead, it often just means grabbing a source, any source, as long as it’s print, after the paper has already been mostly written.

We hear from many professors who are thankfully concerned that their students learn how to use a college library. If you want to be sure that your students use library resources, we have had a lot of success with students creating annotated bibliographies explaining why they chose each source, or alternately writing down the steps they took to find an article online through the library website and what qualities make the article appropriate for their paper for at least 1 of their sources. That way students are forced to think about process and quality of resources.

or

I am guessing that one reason for requiring print is to encourage students to visit the library in person. I completely understand that you want your students to learn how to use the library and critically think about authority and appropriateness. We do too! However, in many cases we’ve found that requiring a print resource can actually be counterproductive in this regard. Students wind up not being forced to use the critical thinking skills we’re requiring of them. They may use something that doesn’t work very well just to fill the requirement and they aren’t forced to consider authority, appropriateness of content, etc. Also, because most libraries are moving or have already moved to all online journals we’re concerned our students know what to expect now and in the future. We want them to leave here knowing how to use a library, including the subscription databases, and to have a clear understanding of the difference between articles found online through the library and those out on the open web.

or

It’s so important that students learn how to find authoritative journal articles. We want our students to be prepared for (grad school/work/4-year) and most (four year universities/schools with grad programs/corporations) have moved to all online journals. They may even be getting rid of their print archives and replacing them with online archives! We’re concerned our students know what to expect now and in the future. We want them to leave here knowing how to use a library.

This is also the place to offer an in library instruction session or a specialized assignment to accomplish the goal of getting the students in to the library.

We could also create a brief assignment which would require students to visit the library to find out about the resources and services available.

Sometimes the information just doesn’t exist.

I’ve already mentioned the newspaper articles from the time of an event, from the country where the event took place, when it took place in the distant past and in a country with a different language. Another example would be peer reviewed journal articles on an extremely recent event.

In this situation you can ask the teacher whether they have specific resources in mind. It is always possible that they know of a source that you don’t. Of course it is also possible that the library no longer has access to something the faculty member was accustomed to using in the past, or that a new faculty member simply isn’t familiar with your library’s particular collection yet and is making assumptions based on his or her former institution. This opens the door to discussing collection development and acquiring new resources to help support the curriculum. If neither of those are the case you can fall back on explaining types of information sources and why that information just isn’t readily available. One of the first things I ask students to do when beginning their research is to ask themselves who would have collected the information they’re looking for and how would they have then made it available. This is particularly helpful when trying to find statistics. But it is also helpful here in explaining why we’re not necessarily going to be able to find a newspaper article, in English, from the 1700’s in Turkey talking about a specific war from a specific side.

In the case of the peer reviewed journal article we can explain the peer review process, that it takes time, and that for this topic, perhaps newspaper articles from large papers or government publications could be considered authoritative. I want to leave you with a perspective that particularly struck me:

“The berating of faculty for not being intuitively information literate, or for not taking the time to become information literate is a puzzling attitude – particularly given librarians’ professed mandate to guide users and provide instruction in the use of information resources. … The images of troublesome, arrogant faculty, who have little understanding of librarians’ roles, point to a problem at the core of the relationship issue; that until librarians embrace faculty as clients themselves, deserving of the same level of respect and support afforded undergraduate and graduate students, IL librarians may continue to fight an uphill battle to bring faculty members onside. Why do librarians, for example, assume that faculty should necessarily understand what they have not been taught, or necessarily understand how to use information systems that are not user-friendly? Do librarians ask this of other users?”²

The further reading section contains a number of links to pages that various libraries have created to provide tips for instructors who want to create library related assignments. Some of the wording could be a tad friendlier in places, but the content is good. There are also links to a best practices discussion and a model program.

I hope that librarians who have been frustrated by what they felt was an unfair assignment feel both empowered to contact faculty and prepared with some tools to use. I hope that librarians who have been there and done that will share their stories of what to do and what to avoid in the comments.

Further reading:

• Share Your Teaching Tool Kit: Best Practices in Library Instruction Topic: Teaching to a Bad Assignment (Notes from ACRL IS Discussion)
• Mosley, Pixey Anne. “Creating a library assignment workshop for university faculty.” Journal of Academic Librarianship 24.1 (Jan. 1998): 33-41.
• Effective assignments using library and internet sources (From the University of California Berkeley)
• Creating Effective Research Assignments (From the University of Maryland)
• Designing Effective Library Assignments (From the University of North Carolina Wilmington)
• Integrating Library and Information Literacy into your Assignment (From St. Cloud State University)

Thanks to Liane Luckman and Meghan Sitar for sharing their strategies and to Andrew Shuping and Emily Ford for reviewing and editing.

1. From the University of California at Berkeley’s Effective Assignments Using Library and Internet Resources
2. From Julien, Heidi and Lisa M. Given. “Faculty-Librarian Relationships in the Information Literacy Context: A Content Analysis of Librarians’ Expressed Attitudes and Experiences.” <u>The Canadian Journal of Information and Library Science</u> 27.3 (2002/2003): 75-87.

Photo by Flickr user orangeacid

My alternate title for this post was “The Internet is awesome. Start acting like it.” It is a call to arms to shift our attitude away from magnifying the perils of online research and towards examining the many types of useful information along with how and when to use them; to shift our primary focus away from teaching how to find information and towards engaging critical thinking skills. Often we have just one class period with our students and “the greater need is evaluation; they already know at least one method of finding articles.” [1]

The kernel of this post emerged from a recent conversation with my brother. He asked me, “What would you estimate the ratio of inaccurate to accurate information on the Internet is?”

I hemmed and hawed and asked, “on the free web or including subscription sites?”

He clarified, “Well anytime I’ve randomly wanted to look something up … I’ve never come across something I’ve noticed to be faulty, but I wonder sometimes if A) I’ve totally been mislead by faulty info or B) if most stuff I’ve ever looked up is OK. But they make such a big deal to not trust things on the Internet unless you know the poster is reputable. I think information is more likely to be incomplete rather than flat out wrong. Go find something wrong on the Internet and give me a link.”

I sent him some of the standards:

• http://www.dhmo.org/ [2]
• http://zapatopi.net/afdb/ [3]
• http://zapatopi.net/treeoctopus/

He asked, “What search would bring those things up that you’d actually be looking for? I’m just curious sometimes about these things. I’m skeptical of the skeptics, you know.”

A bit of background: My brother and I are both within or at least near the cusp of the age groups defined as Millennials, digital natives, net generation, etc. We also come from a family that highly values education. We both have masters degrees; his is in science education. He teaches 9th grade science at a public school. In short, he’s an intelligent, well-educated, and Internet savvy young man. So his questions made me think hard about what I had learned about how to teach students to evaluate Internet sources.

Personally, I only know about those sites because people use them as examples when teaching how to evaluate websites. There are scores of sites that list examples for teachers to use. But I would argue that they are not the examples we should be using. They are not what will be on the first page of results on a real life information query. Or at least they wouldn’t be if so many education sites weren’t linking to them. [4] The real things they will typically encounter are much more complicated. And in all fairness, more likely to have decent information.

I’ll interject here with another anecdote as a case in point. I was helping a student who had to write a paper on psychedelic mushrooms. This is a recurring assignment from a Comp I professor who has his students write about various drugs, so I already knew from past experience that our library had relatively little information on this particular topic. The student had a note from her teacher saying she had relied too heavily on one particular source. She was frustrated because it had been the only place she had been able to find much of the information for her paper and now she wasn’t sure where else to look. It turned out to be an excellent teaching moment, and a much better example of the type of site we should be showing students how to evaluate. I explained the importance of looking for and reading the “about us” information and how she might not want to quote Fire and Earth Erowid in a college level paper. I also showed her that even though Fire and Earth don’t pass the credibility test, they did document their sources. It turned out that nearly every quote this student had selected for her paper had originally come from a government publication. Even better, the Erowid site included a direct link to the original source. I explained that the dates on these reports were a little older and showed her how she could find more recent information from the same government organizations. I very much doubt she followed up on every one, but hopefully she at least learned something about evaluating websites and following citations.

In “Dissecting the Web through Wikipedia,” Adam Bennington makes a similar case for using Wikipedia to teach these skills. [5]

“The goal here is to show students how to gather the same resources that support the Wikipedia entry. This helps expose the searcher to the wide variety of quality material contained in the library including the physical collection, electronic resources, and inter-library loan services (for resources not contained in the user’s home collection). It also gives the librarian a chance to explain how this content is different from what one might find with solely a Google search.”

I fully support Bennington in his focus on Wikipedia. It is a cultural phenomena that we ignore at our own (and our students’) peril. It is also another example of the complexity of Internet sources and another chance to practice critical thinking. When I discuss Wikipedia, I usually mention how Steven Colbert told his fans to change a Wikipedia entry on elephants to say “the number of elephants has tripled in the last six months.” So if you had seen it that day you might have believed that. In every class there are still students that didn’t know Wikipedia could be edited by anyone, so first it covers that feature. This example is not only about Wikipedia’s dangers though. The Wikipedia community responded quickly, fixing the error and protecting the page from further attack. So while it can be edited by anyone and errors do occur, so do corrections, another feature. We do our students a disservice when we dismiss such an amazing and useful resource, when instead we could be using it to teach them about the research process not to mention the power of individuals working together to share knowledge.

Using more realistic examples in our instruction and explaining the positive aspects as well as the negative will help both the students and our image. As my brother said, when he has searched for something online, he mostly receives decent information. Despite all the (certainly valid) questions about the secrets behind page ranking algorithms, a basic search will generally return fairly decent results with today’s technology. He (and our students) have every right to be skeptical of the skeptics. Condemning the Internet as a wasteland or a dangerous minefield when this is not the students’ personal experience only hurts our credibility.

Emily Drabinski summed up the severity of what is at stake in her comments on my first draft, “As a reference and instruction librarian, I feel like my entire job depends on whether or not students and faculty seek me out for help. Losing credibility by trying to convince students of a reality they have never experienced means I’ve lost a chance to seem authoritative and like I know what’s what.” If we continue to insist on this paradox between our authority and their personal experience we risk alienating the people we are trying to help.

In Free Culture, Elizabeth Daley discusses using various media in education, but her point applies here as well:

“You know, you’ve got Johnny who can look at a video, he can play a video game, he can do graffiti all over your walls, he can take your car apart, and he can do all sorts of other things. He just can’t read your text. So Johnny comes to school and you say, “Johnny, you’re illiterate. Nothing you can do matters.” Well, Johnny then has two choices: He can dismiss you or he [can] dismiss himself. If his ego is healthy at all, he’s going to dismiss you. [6]

In addition to using more realistic examples in our instruction, I’d also like to suggest a tiny change in vocabulary. When discussing sources let’s talk about whether they are appropriate to cite in the student’s paper, rather than whether they’re appropriate to use. There are many resources that are perfectly useful throughout the research process that may not be appropriate to cite in the final paper.

While pursuing my MSIS, I wrote a paper entitled “Writing Forms and Usage During the Viking Age.” Like every other student today, as part of my research process I did a Google search. I read Wikipedia entries. I also used the more encouraged sources, searching the library catalog and subscription databases, and browsing the shelves. This was an obscure subject and required a lot of digging. By far my most useful source was Vikinganswerlady.com. The Viking Answer Lady is Christie Ward. Her resume lists experience in computer science and web design, but no degrees and nothing related to viking studies. Our standard instruction would dismiss her site for not having an “about us” page and, after finding her resume, dismiss her as not an authority. Yet, reading through the site she is obviously dedicated, well read, and documents her sources.

from my bibliographic essay [7]:

“For a more in depth study of Viking Age literacy, I was lucky enough to be pointed towards James E. Knirk’s “Learning to Write with Runes in Medieval Norway” (Runica et mediævalia. Opuscula 2. Stockholm, 1994) and Aslak Liestøl’s “The Literate Vikings” (Proceedings of the Sixth Viking Congress. Uppsala, 1971). These two articles in particular provided much of the serious analysis that was missing from the easy to find general information. They also provided a large number of attempted and partial translations of runic inscriptions that helped inform my summaries of the various types extant.”

I was lucky enough to be pointed to those articles because I emailed Viking Answer Lady with my general thesis and asked her advice on where to look for more information. She might not fit the standard authority criteria that were established in the pre-Internet age, but I would argue she is most definitely an authority. Even if she is not an authority I would cite in a paper, she was an important step along the way of my research process.

We are quick to explain as it becomes easier and easier for anyone to put anything online that more and more incorrect, misleading, and otherwise “bad” information is becoming available. But the opposite is also true. It is just as easy for dedicated hobbyists, gifted amateurs, independent scholars and the like to put up incredibly useful information. (Not to mention marginal voices that are often excluded from more traditional modes of public discourse.) More and more organizations are providing their services and expertise online. We should be encouraging our students to take advantage of these wonderful resources, not handicapping them by refusing, discouraging, blocking, filtering, or otherwise denying access.

As we teach students to approach information critically we can also explain the importance of the intended use of the resource. To write a research paper on a medical condition you want to use reputable scientific information. But a chat room or forum might be much more useful for dealing with patients’ emotions and gathering first hand accounts, even if not all the scientific information in it is vetted. With these types of examples students can begin to learn to ask themselves questions about what types of information they need, who might have the information they are looking for, what type of person or group would have collected it and why, and where would it have been made available.

My brother asked in summary, “Basically, if you’re writing a paper for school, only use peer reviewed stuff.”

But it’s not that simple, is it? I sometimes moonlight at a wonderful four-year college where everyone has to take two courses that include in-depth position papers on controversial topics. Students (and even teachers sometimes) are often confused about whether what they’re looking at should count as authoritative. One of the examples I always give is that if you want to know the NRA’s stated position on gun control there’s no better place to go than the NRA website. If you want to know the statistics of children killed by their parents’ guns, I wouldn’t get it there. Another example: if you’re writing on Star Trek culture or the phenomena of fan fiction you would absolutely want to use fan sites. Rather than focus on these fan sites as examples of non-authority we should be focusing on clarifying your purpose and identifying what types of sources would fit.

I am calling for a shift in focus and in attitude. When deciding how to split your time, give precedence to critical thinking skills. Rather than extol the evils and dangers of the Internet, focus on the gems. In teaching how to find the gems we teach how to sift out the soil, sand and fool’s gold, but the emphasis should remain on the gems. Personal experience shows us that we can typically easily find anything we want online. Emphasizing the chaff discredits us. So as you go into your instruction sessions this next semester I encourage you to spend less time on Boolean and more time using realistic examples to help engage students in a critical discussion about how to best use the Internet for research.

Further Reading:

For lesson plans and concrete examples of how to incorporate these themes into your instruction see:

• Miller, Sara D. “Learning Outcomes, Instructional Design, and the 50-Minute Information Literacy Session.” Presented March 7, 2008 to the Library & Information Sciences Section.
• Bennington, Adam. “Dissecting the Web through Wikipedia.” American Libraries. August 2008: 46-48.

For more information on the growing importance of dedicated amateurs see:

• Howe, Jeff. “The Rise of Crowdsourcing.” Wired June 2006

Notes:

[1] Quoted from: Miller, Sara D. “Learning Outcomes, Instructional Design, and the 50-Minute Information Literacy Session.” Presented March 7, 2008 to the Library & Information Sciences Section.

[2] Just in case it’s not obvious: dhmo = h20 = water

[3] The tin foil hat site is often used in K-12 for website evaluation exercises. Read their response. Amusing and insightful.

[4] A fascinating aside: I did a Google search on “octopus” to see if the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus site would come up. It was the second result after the Wikipedia article, most likely because it is linked to off of so many education (read-reputable) web sites. But on the search results page, underneath the link, in brackets it says “Contains fictitious information.”

[5] Quoted from: Bennington, Adam. “Dissecting the Web through Wikipedia.” American Libraries. August 2008: 46-48.

[6] Quoted from: Lessig, Lawrence. Free Culture. While not directly related to this post, I wanted to share that this quote continues:

But instead, if you say, “Well, with all these things that you can do, let’s talk about this issue. Play for me music that you think reflects that, or show me images that you think reflect that, or draw for me something that reflects that.” Not by giving a kid a video camera and … saying, “Let’s go have fun with the video camera and make a little movie. But instead, really help you take these elements that you understand, that are your language, and construct meaning about the topic.”

[7] I just want to put a plug in for bibliographic essays as an excellent tool for ensuring real thought goes into selecting sources.

Photo by Flickr member houseofsims

I always feel the need to preface my praise for this book with a little background. I’ve read a slew of best sellers on behavior. I started when a friend was raving about Malcolm Gladwell. I picked up Blink and The Tipping Point and read through them to join in the discussion. I was generally entertained but not particularly blown away. Then I read Predictably Irrational in preparation for a panel with Dr. Ariely at ALA last year. The reviews compared it to Freakonomics, so I read that one too. Figuring I was on a roll, I ran into Sway and added it to my list. They were all quick, easy, and entertaining reads. But Made to Stick was the first to truly inspire me. I had to stop every couple of pages and share a passage with someone or make a note to myself about how I could apply a concept to my work. I’m not claiming that Made to Stick is full of revolutionary ideas. It’s not. It’s also not a librarianship book. It’s not even a teaching book. It’s a marketing book, and yet page after page I found ideas to apply in my information literacy classes and to other areas of librarianship. What Made to Stick does have are excellent examples across various disciplines. (It also has a nice sized font and a conversational tone that make for easy gym reading.)

I would like to share some of the insights that stuck with me, and, in the process, encourage you to read outside your typical areas and think of how you can apply what you learn to your work. Right now, in my personal practice, I’m focusing on my teaching and how to make my one shot presentations more effective, both with my students in the library and at conferences. The examples that dealt with teaching and the possible applications that struck me while reading are the ones that stuck with me, but there’s so much more to mine here, especially in terms of management and marketing.

The Heaths “wrote this book to help you make your ideas stick. By ’stick,’ we mean that your ideas are understood and remembered, and have a lasting impact – they change your audience’s opinions or behavior.” With that in mind they organized the book (and titled the chapters) around 6 major qualities of sticky ideas:

• Simplicity
• Unexpectedness
• Concreteness
• Credibility
• Emotions
• Stories

Again, none of this is revolutionary, but the examples (concreteness) and the Idea Clinics (sidebar thought exercises) in each chapter bring home the points. The acronym of SUCCESs was a little cheesy for my taste, but as one of my reviewers pointed out, librarians love acronyms and people remember mnemonics. So if it helps you, use it.

Simple

In the chapter on “Simple” there is an excellent detailed explanation of military strategy and the importance of the Commander’s Intent. The Commander’s Intent is the one line summary of the main objective, written at the top of the document that spells out the full strategy. There follows a detailed plan for how to achieve this, but there’s also a saying, “No plan survives contact with the enemy.” The message here is to find the core of the idea. The corollary is, “No lesson plan survives contact with teenagers,” something that I can relate to in my instruction. In fact, the majority of my sessions to coworkers begin with my asking them what they hope to get out of the class. I then sketch out the details of the lesson plan on-the-fly based on their answers. I have my Commander’s Intent in the form of the topic of the session, but am free to rearrange the actual class time based on the learners’ needs. I am still working on how to pull this method into my one shot classes, where the students are much less likely to be there of their own volition and therefore less likely to have personal objectives for the class.

Made to Stick stresses that making an idea simple is “about elegance and prioritization, not dumbing down.” I’ve been struggling to determine how much information to cover in my one shot sessions. My main objective that I repeat throughout my presentation is, “I don’t expect you to remember how to do all of this. I want you to remember that the librarians know it and you can always come to us with questions.” Likewise when I cover evaluating web sites, I’ve cut it down to “Ask yourself ‘Who wrote this?’” Yes, there’s much more to it, but not much more that can be covered and absorbed in such a short period of time. “People are tempted to tell you everything, with perfect accuracy, right up front, when they should be giving you just enough info to be useful, then a little more, then a little more.” I think so many of us struggle against this Curse of Knowledge – having difficulty seeing what we’re trying to teach through the eyes of someone who doesn’t already know it. “As a result, we become lousy communicators.” Working to make our ideas simple is probably the most challenging idea covered in the book, but certainly worth the effort.

Unexpected

The Nordstrom’s customer service training teams use a list of unexpected examples to drive home the importance of outstanding customer service. Some stories of outstanding “Nordies” include the salesperson who warmed the customer’s car while he finished shopping, the one who ironed a customer’s shirt so he could wear it later that day and the one who refunded a set of tire chains – even though Nordstrom’s doesn’t sell tire chains. Telling people something unexpected shakes them out of their standard assumptions. Most people would presume to know what good customer service is, but the unexpected story of warming a customer’s car causes them to reevaluate the meaning of outstanding.

This brings up another common problem in my classes: battling over-confidence. If my students assume they already know everything they need to know about doing research, why would they want to listen to me? Both Made to Stick and one of my colleagues have suggested the same solution: engage people by having them vote publicly and commit to an answer. Made to Stick tells of a study of 5th and 6th graders who were assigned to interact on a topic. They were broken into two groups. One group’s conversation was lead to foster disagreement, the other group’s conversation was steered towards consensus. The group whose discussion had more disagreements was more likely to skip recess to watch a video on the topic. They were more engaged than the group that quickly came to consensus. As I reviewed this section I was reminded of a recent discussion over iClickers. One of my coworkers said that she has the students vote on whether a particular site is appropriate for college level research. After they vote she has them find someone with the opposite point of view and try to persuade them. She has them vote again after their discussion and finds that the majority have come around the the right conclusion.

Concrete

“World class customer service” is abstract. A Nordie ironing a customer’s shirt is concrete. Simple and unexpected are hard and take effort. Being concrete just takes remembering to do it and not slipping into the Curse of Knowledge. There are a number of great uses of concreteness in terms of marketing in this section. In one example the people behind Hamburger Helper took the abstract idea of their users and nonusers and made them into concrete detailed pictures of individuals. The Hamburger Helper product team had multiple binders full of data on their customers, so much that it was overwhelming. They put the binders aside and sent small groups into homes where they saw that mothers valued predictability in flavor and convenience to make. Seeing the mother searching for her child’s old familiar flavor on the shelf amongst a slew of new alternatives and then preparing dinner with a child on her hip made the idea of convenience concrete. Hamburger Helper ended up simplifying the product line and, subsquently, increasing sales. Creating a concrete, detailed description of your library’s users sounds like an excellent exercise for an all staff day or, even better, an outcome of a full blown user study. At my community college we would likely create three: the transitioning-to-a-4-year-university student, the two-year-certificate/workforce student, and the continuing education student.

Credible

Authority and celebrity are two ways to boost your credibility, but thankfully this chapter spends more time on options that are readily available to the average person. One such option is the anti-authority. Take Pam Laffin – the 29 year old who started smoking at age 10, developed emphysema by 24, and suffered a failed lung transplant. Pam became an anti-smoking spokesperson appearing in ads on MTV and Dawson’s Creek. Using these kinds of vivid concrete details and putting things on a human scale are two alternative ways to evoke credibility. To show just how powerful details can be, the authors tell the story of a study in which jurors were deciding a custody case. The jurors were more likely to believe the defendant was a good mother if her testimony included the specific description that the boy used a Darth Vader toothbrush while she ensured that he brushed his teeth at night. This little detail of the type of toothbrush lent significant credibility to her testimony. One of my coworkers tells a cautionary story of the student who waited to the last minute and tried to find everything online and the one who followed the steps she was about to teach them for good research. What other ways can we bring instruction out of the abstract, into the specific and human?

One of the most applicable ideas in this section is that of testable credentials. The book gives two great examples of this. First is Ronald Reagan asking the American public in his 1980 presidential debate, “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?” The second example is taken from a workshop held by the Positive Coaching Alliance. The trainers “use the analogy of an ‘Emotional Tank’ to get coaches to think about the right ratio of praise, support and critical feedback.” They ask the coaches to say something to drain a player’s tank after he has flubbed a key play. The coaches excel at this. When they are asked to fill the tank the room goes silent. “Observing their own behavior, the coaches learn the lesson – how they found it easier to criticize than to support, to think of ten clever insults rather than a single consolation. [They] found a way to transform [their] point into a testable credential, something the coaches could experience for themselves.” I know that my instruction could benefit from relying less on the authority and lecture angle. It’s a hard habit to break, especially since the lecture style is my personal preferred learning method, but I also see the need to foster increased critical thinking skills, allowing students to reason through more lessons on their own.

Emotional

This was my favorite chapter. Getting people to believe you is only one step in changing minds. To take action, they have to care. There are a number of incredibly compelling stories in this chapter. There’s the effectiveness of charity on a human scale (sponsoring a child rather than giving to the general cause) summed up by the quote from Mother Teresa, “If I look at the mass, I will never act. If I look at the one, I will.” And there’s the success of the Truth cigarette campaign, which tapped into anti authoritarianism. The authors also remind us not to overlook self interest – what’s in it for you? They discuss Maslow’s Pyramid and comment that most self interest appeals invoke the physical, security, and esteem layers. We need to come out of Maslow’s basement. The shining example of this is the military mess hall operator who deemed himself in charge of morale (transendence on Maslow’s pyramid). He has soldiers that commute in from the well-protected Americanized areas just for Sunday dinner. We tend to realize higher level appeals work on us, but then assume we need to appeal to the base needs of others.

This chapter also has an excellent idea clinic on the need for algebra. It begins with the question “Why study algebra?” and a typical conference answer suffering from the Curse of Knowledge which includes gems like “Algebra provides procedures for manipulating symbols to allow for understanding the world around us.” The following slightly better example has things like, you need it to get your diploma, it will help you with reasoning skills, etc. But then the winner:

Stories

Stories “provides simulation (knowledge about how to act) and inspiration (motivation to act). Note that both benefits, simulation and inspiration, are geared towards generating action … we’ve seen that a credible idea makes people believe. An Emotional idea makes people care …the right stories make people act.” There are a number of great stories in this section, but the most important aspect for me was the emphasis on the art of spotting – not making up – these stories. We encounter inspiring stories all the time. I know that a number of libraries collect these stories from their patrons and put them on their web sites. This section has ideas on how to spot ones that are most likely to inspire others to action. I will be looking for ways to incorporate more stories into my instruction, but I think the real strength here would be in promoting libraries to our communities at large.

I hope that I’ve inspired you to pick up a copy of Made to Stick, read through it yourself and look for ways to apply some of the ideas it explains. The ideas from Made to Stick are also a good example of how reading outside the library literature can help us expand our practice without reinventing the wheel. There are so many options. You can start with the straight one to one correlation. Interested in marketing in your library? Read general marketing content. Same goes for management, teaching, presenting, etc. Also consider going to primary sources. Watch good presentations and think about what was good about them. Swap out “presentations” for “managers” or “teachers” and do it again. I’m also including a list of suggestions for further reading, mostly on presenting, that I’ve found inspiring recently. If you have suggestions to add to the list that have inspired you or ways you’ve incorporated some of these ideas, please let me know in the comments.

Suggestions for further reading:

• Authors@Google: Garr Reynolds – “encourages you to think differently and more creatively about the preparation, design, and delivery of your presentations”
• Financial crisis simplified (a whiteboard presentation) – an example of a great concrete analogy
• Book Recommendation: Letting Go of the Words – a book on designing for web content, useful for our websites, but also for presentations
• TED Talks – a collection of amazing and inspiring speakers