Three years, twenty committees, twelve hundred instruction sessions, forty thousand monograph purchases, and half a million reference questions later, I’m at the point in this librarian job where I have enough experience to know how to get things done, and also enough to wonder, “What exactly am I doing?” The more you know, the more you know you don’t know, as they say.

I exaggerate the numbers, but the above four things do seem to encompass the majority of what I do from day to day. Of course there’s a wide variety of additional tasks that fill up my time in the office, from updating my library’s Facebook page to presenting at conferences. All these things combine into the work portion of my life. Is it a good job? Undoubtedly. Is it fulfilling? Usually. Fun? Sometimes. But I can’t help but wonder what it’s all for.

The danger of the summer lull, particularly for academic librarians — but perhaps for others, too — is that after the frenetic pace of the regular semesters, we suddenly have time to reflect. I call it a “danger” because it’s much easier to speed through life and work without asking too many questions. Questions can get you into trouble if you don’t like the answers. But then a little trouble isn’t always a bad thing.

My spring semester ended about a month ago. Immediately after finals I went on a lovely long vacation, and now I’m back at work, waking up early thanks to jet lag, and taking a little time to think and ask questions. After all, this year was my midpoint in moving towards tenure at my institution, a circumstance that required me to submit formal documents to my colleagues so that they could offer constructive feedback about my progress in this position. It seems fitting, now that I have been evaluated by others on my librarianness, that I do a little review of my own and decide what being a librarian means to me.

The Librarian Identity, or Lack Thereof

One of my favorite things about being a librarian, and an academic reference and instruction librarian in particular, is the variety: the variety of tasks and duties I’m responsible for, the variety of people I interact with, the variety of information and topics I deal with on a daily basis. The average day in the life of an academic librarian is notoriously difficult to pin down, since the list of potential tasks accomplished in a single day is seemingly endless. I enjoy knowing that every day I do something a little bit different and yet it all somehow fits under my job description.

On the other hand, it makes me wonder if my job description should be quite so broad. Not that mine is different from those of identical jobs in other places; it’s not. I greatly enjoy the many types of tasks that cross my desk on a daily basis, but I see a red flag, too, in the sheer yawning chasm of work before me. In the back of my mind is the nagging concern that my work might be oversized, unfocused, and possibly on the edge of unmanageable. Yet if I wanted to narrow it down to a few critical tasks, I’m not sure I could; too much else would be neglected or would get in the way. So I find myself asking, what’s at the core of it all? What is the real work of librarianship?

This last question brings to mind a poem by Gary Snyder, “I Went Into the Maverick Bar,” in which the main character of the poem adapts his appearance to fit in with the customers of a country bar in New Mexico. The real work of this poem, the work of coming to terms with place and identity, is far larger than any job, but if we shrink it down and tweak it slightly (with apologies to Mr. Snyder), the nature of the poem is still applicable.

Yes, I’m calling librarianship my “maverick bar.” Not literally of course, since our workplaces in no way resemble the bourbon-and-beer scene in the poem, but I have the sense sometimes that librarians are a little bit like those folks in the bar – a little displaced, not quite sure who they are or what they should be doing. Every culture has a life of its own beyond the individuals, and our library culture, too, is not quite native to where we now live. Libraries were built for a print-based culture of collecting and preserving, but that culture has shifted dramatically around us while we continue to dance, a little awkwardly, to the band.

Our search for identity is clear to me as the source of many younger librarians’ efforts over the past several decades to combat the “librarian stereotype.” Any culture that is so intent on making a sharp break from the recent past makes me suspicious.  I’m unable to accept that the inherent nature of librarianship has changed dramatically, even if it sports a nose ring and carries a smartphone. Then there are the varied, insistent, even desperate initiatives to redefine our buildings in ways that will continue to appeal to library users, campus administrations, trustees, and boards of directors. I’ll be first in line to admire these new buildings and renovations, with their polished work spaces and bright, airy environments, but these new buildings may simultaneously advance us even further on the path to identity crisis. They include less and less of any particular thing that one would identify as characteristic of a library. After all, what purpose does a bookless, wholly electronic library serve that distinguishes it from an overblown student center? In this article from the Mercury News, note the paragraph:

Libraries are the very heart of the research university, the center for scholarship. But the accumulation of information online is shifting their sense of identity.

Shifting their sense of identity to what, exactly? The article doesn’t say.

These days we’re better at knowing what we’re not (bun-wearing shushers) than putting our finger on what exactly we are and what we’re here for. Perhaps it’s this insecurity that causes librarians to try to do so many things all at once. We leap into social networks, digital repositories, and online services; we reconceive our collections; we become publishers as well as collectors; we reach out to our communities, campuses, and potential donors, stretching ourselves thin; we digitize; we redefine our jobs, and redefine them again; we rebuild, restructure, rearrange; we stand alert, ready for anything. And even when we are self-conscious enough to acknowledge our situation, we still don’t have any answers. In a blog post more than a year ago Bobbi Newman pointed to this problem, but rather than offering solutions she ends with the (admittedly potent) line, “We’ve got to change, and I mean really change.”

The urgency and the need for change is clear to all of us; what no one can seem to put their finger on is how to change. And that leads to more identity crisis and more desperate grabbing at the technologies, tools, and strategies that might work in the short-term. We’re running on the information hamster wheel; we simply can’t do everything. And rather than try to do it all, it might be better if we do, well, nothing for a while. You don’t tell someone hyperventilating in panic to run some sprints, do you? No, you give them a paper bag or some distraction, speak calmly, and encourage them to sit down, relax, and put their fear aside. Similarly, what libraries may need to do is stop, take a breather, release our fears of irrelevance and ask our patrons, campuses, administrations, donors — and yes, ourselves — what is our real work and what does it look like in 2010 and beyond?

If indeed libraries have become irrelevant in the age of the almighty Google — and I don’t think we have — wouldn’t you rather know than keep panting along on the hamster wheel, accomplishing nothing?

In Search of the Real Work

What librarians do have is a set of core values that serves as the backbone of our identity and draws together even those working in nontraditional positions. Increasing access to all types of information and all perspectives while protecting intellectual freedom and privacy; these are the values that unite us. I think every library student gets (or should get) a little rush upon first discovering the ALA Library Bill of Rights and realizing the larger issues that play a role in this field. If we boil it down, the major value expressed in this document is intellectual freedom, the full and equal access to all types of information for everyone. In my mind, this is one of the most critical roles a librarian can play. (Though I have heard some debate on this; for more, stay tuned for Ellie Collier’s post later this month).

The values that guide librarians don’t address the core tasks that cement these values to our daily lives in the field. While I would like to believe that my primary responsibilities reflect these values, I don’t knowingly achieve any goals related to intellectual freedom in my daily tasks. There is some gap between what I stand for as a librarian and what I do in practice, as all idealism shrivels a bit in the face of reality. I must please my boss, my tenure reviewers, my students, my campus administration. At a minimum, I hope my theory and practice don’t contradict each other.

I wonder, too, if there are common tasks across all librarians’ various job types, professional organizations, and institutions. I can’t think of any other career that has so many different manifestations of what work in that field might look like. I’m not sure whether to call it flexibility or lack of focus. Just think about the various titles that librarians work under: Emerging Technologies Librarian, Copyright Librarian, First-Year Services Librarian, Digital Initiatives Librarian, as well as all the ones that are more traditional and familiar. Not to mention librarians working in other information-related organizations that aren’t libraries.

A considered look backwards at the librarian’s primary roles throughout history is interesting in the effort to make meaning out of this. In “Tracing the Archetypal Academic Librarian,”  Stephen E. Bales compares academic librarian job duties during two periods of early history with those of today. After reviewing the activities that took place in libraries during the time of Assurbanipal (roughly 600s BCE) and Alexandria (200s BCE), Bales concludes that most of the primary roles of librarians have not changed over the course of several millennia: librarians from all periods of time have been involved in these tasks: identifying, selecting, acquiring, organizing, retrieving, conserving, and conducting some sort of scholarship. Bales is not the only one to note that librarianship, historically, has taken place largely behind the scenes, and this was still the case in the late eighteen hundreds.

No longer. Bales’ insights might be helpful if not for the fact that I do very few of these things as part of my daily work as an academic librarian in 2010. Not many librarians I know do much of this at all. In fact, the two things I spend a large proportion of my time on – outreach and teaching – didn’t even make the cut in Bales’ listing of major roles. Certainly in former millennia librarians had no interest in sharing their collections; documents were reserved for elite and wealthy scholars. Nor does Bales mention professional service outside of scholarship, which is a tremendous time commitment for many academic librarians. In my opinion, Bales’ historical assessment of librarian duties doesn’t really cut to the “real work” of the field today.

To gain a more modern perspective on the priorities of a librarian position, we can review evaluation documents from institutions that break out task areas into particular percentages. For instance, I happened upon a handbook from Florida International University Libraries (pdf) that prioritizes the work of an information services librarian in this manner:

35% Reference/Research Assistance

25% Information Literacy

15% Collection Development

5% Liaison

15% Non-Scheduled Activities (service, conferences, professional development)

5% Other Duties as Assigned by Department Head

While I don’t advocate trying to break down one’s work schedule according to this sort of math (think of all the grey areas), it does make it clear that answering questions and teaching are by far the top two responsibilities at this institution. That sounds about right to me. Of course, if we look closely at each of those categories we can see that they each encompass a wide range of more specific tasks. “Information Literacy,” for example, might include teaching (one-time workshops, for-credit courses, and perhaps additional sessions), assessment of current instruction, planning for future instruction, creating promotional and informational materials, etc. Although it’s just one priority area, I’m sure it could fill a full-time librarian’s work schedule all on its own.

It’s clear to most of us working in academic librarian positions – and probably all librarian positions – that the full array of responsibilities and duties our jobs encompass are simply not achievable in a regular work week. In case we thought it was just our imaginations, the University of California at Berkeley conducted a workload survey of their librarians and received 31 responses that indicated overwhelmingly that getting the work done is more than full-time commitment. It’s no surprise that Berkeley librarians largely felt obliged to work some evenings and weekends to keep up; even those in smaller institutions do the same. This makes it even more important to identify what our real work is, and to prioritize tasks in a way that empowers us to accomplish it.

Conclusions, Such as They Are

There’s not much discussion in the literature of librarianship, so far as I can tell, to answer my rather philosophical question about what our “real work” is. I have located books and articles about job duties and priorities, some of which I mentioned above, but little that attempts to dig to the core of our professional beings. Historically, I could argue that the real work revolved around collecting and preserving documents in the interests of greater knowledge. Today, although that is one piece of the work most librarians do, it has certainly been deemphasized.

The more I consider this question, too, the more I doubt that it could possibly have a rational, scientific answer. I relive that grad-school rush upon reading the Library Bill of Rights, which is about as real as anything I could point to in this field. I think about the deep, true gratification I enjoy when I manage to connect an interested, intellectual person with new information that contributes to their perspective on a topic. I think about my colleagues in academic libraries, and about my colleagues in public, school, and special libraries. Isn’t it true, in the end, that our real work is more about values than tasks?

And that greatest value of all, even beyond any document compiled by any professional association: Knowledge, with a capital “K.” I see no work in librarianship more real than the collection, protection, and dissemination of Knowledge, and the empowerment of others in means to acquire it. Although libraries historically were more about hoarding Knowledge than sharing it, our work has not otherwise changed much over the millennia. The internet, while making information more widely available, has simultaneously obscured true Knowledge and increased the importance of our real work.

This revelation doesn’t directly help me manage my workload and organize tasks, but it does help to keep me theoretically and emotionally grounded in my job. My real work is Knowledge. If I hold that goal in mind, the details of how I accomplish it on daily basis begin to fall into place. Some of my duties, like teaching, support Knowledge directly. Other tasks, like tracking reference questions, are not tied to that higher goal but are necessary for the reality of my workplace. If I want to continue in my job, I can’t just stop doing those less crucial tasks, but I can prioritize my efforts and save the best of my energy for the real work of librarianship.

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Readers: I don’t speak for every librarian, just myself. What are your thoughts about the “real work” of librarianship? Your comments below are welcome.

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Author’s Note, Or, A Confession and Suggestion for Further Reading: I’m embarrassed to say that I was unfamiliar with (or had forgotten) “The Darien Statements on the Library and Librarians” until after writing this post, but now that I have I strongly encourage anyone who is thinking about the real work of librarianship to read them. The document is an excellent, timeless vision of our field, and I nod to the wisdom of those who conceived it.

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My thanks to the entire cast of ItLwtLP as well as Eric Frierson and Rachel Slough for their invaluable feedback on drafts of this post. I have never before had so many helpful and insightful responses to any single piece of writing, and I hope the results reflect it.

During the last few frenzied weeks of the academic semester last month I came across an article I reviewed quickly and put aside, but which has lingered in the back of my mind despite the fact that I can’t seem to find it again. Essentially, as a I recall, the article addressed the manner in which academic (and school?) libraries are evolving more fully into social spaces for students, along the lines of a second student union or a glorified internet cafe. The article raised the question in my mind of whether libraries, if they continue to progress in this direction, will eventually just merge into the campus student union, which also provides computers, study spaces, and food options. Do we have a greater vision, a plan for where we’re going, or are we just rolling with the times?

I spent a lot of time last fall researching an annotated bibliography on the Learning Commons that caused me to reflect on some of the same questions. In 1985 Pat Molholt published an article in the Journal of Academic Librarianship titled “On Converging Paths” in which she suggested that libraries and computer labs were likely to merge into one. At this point we can say that she was partially correct, as the job description of a librarian now overlaps strongly in many ways with an information technology job description (I am not sure the reverse is true, however). As a reference librarian, I probably spend about the same amount of time helping students with research as I do helping them with technology. At many institutions the relationship between the library and IT department are very close, and they often reside in nearby office spaces, but I am not aware of any place where they have yet been merged.

The idea of combining libraries with information technology departments is scary to many, but also a very natural step. Many libraries have their own IT departments, or rely heavily on an organizational unit to build and update their website, keep online resources correctly linked and current, provide online reference services and technology support for patrons, and host multimedia content, among other things. If librarians were more highly trained in back-end technology, think of how much further we could take many of our instructional and service initiatives! If IT professionals were trained as librarians, the same would be true.

If you’re not familiar with the concept, the Learning Commons is the latest manifestation of the 1990′s Information Commons, which was a later manifestation of the 1980′s library computer lab. First we put computers in libraries and thought that was pretty cool. Later, libraries at some notable institutions such as The University of Iowa and The University of Arizona decided to integrate their computer labs more fully by expanding the labs, providing a greater variety of software and hardware, offering combined research and technology help desks, and building computer classrooms where online research skills could be taught. That was the Information Commons.

More recently, a number of universities are beginning to build on the Information Commons concept with the goal of a “seamless learning environment” in mind. The Learning Commons includes, in addition to the usual computer labs and classrooms, student services resources such as the writing center, career services, and residence life. In some cases these are physical facilities that combine several units, in other cases they are programmatic or service collaborations (If you’re interested in learning more about this, try Learning Commons: Evolution and Collaborative Essentials or any of the other recent books on the topic). Apparently, this is the next step in our evolution: it’s like creating the WalMart of libraries where students can do their one-stop shopping for everything college.

I think this is a really interesting direction, and I’m sure many of the Learning Commons will be (and continue to be) highly successful. The goal of the Learning Commons is to identify the ways students learn today and creative a responsive environment for them. But it makes me wonder what our libraries and our jobs as librarians will look like in the future if we continue to change in the direction of merging our buildings and services with everyone else’s buildings and services. Will we even call libraries “libraries” then, or will we have more elusive names such as “Integrated Services Building”? At the ISB you can grab a cup of coffee, research and write a paper, troubleshoot your registration problems, and sign up for the dorm room lottery. I wonder if it will be the same person who can help students with all those things.

And the most important question of all: do we know where we’re going?

What Makes a Library a Library?

As I wrestle with this question, I have found interesting a conversation taking place among public and school librarians about what makes a library a library.” Sarah Houghton-Jan began the discussion early in December on the subject of King County’s new “Express Library,” an unstaffed self-serve library branch. After 95 percent of local residents said they would prefer it, King County created a “mini-branch” where patrons can pick up holds, and the library system even threw in two computers for catalog searching and a small browsing collection. Can one even call this a library? Houghton-Jan is not sure:

It raises the question–-what makes a library a library? And not just because there aren’t live staff there. There is not a full browsing collection of materials, no internet-enabled computers, no wifi, no rooms to read or study in, no programs, etc.

From her comment we might extrapolate that what makes a library a library are the things she listed: librarians and staff, a large collection, computers and internet access, study space, and programs of some variety.  But a few days later, a set of video interviews published by Buffy Hamilton from Creekview High School in Canton, Georgia, seem to disagree, at least from the teen perspective. These young people generally see the library as a place to both hang out with friends and get their work done. Out of the twelve students she interviewed (she notes eleven, but one video clip has two students), I was surprised to see that nearly half, or five students, cited “atmosphere” as what makes a library a library. What constitutes the library atmosphere was unclear.

I think the commonly cited quality among both groups of students — the library as a place to read, study, work, and/or do research — is informative, and obviously carries over into college students’ views of the library. For students of all ages, the library is a place to get out of the house or dorm room and get work done. For older students, there is some social value to the library as well. I appreciate Scott Bennett’s view of the library’s value in the modern higher educational institution:

The library is the only centralized location where new and emerging information technologies can be combined with traditional knowledge resources in a user-focused, service-rich environment that supports today’s social and educational patterns of learning, teaching, and research. Whereas the Internet has tended to isolate people, the library, as a physical place, has done just the opposite (p.3).

The library as a place that counteracts the isolating nature of the internet is something I can get on board with. And again, it reinforces the idea of the library as an increasingly social venue.

The value of the library as place appears to be alive and well, but what kind of “place” are we talking about? It seems important that we retain the “atmosphere” the interviewed students cite, but first we need to know what that atmosphere is. If our libraries morph into something else by blending with other campus entities, the qualities students enjoy might disappear. On the other hand, perhaps those qualities are so central to the library that they will persist regardless.

Vision: Do We Have It?

Being a librarian these days sometimes feels like being a passenger on a fast-moving train. We sit inside, hoping there is someone in front running the show, or hoping at a minimum that another train won’t run us off the track. But we sit looking out the side windows without having any idea what may be coming along the road in front of us. Whether or not anyone’s in charge, it can be hard to tell. Lots of people have taken stabs at predicting the future of libraries, and I can’t say with any authority (until we get there!) whether they have it right. Will we be cultural centers, wholly special collections, digital repositories, absorbed into Google, or just plain out of business?

Out of curiosity I searched the last six years of the journal Library Administration & Management for articles with “future” in the title, and found only five. Two were a two-part article on the future of libraries by Bonnie A. Osif from 2008 that summarized the variety of perspectives about library futures as represented in the literature. I must admit to being surprised to not see something more visionary in this journal. Perhaps I am looking in the wrong place. But it seems to me, and I don’t mean to criticize any of our great library leaders, that most of the “vision” I see in the library field is just an expansion of what already exists. Building on our strengths is a great thing, but it is a different thing than having a vision towards which to build our future.

Who is our Henry Ford, our Steve Jobs? Who is leading us to a place where libraries will thrive and succeed in an uncertain future? Some may argue that we don’t need visionaries to lead us, but I disagree. Most of us work day to day with our heads down, just trying to get everything done. We need leaders who have the time and space to be constantly looking ahead, watching the clouds, and anticipating the storms and sunshine to come.

Looking Forward

I don’t have the answers — only a lot of questions. It seems to me that the first thing to ask is what we want libraries to be in the future. Or would it be better phrased to ask what our students want libraries to be in the future? Do we serve our students best if we turn libraries into learning centers combined with various other campus units? From my admittedly inexperienced perspective, and considering the state of the economy, I can see this road leading us towards a place of campus mergers. Putting our instinct for self-preservation aside, is an eventual merger of the library, IT department, and (potentially) other offices desirable? Students might love it, as it will avoid their being redirected multiple times to the office that “handles that,” but will it be the best way to serve their information needs?

Of course we must balance what we want for libraries with what is possible, considering the changes in technology and learning that are still happening. We can’t predict where learning theory may take us next, but I learned while at The University of Arizona that sitting around and waiting for the future to take us somewhere is an exercise in failure. Peter Drucker and other great management gurus encourage us to take control of our future by constantly assessing our successes and failures, experimenting with new innovations, and shedding those aspects of our work that don’t measure up.

I like to consider what our libraries would look like if we tore them all down, erased our memories, and rebuilt them from the ground up. No doubt we would focus first on what our patrons need and use. Not books, that’s for sure — forget about print. Computers and software, yes, but everything will have to be wireless so buy up those laptops. Online resources for sure, but reconfigured in simpler ways. We may still buy academic databases, but now that we’re cross-trained as IT specialists we’ll build our own search engines that cross all of our various information platforms seamlessly. Our buildings will be full of flexible social spaces that can be used for teaching, gaming, group work, and just hanging out with friends. We’re not going to design around the needs of computers anymore. We’ll share building space with the writing center, coffee shop, tutoring, business center, and maybe others. Perhaps we’ll be a big educational mall. WalLibrary. LibraryMart.

Overall, our libraries are innovative and ever seeking improvement, but let’s face it: we’re turtles among a race of hares when it comes to moving with the times. We grab onto new technologies eagerly, but don’t know what to do with them or how to use them effectively. We’re just starting to understand that assessment is important. If we’re honest with ourselves, we know that as a whole we move too slowly. And while it may get us somewhere faster, riding along in somebody else’s train may or may not take us where we want to be.

I hear a little shrillness in the voices of many librarians who speak or write about the future. We argue with the world at large, insisting that not everything is available online, that libraries are not going out of business. We are insecure about our future and whether we’ll have jobs in ten or twenty years. I appreciate the optimism of those who are prepared to evolve with what comes, but I think that is missing the point a little bit. We should not just adapt to fit our changing present, but plan ahead and prepare and take the future by the throat saying, “Throw at me what surprises you will, I am ready for you!”

Who are our visionaries, who is leading this charge of libraries into the future? I’m really asking you, ItLwtLP reader, because I don’t know. I would love to hear about your vision and those you think visionary in the comments below. Perhaps if we put our heads together, we’ll start to see a little glimmer of what’s down the road for us.

Thanks to Ellie Collier, Emily Ford, and Tom Hillard for offering feedback on a draft of this post.

samsungtv 009 / http://www.flickr.com/photos/ousby/ / CC BY-NC 2.0

When we try to adapt our instructional strategies to a new medium, however, the challenge begins anew. Teaching in the classroom is not the same as teaching through a course management system (such as Blackboard), and teaching on Blackboard is different than teaching through video. All of these technologies tax our already minimal knowledge of instructional theory, and the results can turn out to be rather ineffective.

I’ll be the first to admit that I have made students watch far too many dull, lengthy screencast videos in the effort to help them learn about research. And I’ve seen many similar videos around on YouTube and on other library websites. Our intentions are always good – to educate, to equip students with research skills – but the tools we produce could be better. Recently my colleagues and I have begun a project to train ourselves in the pedagogy and technology of how to make effective video tutorials. I’d like to share some of what we’ve learned so far. It has all been new to me, and I hope that others may benefit from our efforts.

A couple of disclaimers: first, I don’t claim to be an expert in video creation or educational pedagogy. My knowledge is still nascent. Second, I don’t advocate video for video’s sake: be sure a video tutorial is the right medium for your intended goals before jumping into the recording process. When you want to teach a certain skill or idea, start by asking: how can I best get this information across? Sometimes it will be video, but other times a step-by-step text description can be simpler and more effective. Although as librarians we’re always eager to embrace the new technologies, it’s helpful to remember that the “old” technologies have their strengths as well. Tasks that involve basic, step-by-step instructions may be better presented as text on a webpage (or–gasp!–handout) that will be easier for students to follow as they complete the steps in another browser window. On the other hand, those that involve navigation through various, complex online interfaces may need video be clear. Sometimes it’s best to provide information in both formats to provide for different learning styles.

Some pedagogical context

Two well-known educational psychologists, Richard E. Mayer and Roxana Moreno, have written extensively on the cognitive implications of multimedia learning. Most notable of their writings for our purposes is a 2003 article in Educational Psychologist entitled, “Nine Ways to Reduce Cognitive Load in Multimedia Learning.” The gist of the article is that the human brain’s ability to process information is divided into two channels, the verbal and the visual. And no matter what our multi-tasking Millennials would have us believe, the brain can process only a limited amount of information from each channel at any given moment.

Here’s what the cognitive process looks like according to Mayer and Moreno. Information comes in through those two “channels” of our ears and eyes. From everything we take in through our immediate, sensory memory, we select certain words and pictures that are processed to our working, or short-term, memory. At that point we begin making sense out of those pieces: aligning the images and sounds, organizing them into meaning, and most importantly, connecting the results with our prior knowledge in a way that will be added to our long-term memory. All of these steps are important, but perhaps most critical here is what happens between the sensory memory absorbing information and the working memory organizing it: selection. That’s the point where details will be lost unless we are careful to provide the most essential information as clearly and simply as possible, to ease the selection process along.

So our students need to go through several steps to make meaning out of what we teach them: first, by paying attention; second, by making sense out of it; and third, by applying it to what they already know about the topic. As a result, educators using multimedia need to be thoughtful about the amount of information we’re providing through video and audio channels, and the pace at which we’re providing the information, to ensure that we’re giving students enough time to process it in ways that make sense to them. If we provide too much information at once, we cause cognitive overload, at which point our students shut down, lose interest, or otherwise simply stop learning.

When beginning a new video tutorial, the most critical elements are the most basic ones: (i) identifying the audience, (ii) determining the goal or goals, and (ii) breaking down the task into its most basic elements. It’s always helpful to state the video’s goals at the start of a tutorial, and restate them again at the end to reinforce the message. The clearer the message of a video, the less cognitive load it will require from students who are trying to make sense out of it, and the more brainpower they will have left to process and internalize the skills being taught. All of this needs to be taken into account to achieve the goal of meaningful learning, which Mayer and Moreno define as “deep understanding of the material, which includes attending to important aspects of the presented material, mentally organizing it into a coherent cognitive structure, and integrating it with relevant existing knowledge.”

Principles of multimedia learning

So how do we take advantage of cognitive theory to create meaningful learning through video tutorials? The key is to carefully review every element we add to a video to determine whether it is adding to or detracting from the viewer’s experience. To help us with this, Moreno and Mayer offer a series of principles on how people process multimedia, and in the article I mentioned above, make nine recommendations for multimedia instruction based on those principles (these were nicely encapsulated by Ross Perkins, Assistant Professor of Educational Technology at Boise State University, in a workshop he provided for myself and my colleagues):

1. Split Attention Principle: Students learn better when instruction material does not require them to split their attention between multiple sources of mutually referring information.
2. Modality Principle: Students learn better when the verbal information is presented auditorily as speech rather than visually as on-screen text both for concurrent and sequential presentations.
3. Redundancy Principle: Students learn better from animation and narration than from animation, narration, and text if the visual information is provided simultaneously to the verbal information.
4. Spatial Contiguity Principle: Students learn better when on-screen text and visual materials are physically integrated rather than separated.
5. Temporal Contiguity Principle: Students learn better when verbal and visual materials are temporally synchronized rather than separated in time.
6. Coherence Principle: Students learn better when extraneous material is excluded rather than included in multimedia explanations.

As recommendations based on these principles, Mayer and Moreno suggest:

• using narration without on-screen text to remove the need for students to read and listen to text at the same time (called “off-loading”);
• allowing short breaks, or pauses, between sections of a presentation (called “segmenting”);
• starting off the presentation with lessons about any terms or concepts that are new and important to what they will learn in the video (called “pretraining”);
• leaving out any unnecessary audio or visual elements (called “weeding”);
• using arrows, highlighting, or other cues to the viewer as a means of clarifying important points or confusing images (called “signaling”);
• ensuring that on-screen text and images that rely on each other are shown physically close together (called “aligning”);
• removing visual elements that are duplicated by narration or graphics (called “eliminating redundancy”);
• maintaining a close match between narration and visual elements shown in the video (called “synchronizing”); and
• when possible, considering the particular audience of a video and matching the presentation style to their learning style(s).

For instance, consider videos that include both verbal narration and on-screen text. Providing such duplicative information is likely to bog down a student by requiring them to process the same information twice, using both verbal and visual channels. Meanwhile, if the narration and on-screen text is being shown simultaneously with a screencast or other video element, it is likely that the student will not be able to process this third piece at all. Instead, using verbal narration with a screencast will probably be more effective at keeping the student’s cognitive load manageable. Similarly, when using a screencast of a library homepage, keep in mind that the large number of images and links on an average page can also cause overload. It’s easy to add a large arrow or call-out identifying the particular link you want students to see, and it will significantly reduce the cognitive demands of the shot. Mayer and Moreno’s oeuvre includes much more guidance on these issues, as does a 2006 article by Nadaleen Tempelman-Kluit in College & Research Libraries.

Planning for video instruction

With busy lives and jobs, many of us choose to create video tutorials on the fly simply by transferring strategies used at the reference desk or one-shot instruction. Honestly, we do it every day at the desk, right, so how hard can it be to simply record the same information? Well, it is harder than one might think when considering both pedagogical and cognitive implications. It’s important to begin with a plan; a breakdown of exactly what the goal(s) of the video will be, how the goal(s) will be achieved, and what exact steps must be shown in the video without any unnecessary or distracting elements.

Storyboarding is perhaps one of the most underestimated but most critical parts of the process of creating an instructional video. This is the same approach used by filmmakers to plan out scenes, props, and actors required in every different part of a movie. Storyboarding does not have to be complicated or high art, it can simply be a listing of what will happen in each scene, in full detail. It requires us to walk through every second of the video in advance to make sure it is doing what we want it do. Storyboards can be sketched out on paper or digitally but should incorporate whatever will be taking place on the screen visually, the full script that a narrator will speak, and an indication of any additional sound or graphical elements (such as call-outs) that may be included. I’ve just started using PowerPoint as a storyboarding tool — putting visual elements in the slide section, and audio in the notes — and fellow Leadpiper Derik suggests post-it notes as a quick and easy method. Storyboards help in planning a video so that it can be created in a way that reduces cognitive load for students, while also allowing us to budget our time more efficiently in the creation process.

Storyboards / http://www.flickr.com/photos/cgc/ / CC BY-NC 2.0

Of course, those new clips can only be integrated if our method of organizing video files and completed tutorials is clear. It’s easy to let the long list of video clip, screen shot and screencast files flow into a variety of folders without keeping track of them. However, when those files are carefully tracked and identified (by filename) on the storyboard, and then all of the raw production files archived together for future reference, maintenance and updating suddenly becomes far easier and far less time consuming.

The software

Many of the best videos incorporate a mix of screencasting (or screen recording), live video from a camera, and slide clips. In some cases they may also include extra sound effects or supplemental audio tracks. This can get complicated when working with so many different types of files. And, not surprisingly, there is no perfect, easy-to-use software package for video tutorial creation. Camtasia Studio from TechSmith is generally considered to be the standard for true video and audio editing. Camtasia is one of the few programs that accepts a wide variety of audio and video formats, and makes it possible to edit and integrate them in sophisticated ways. On the downside it is expensive and takes time to learn; after using it for over a year I am just starting to feel competent in the software. Camtasia is available for a 30-day trial, and TechSmith provides a number of high-quality (wouldn’t they have to be?) video tutorials on how to use the software.

In addition to Camtasia, there are a number of simpler, free programs that make some of the same functions possible. For screencasting only, TechSmith also provides a program called Jing that is far simpler and more user-friendly than Camtasia, so that can be a great place to start for those new to video creation. ScreenToaster is a similar program, but unlike Jing it’s web-based so does not require installation. Unfortunately, neither Jing (free version) nor ScreenToaster offer much in the way of editing options, nor do they provide screencasting files that can be integrated with other video clips. When working just with live video from a webcam or video camera, the simplest editing options are the default PC and Mac programs: Windows Movie Maker and iMovie. Both can be useful and make it easier to get started, but they also have more limited options than Camtasia. For audio editing alone, Audacity is a free program that many use for creating sound clips, sound effects, and podcasts.

The settings used during video creation can have a big impact on the quality of the results. For the best quality, experts recommend that the resolution of the video recording should be as close as possible to the final product. For instance, YouTube’s standard video resolution is 640 pixels by 480 pixels, so recording should take place at that image size. We’ve all seen screencast videos that recorded the individual’s entire screen at a resolution such as 1280×720, produced the video at the same size, and then uploaded the video to YouTube, only to see the video size compressed to a degraded and unreadable result. Recording at such a high resolution would, however, be appropriate for YouTube’s High Definition video, which uses 1280×720 as the standard. Recording size can be changed within the video recording software or camera settings, or for screencasting the entire screen resolution can be changed to fit the desired result. It’s important, too, to be consistent in recording size when using video from several sources (screencast, webcam, video camera, etc.). Overall, video should be both recorded and produced at whatever size is needed for the platform where it will be viewed in the end.

Conclusion

In general, all of the recommendations from cognitive theory indicate that the simpler the video, the better. The challenge is to balance this simplicity with our other needs: to cover complex material, to cater to various learning styles, to be accessible to hearing impaired students, to work within our often-limited video editing skills, and even to be entertaining. Instruction through multimedia is highly challenging, often frustrating, and extremely time-consuming, but when done well it can have a dramatic impact upon student learning.

For example, let’s look at a couple of great examples of videos that are both engaging and reflect awareness of the pedagogical and cognitive considerations described above. I’ll start off with a video from Common Craft, a great example of simplicity in action:

Common Craft videos are excellent at breaking down an idea or task into its simplest elements and presenting them clearly and concisely without audio or visual distractions. They do all this in mere minutes while maintaining a level of humor and entertainment throughout to keep viewers interested.

Or how about this one? The University of Texas at Arlington has started a series of “Librarian vs. Stereotype” videos that are engaging and informative while still getting their message across:

Notice the simple white background; the creators of this video omitted any distractions or visual elements other than the people on the screen. And it works! Our educational psychologist friends might have recommended against the background music as a non-essential element that adds to viewers’ cognitive load, but otherwise this is a terrific instructional video.

Now it’s your turn: What are your favorite examples of high quality instruction videos? What have been your experiences in trying to create videos for teaching? The comments below are open for your thoughts, links, and experiences.

Many thanks to Lead Pipers Ellie Collier and Derik Badman, as well as my Boise colleagues Memo Cordova and Ellie Dworak, for providing valuable feedback on an earlier draft of this post.

Want to learn more? Here are a few places to start:

• Ganster, L. A., & Walsh, T. R. (2008). Enhancing Library Instruction to Undergraduates: Incorporating Online Tutorials into the Curriculum. College & Undergraduate Libraries, 15(3), 314-333.
• Mayer, R. E., & Moreno, R. (2003). Nine Ways to Reduce Cognitive Load in Multimedia Learning. Educational Psychologist, 38(1), 43-52.
• Oud, J. (2009). Guidelines for effective online instruction using multimedia screencasts. Reference Services Review, 37(2), 164-177.
• Tempelman-Kluit, N. (2006). Multimedia Learning Theories and Online Instruction. College & Research Libraries, 67(4), 364-9.

Photo by Flickr member grewlike

If you want to start a passionate conversation, ask a past Emerging Leader (EL) about their experience in the ALA Emerging Leaders program. Created by former ALA President Leslie Burger as one of her presidential initiatives in 2007, Emerging Leaders was initiated to put new librarians “on the fast track to ALA and professional leadership” (learn more on the wiki). If you talk to any of the roughly three hundred participants in Emerging Leaders so far, you are likely to find that they have a powerful opinion on the subject. Some loved it, some hated it, and some express profoundly mixed feelings. A very few are neutral. In this blog post I will be exploring those differing responses from past Emerging Leaders as part of a critique of the high-profile program.

Emerging Leaders is intended to recognize and train approximately one hundred outstanding new librarians each year and guide them toward becoming leaders within ALA and the profession. Participants are selected in part by their accomplishments and leadership potential, and in part by the desire to have a geographically and culturally diverse class. The program involves a one-year commitment and requires attendance at that year’s Midwinter and Annual Conferences (a full day workshop takes place at each), plus unmeasured time working on a group project in the interim. ELs spend the six months between conferences working in small groups on an ALA-related project. The EL projects vary widely and are introduced into the program by individuals or committees from across ALA.

Disclaimer and admission of bias: I was an EL in 2008 so my experience serves as the impetus for and subtle bias of this post. I’m writing from a blend of personal experience, anecdotal evidence, and survey data. Though I strive in this post to maintain an objective distance, my own Emerging Leaders experience is best described as a roller coaster ride full of high points and deep frustrations. I applaud the program’s goals but I believe that there is a significant gap between the inspiring, boundless encouragement given to ELs to reenvision ALA and the reality of how change might actually happen within the organization. I am proud to have been an Emerging Leader and I hope that this post may be the start of some small movement to improve what is, at its heart, a truly impressive initiative.

Literature Review

While the talented new librarians you will meet in Emerging Leaders are generally very willing to say what they think, I was unable to locate even one written critique — either positive or negative — of the program by a participant (if you know of any, please post them in the comments below). Very few have written about their experiences except to post the occasional non-evaluative summary of the program events and workshops. In fact, other than a tongue-in-cheek blog post by The Annoyed Librarian (who has not been an EL) and a well-rounded slideshow report by Rachel Vacek, there is little in any published medium other than PR and related announcements.

From this we may draw one of several conclusions: (1) Past ELs don’t have any opinions about the program one way or the other; (2) Past ELs don’t write much or aren’t interested in writing about the program; or (3) Past ELs are, for some reason, uncomfortable about critiquing their experience in the program. Based upon a variety of personal email exchanges and in-person conversations, I am going to immediately rule out the first possibility. I have met ELs from every year of the program and all have been vocal about what they see as its strengths and weaknesses. In truth, their energetic praise and criticism played a large part in my decision to tackle this topic in a blog post. As for the second possibility above, a few quick searches will show that many past ELs are prolific writers and bloggers. While it is possible that they simply don’t have any interest in discussing their EL experiences in their writing, I find that unlikely.

I find the third possibility above to be the most plausible, and offer my own feelings as evidence here. First of all, this is a high-profile program that is quite attractive on resumes and CVs, and the library world is very small. Writing a critique about Emerging Leaders, and being willing to accept any potential negative feedback from such a critique, takes courage. On the other hand, among those I know who have been through the program, I have heard more than one admit to feeling too emotional about the experience to put their thoughts on paper. Personally it took me nearly a year to gain the distance and perspective required to approach this post, and even after much encouragement and feedback from others, I still offer it with some hesitation.

Survey of Past Emerging Leaders

In order to write about the Emerging Leaders program with some authority, I gathered feedback and opinions from as many past ELs as possible. Accordingly, this post is based not merely upon my own experience, but upon the insights of nearly fifty past ELs who took the time to complete a survey about their experiences in the program. Admittedly this is a self-selected sample, and it is likely that ELs who had strong feelings about the program were more likely to respond. I conducted the survey in Google Forms and distributed it to the listservs for the 2007 and 2008 ELs, a pool of approximately 220 librarians. I omitted 2009 ELs from the survey because they have not yet completed their program.

The survey was composed of eleven questions, six of which were open-ended with a box for unlimited text responses. The remaining questions were multiple choice or ratings (see Appendix below for the list of questions). None of the questions in the survey were required, and respondents were encouraged to pick and choose those they preferred to answer.

Results summary

There were 46 respondents, divided roughly by year with 57% of respondents identifying as members of the 2008 Emerging Leaders class, and 43% from the 2007 class. Overall, the results to the ratings questions were positive. When asked to rate the value of their experience on a 1-5 scale, with 5 being highest, 60% of respondents rated the program as a 4 or 5. When rating their experience based upon how much they enjoyed it the ratings were slightly lower, with 43% rating the program as a 4 or 5. However, an additional 41% rated the program at the midpoint level of 3. As an additional indicator of the perceived overall value of the program, 61% of respondents indicated that they would recommend Emerging Leaders to others. 78% (36 respondents) felt that the program made a difference in the trajectory of their career and/or ALA involvement. The great majority described a positive impact; only 3 of those respondents indicated a negative impact in that the program discouraged them from continuing in ALA.

The responses to the open-ended questions were far more mixed, and will be described in the following sections of this post.

Worthwhile aspects

Overwhelmingly, survey respondents pointed to networking as the most rewarding part of their Emerging Leaders experience. Out of 38 who answered the question, “What aspects of the program did you find worthwhile, if any?,” twenty-five referred to “networking,” “making new friends,” and/or “meeting people” as a positive result of their participation. One respondent described “meeting other enthusiastic librarians” as a worthwhile part of their experience. Another simply answered, “Networking, networking, networking.”

Similarly, an additional seven respondents pointed to their group work, in terms of having the opportunity to work with and get to know a small group of people, as a worthwhile aspect of the program. One respondent explained it this way: “Working in small groups was a real plus. I probably would never have met my groupmates through any other channel, and it is great to see them at conferences and catch up.”

Eleven respondents indicated that the most worthwhile part of Emerging Leaders was the doors the program opened for them in terms of committee work, recognition, and resulting presentation and publication opportunities. In the words of one respondent, “The recognition I received from other conference attendees because of my EL ribbon on my name badge was surprising to me…. Just wearing the ribbon served as a conversation starter and the networking opportunities are there for the taking. The opportunity to continue working at the national level upon the completion of the program is the greatest benefit.”

Another respondent commented that it was “a great way to become more involved when getting your foot in the door seems intimidating.”

I agree strongly with these assessments. Being handed the opportunity to meet so many like-minded librarians who share my passion and desire to make positive contributions to the field was a stunning experience. Granted not every EL was quite that driven — I do know that a few dropped out along the way — but the vast majority of the librarians I met through Emerging Leaders are impressive individuals, and I have continued to stay in touch with many of them through email, Facebook, and this blog. I cannot overstate the value of the Emerging Leaders networking experience.

Disappointments

Out of 39 who responded to the question, “What aspects of the program did you find disappointing, if any?,” eighteen indicated some aspect of the conference workshops, and another fourteen pointed to their group projects. Specific comments about the workshops varied, although many expressed the wish that there had been less lecture, more interactive sessions, and more advanced leadership training. “Really expected to have more ‘leadership’ training,” said one respondent, “similar to ARL’s leadership workshops, with in-depth discussion and activities around aspects of leadership in a library organization. Found that it was little more than ‘here are 5 qualities of good leaders.’” Others described the content of the leadership training workshops as “rudimentary,” “weak,” or “trite.”

Additionally, several respondents felt that those facilitating the workshops were not responsive to their ideas and feedback. As one respondent explained, “The ALA leadership that spoke to us regarding what can ALA do to enhance or encourage more participation by newer librarians – when we provided feedback and comments in an open forum – I got the distinct impression that there was not an interest in new ideas. Rather they were looking for confirmation that what steps they were already taking were satisfactory. There wasn’t an opportunity for a free exchange of ideas between the old guard and the new guard.”

Another observed, “You have a room full of folks who are energized and the energy didn’t go anywhere.” This sentiment was repeated throughout the survey responses.

A large number of respondents felt that their group projects were “busy work” and did not see that their efforts were providing any results. “Emerging leaders participants do a lot of good work for the projects,” said one respondent. “I was disappointed that the work was not used more within the ALA system. While doing the project for project’s sake provides good training experience, the outcomes can be useful for the organization.” Others compared the projects to “another library school assignment” or evaluated them as “not all that engaging or useful.”

Overall, my own greatest disappointment in the program was being encouraged to offer creative ideas and feedback in the interests of effecting change within ALA, and then watching the bubble burst over and over again. Whether it was a conversation about how to make ALA more responsive to new librarians, or the “World Cafe” events in which we brainstormed what the ideal organization would look like, our collective vision was praised, collected, and (I imagine) filed away at the end of the session, with no opportunities to further develop or pursue it.

Alternative visions

In response to the question, “If you were asked to take over the Emerging Leaders program, or to create a new program to foster leadership among new librarians, what would it look like?,” past ELs had a variety of relevant ideas and suggestions. Regarding the content of Emerging Leaders workshops, respondent comments generally focused on three primary issues they would address. First, they would emphasize interactive leadership training as the program’s primary goal and reduce the emphasis on generating greater ALA participation. As one respondent stated, “it would have a larger goal than putting participants ‘on the fast track to ALA leadership.’ I think it should focus on helping participants attain their personal and professional best and how ALA can help them get there.”

Second, respondents disliked the current lecture-based format and many indicated that they would incorporate active learning exercises and guided small group discussions moderated by experienced ALA members. Third, many would add a variety of inspirational and “Mover and Shaker”-type guest speakers from within and outside of ALA whose experiences and knowledge would be relevant to ELs. Several suggested creating venues to facilitate free and open discussion among and between Emerging Leaders and those at various levels of ALA leadership. One respondent had a clear vision of a potential format they would institute: “Instead of posing organizational change questions to the group as a whole I would offer Issues Discussion Tables, letting participants choose the issues most important to them and to which they feel they can offer definite courses for change. Issues Tables might include: ALA Structure, ALA Student Chapter Solutions, Virtual Membership, etc. A 1.5 hour session with a mentor/moderator could provide real, progressive ideas.”

In terms of program format, many respondents would develop intensive training programs that included week-long retreats or a year-long, involved program with multiple meetings at each conference and ongoing virtual participation. One respondent summed it up, “It would have to be more involved. More than just 2 meetings. More virtual participation, discussion.” Many respondents thought an ideal class size for a leadership program would be small (one suggested a class size of 50 participants). Consistent with this, many felt that such a program should be highly selective, accepting only candidates with the clearest leadership potential.

Some respondents favored incorporating a mentoring program, possibly by having past ELs mentor subsequent participants or groups, or by holding “tours” of high-level ALA meetings for participants. Many emphasized the need for communication and community building activities among EL participants and alumni, such as an online community and/or regional meetups for ELs (or projects assigned by region) that provide networking and development benefits without required conference attendance.

Among those who would include group projects, respondents indicated that those projects would be designed to have clear relevance, impact, and purpose within ALA, and provide room for innovation. “I’d give the young/new librarians more room to innovate in their projects instead of assigning them grunt work from the various divisions,” said one respondent. Some suggested models in which ELs identify and design their own projects, are fully integrated into existing committees, or are employed as interns at high levels of ALA structure. Others believed that group work interfered with the leadership training goals, and could be omitted altogether in favor of other activities.

An alternative vision proposed that differed somewhat from the others was stated thus, “Why have the program if the only benefit is to get a committee appointment? Just have a program to get people on committees.” Others mentioned BIGWIG and an unspecified AASL program (perhaps the Collaborative Leadership Institute?) as models they would draw on.

From my experience in the program, I can attest that there was quite a bit of grumbling amongst the ELs during the full-day sessions at each conference. The majority of ELs are borderline or full-fledged Millennials, and being “talked at” is not a way we effectively learn. And while we can learn through lecture if we must, the content in our sessions assumed that we knew very little about leadership or interpersonal skills in general, which was largely untrue. A higher level of content and more skill-based activities would have greatly enriched the sessions for many of us.

Discussion

Clearly Emerging Leaders is generating widely differing reactions among participants. Some of the responses are extremely positive, and many past ELs express gratitude and pleasure for having had the opportunity to participate. One respondent asserted, “being an EL has changed my life…. It was a great way for me to get involved in a career that I truly love.” Others made similarly glowing statements. Meanwhile, other past ELs say they have become “embittered” and describe the program as “a waste of time.” My personal response to the experience was mixed; as a whole I found the experience rewarding but like many others I was frustrated by some of the elements of the program that didn’t fulfill my hopes for what it could be.

At its root, much of my own and the survey respondents’ frustration with Emerging Leaders may derive from a discrepancy between our expectations and the reality of the program. Comments from many of the respondents indicate that they began the program with the hope of making a difference by bringing their new ideas and energy to ALA, but felt that they were not offered an effective venue to do so. One respondent acknowledged that discrepancy, saying, “I would recommend the program with a huge qualification regarding expectations and outcomes.” Implicit in this comment is an indication that their expectations for the program were too high, at least compared to the reality of the experience.

From what I have seen, there is a direct connection between those individuals who are most passionate about making a positive difference in libraries and those who are most frustrated by the Emerging Leaders program. The frustration is a product of feeling that their EL experience was something akin to standing in a doorway, enjoying a spectacular vision of the future, and having the door slammed in their faces. Said one respondent, “I felt a great disconnect with the leadership of ALA and have concerns for the professional organization and what current leadership is doing to pave the way for new ideas.” Another respondent echoed those concerns and took a step further: “I am not sure…that we are making much of a difference within ALA. We had many ideas, but nothing has been done with them. Perhaps we need to extend the program to a post piece that deals with the ideas that we’ve come up with and creating a strategic plan on how to implement them.”

If one were to make change to the Emerging Leaders program based upon this feedback, there are two potential paths that could lead to a more satisfying experience for participants. The first is to simply remove the elements of the program that give participants the impression that their creative ideas for remaking ALA are welcome and to focus on the skills specific to leadership instead. Discussions and brainstorming sessions about how to improve the organization could be removed from the program in favor of an increased focus on leadership overall. This approach would eliminate the disappointment caused by ELs feeling that their creative ideas were invited and then discarded.

The alternative path is far more complex but arguably more exciting. It would require the organizers of Emerging Leaders, and the ELs by extension, to become more aggressive in seeking out opportunities in which ELs might share their creative ideas with those in ALA who are best positioned to consider and respond to them. It might involve having a group of ELs write a proposal to ALA Council on some pressing issue. It could tie certain ELs to current ALA presidential initiatives, or other high-level committees and task forces. Or perhaps at the end of each program year, it would involve ELs presenting a list of ideas and/or proposals to representatives of current ALA leadership. Perhaps ELs could work on more meaningful, longer-term projects they would hand off each year to the next group of participants. Above all, it demands enabling ELs to begin putting into motion some of the creative ideas they are generating in workshop sessions. There are many potential ways to offer ELs the sort of exposure and feedback that survey respondents indicate they are seeking; the point is to start building those bridges.

What do you think? I invite my fellow ELs to add your insights and comments below. In this post I am only beginning to dig toward the root of the issue, and maybe with your help we can bring it out into the light. Perhaps the true movement toward change that comes out of Emerging Leaders doesn’t have anything to do with the program at all — perhaps it is made by those of us who have come together out of the program inspired, furious, motivated, and passionate with a network of colleagues who feel the same way. After all, that is the spirit behind In the Library with the Lead Pipe; it is not a coincidence that five members of our blogging team are past ELs. And as we move forward in our careers we carry with us that nearly religious belief in change, and the knowledge we need to make it happen. Perhaps, in the end, we are the change we wish to see.

Appendix: Survey Questions

• What year were you an Emerging Leader? (multiple choice)
• Please describe your overall experience in the Emerging Leaders program. (open-ended)
• Please rate your experience in the program, in terms of how valuable it was to you. (rating, 1-5)
• Please rate your experience in the program, in terms of how enjoyable you found it to be. (rating, 1-5)
• What aspects of the program did you find worthwhile, if any? (open-ended)
• What aspects of the program did you find disappointing, if any? (open-ended)
• Has the Emerging Leaders program made a difference in the trajectory of your ALA participation and/or your career? (multiple choice)
• If you answered “yes” to the previous question, how has it made a difference? (open-ended)
• If you were asked to take over the Emerging Leaders program, or to create a new program to foster leadership among new librarians, what would it look like? (open-ended)
• How likely are you to recommend the Emerging Leaders program to others? (rating, 1-5)
• Is there anything else you’d like to share regarding your experience as an Emerging Leader? (open-ended)

Many thanks to everyone on ItLwtLP for help in crafting the survey and drafting this post, to the many ELs who took the time to respond to the survey, to Latanya Jenkins for her thoughtful feedback on a draft, and to Derik Badman for reviewing multiple drafts and providing me with some small (but needed) kicks in the butt.

]]> http://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2009/all-dressed-up/feed/ 32 http://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2008/social-networking-with-a-brain-a-critical-review-of-academic-sites/ http://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2008/social-networking-with-a-brain-a-critical-review-of-academic-sites/#comments Wed, 10 Dec 2008 11:00:57 +0000 Kim Leeder http://inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/?p=497 Social networking may have started out as a way for students to keep track of their friends, but it has expanded in just about every direction. These days, you can find at least one related social networking site on just about any general topic, including music, photography, television, books, shopping, and bookmarking. But it isn’t all fun games. Job sites like Monster and LinkedIn began the evolution from social networking to professional networking, and academia has joined the fray as a number of networking sites specifically for academics have popped up in recent years. Now we can add “research” to the list above.

The impetus for this blog post was an email that has been making the rounds, originating from Dr. Richard Price of Oxford University, that reads as follows:

I recently finished my Ph.D on the philosophy of perception from Oxford. With a team of people from Stanford and Cambridge, I’ve just launched a website, www.academia.edu, which does two things:

- It shows academics around the world structured in a ‘tree’ format, displayed according to their departmental and institutional affiliations.
- It enables academics to see news on the latest research in their area – the latest people, papers and talks.

We are hoping that Academia.edu will eventually list every academic in the world — Faculty Members, Post-Docs, Graduate Students, and Independent Researchers. Academics can add their departments, and themselves, to the tree by clicking on the boxes.

The message concludes with the names of a few notables who have joined (or been added) to the site, and a request to assist Dr. Price and friends in their efforts by further circulating the announcement.

Call me a sucker, but I got that message and immediately joined up, forwarded it to my colleagues, and started envisioning the possibilities. What intrigues me is Academia.edu’s combination of a professional networking site with a digital repository. Could this take the place of our nascent institutional repository or save my fellow librarians from having to put together an institutional bibliography each year?

A screen shot of Academia.edu's homepage.

The networking-repository hybrid model was new to me, though I learned later that Academia.edu is not the first to do this. Nor is it the only virtual platform where researchers can create a profile and search for others with similar research interests. A lot of people in academia already use Facebook and LinkedIn to connect with their colleagues and friends, but Academia.edu and its competitors are different because they were specifically created to serve the needs of academics, in terms of research, professional networking, listing citations, and file sharing. Try some of those activities on Facebook, and you’ll soon agree that it falls far short of an academic’s networking needs.

Here’s an overview of the major academic networking sites and their features (if you know of others I overlooked, please comment below). All allow you to create a profile and search for other academics by research interest, so I’ve omitted those features in the table.

In addition to the characteristics above, these are the qualities that make each site unique.

• Academia.edu: Networking for academics in all fields. Offers unique visual format with organization by institution. Features Facebook Connect.
• BibApp: Must be hosted on your server for campus-specific organization of faculty experts and research. Functions more like a catalog of faculty than a networking site, but could be used either way.
• Epernicus: Networking targeted for scientists. Features “BenchQs,” which is like Yahoo! Answers for science.
• Graduate Junction: Networking for graduate students that professes to be less intimidating than professional sites. Offers a conference diary & job listings.
• Labmeeting: Networking for scientists in the biomedical and related sciences. Offers features to assist in organizing and sharing information in lab settings. Also includes strong privacy protection.
• Pronetos: Networking for academics in all fields. Organization by discipline, and offers discussion forums for each discipline.

I’m going to use the remainder of this post to critically review these academic networking sites, looking at the benefits, limitations, and possible future outlook.

The Good

There are two major benefits offered by participation in most of the sites I’m looked at, especially Academia.edu and Pronetos:

1. The ability to locate other scholars with similar research interests.
2. The power to upload papers, articles, and even books to contribute to a worldwide digital repository.

As far as #1, the networking aspect goes, it would be natural to ask why any of these sites are an improvement over the ubiquitous Facebook. Who needs another social network, for goodness sake? Vivek Murthy, one of the founders of Epernicus, addressed the question in a post on the Epernicus blog: “Mikhail and I started Epernicus because we realized that the social networks to which we belonged weren’t able to serve our needs as scientists. The profiles didn’t capture what was important to scientists. And equally as important, we couldn’t use these networks to help us find expertise in real world scientific networks.” If they had a question or issue unique to their research that no one they knew personally could address, they wanted a way to find others out there who might know more. This is not what Facebook was built for.

In theory, the opportunity to share research interests and connect with other scholars sounds idyllic. Finally, the chance to find out who’s walking the same path and reading the same articles. It’s like eHarmony for the brain instead of the heart. If there is a need and a demand for such a thing, it could really take off.

Personally, I get more excited about #2, the digital repository side of this project. The sites that actually host files, especially Academia.edu and Pronetos, are contributing to the open access movement in ways they may not even realize. Although those of us in libraries already know that faculty usually don’t want to take the additional time to post their papers to our repositories, these two sites could be different because (a) they’re easier to use than any library repository I’ve ever seen, (b) they’re prettier, and (c) they make it clear that the papers uploaded will be shared with others instead of stored in a dusty server room, never to be heard from again.

The Bad

First, any social networking site, whether personal or professional, is only as good as its membership. With that in mind, I would say that all of these sites have a long way to go in soliciting members. Academia.edu appears to be the largest, at about 20,000, but this is still a small percentage of academics worldwide. GraduateJunction may have the greatest potential in this arena due to its specific target audience (graduate students) and the fact that it boasts more “useful” (job and conference) features than the other sites in this review.

Second, although I initially found it entertaining to search for others with similar research interests to mine, once I found a few I realized that I just didn’t know what to do with them. I could add them as contacts and review their publications. What then? If I were extremely motivated perhaps I would email them and say a few words in our unique research interest language (“speaking geek,” I think they call it). But how often would such contact lead to something constructive? The more I searched, the more skeptical I became.

Third, academic networking sites are facing big challenges in finding an effective way to ensure that only legitimate academics participate. The UK Times Higher Education expressed concern about Academia.edu because “anyone can pass themselves off as an academic…and scholars could be misled into putting their details on it because it occupies the generic top-level domain ‘.edu,’ which is normally reserved for universities.” On the other hand, some sites are so careful to screen members that they seem almost impossible to join. Despite repeated attempts, I was unable to join Labmeeting or Pronetos due to their screening standards. Pronetos sent me an activation message that somehow disappeared into cyberspace (and no, it wasn’t in my spam folder), while Labmeeting did not recognize my university email address as being from a legitimate academic domain (my university president would take issue with that!).

The Ugly

All in all, social networks of any variety are a curious tradeoff. How much time are you willing to put into them in order to expand your web of connections? In writing this blog post, I spent 8-10 hours crawling around on the various sites mentioned here, creating profiles, exploring group and research interests, checking to see if I knew anyone (or wanted to know anyone) on any of the sites. I found many of the sites appealing at first, and enjoyed some of my wanderings. But now that I’ve had some exposure to these platforms, returning to Facebook feels kind of like going home. True, I can’t search for other scholars based on my research interests. But considering how many other avenues I have to find them — from publications to blogs to conferences — do I really need a new one?

As Jeffrey R. Young noted in “New Social Network Hopes to Catalog All Researchers and Their Interests,”an article in the September 16 issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education, “It’s too soon to tell whether any of these sites will catch on, and it seems that the services will only become valuable if a critical mass of researchers join in. The final winner may be Facebook itself.” So, are these new-kid-on-the-block academic networking sites worth your time? Based upon my admittedly limited experience on these sites, probably not. But if you have some free time, go for it. Create your profile and see who else is out there. You might get lucky.

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Many thanks to Brett Bonfield and Ellie Dworak for taking the time to offer feedback on the draft of this post, and to Brett for his coding kindnesses.

Photo by Flickr member Bill Gracey

Recently I found out that it could be happening to all of us: Google and the Internet as a medium could indeed be changing the ways our brains function and process information. “As Marshall McLuhan pointed out in the 1960s,” writes Nicholas Carr in The Atlantic, “media are not just passive channels of information. They supply the stuff of thought, but they also shape the process of thought. And what the Net seems to be doing is chipping away at my capacity for concentration and contemplation.” Carr’s article in the July/August issue of The Atlantic, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?,” received some attention for accusing its readers of not being able to accomplish deep, sustained reading in the age of the Internet. According to the article, the Web is reprogramming our brains in a fundamental, biological way. (Note: for a smart, satirical look at the issue, check out Stephen Colbert’s interview with Carr).

The responses to Carr’s article came from both sides of the fence: those who agreed with with him and those who objected to the perceived insult to their intelligence. The Chronicle of Higher Education came out with three articles that expressed concern and agreement: “Your Brain on Google,” a compilation of somewhat ironic quotes from the Web, “On Stupidity,” an extended book review of “a cartload” of recent books on anti-intellectualism, and “On Stupidity, Part 2,” an English professor’s response to the problem. Meanwhile, The New York Times Technology section printed a counterpoint by Damon Darlin, “Technology Doesn’t Dumb Us Down. It Frees Our Minds,” that accused Carr of being a technophobe and insisted that “writing, printing, computing and Googling have only made it easier to think and communicate.”

The irony of the entire argument is encapsulated in the first two lines of the New York Times article: “Everyone has been talking about an article in The Atlantic magazine called ‘Is Google Making Us Stupid?’ Some subset of that group has actually read the 4,175-word article.” Darlin builds the satire by attempting to sum up Carr’s article in a Twitter “tweet” of less than 140 characters, but only skims the surface of the real irony: the likely truth that very few of the people discussing Carr’s article had been able to read the whole thing. There’s something amazing and a bit disturbing about a culture in which everyone’s opinion is equally important and valid, no matter whether or not one has even a basic knowledge of the subject.

As an academic librarian, I’m particularly interested in the implications for libraries of Carr’s article. Hand in hand with Carr’s concern about a growing inability to engage in deep reading is the equal possibility of a growing inability to engage in sustained research. Google leads us to believe that searching for information is easy when library research is complex, often frustrating, and full of twists and turns. So the next question is: does it have to be that way? It’s a given that library systems tend to be overly complicated, even for simple searches. The common refrain is: how can we be more like Google?

The followup question is: do we want to?

These days academic libraries are grasping at every possible product—from federated searching to LibraryThing—that might ease our students’ apparent impatience with the challenges of research. After all, the 2002 Pew Internet & American Life report, “The Internet Goes to College,” made it clear that our students rely on the Web first when they’re doing research, and generally use the library only as a latter resort. If academic libraries don’t make it easier for students to find relevant information for their course projects, they may not come at all. We may as well just hand Google Scholar the keys.

On the other hand, a recent study of the research practices of college students in the humanities and social sciences offered more heartening results. Alison J. Head’s article, “Beyond Google” in First Monday (later written up for September 2008’s College & Research Libraries) found that students are using libraries in greater numbers—and earlier in their searches—than the Pew Research Center would have us believe. Granted this was a study at a single, small, liberal arts college that doesn’t necessarily reflect the situation everywhere. But we can glean some optimism from the study, along with the requisite grain of salt.

On the positive side, academic libraries have the benefit of a captive audience of students whose professors often require the use of library resources. While we may hope that these requirements train students in the ways of deep research, the day-to-day interactions at any academic reference desk would indicate otherwise. Instead, a majority of students reflect a desire to find adequate sources for a given project as soon as possible, even if those sources are not ideal. Is it Google that has raised their expectations for how quickly an information search can be accomplished? A study from the British Library calls this a “truism in the age in which we live” that “crosses all generational boundaries in the digital environment…. The speed of new media has cultivated a lowered tolerance for delay.” The study goes on to say:

There is considerable evidence to support the view that many students do not explore information in any deep or reflective manner. The lack of any evaluative efforts on the part of information users has been documented…. According to Levin and Arafeh (2002) most students stop searching at ‘good enough’ rather than trying to find the best source etc. Some ‘view the Internet as a way to complete their schoolwork as quickly and painlessly as possible, with minimal effort and minimal engagement.’

English professor Thomas H. Benton’s personal observations are nearly identical. In “On Stupidity, Part 2,” he writes:

Essentially I see students having difficulty following or making extended analytical arguments. In particular, they tend to use easily obtained, superficial, and unreliable online sources as a way of satisfying minimal requirements for citations rather than seeking more authoritative sources in the library and online. Without much evidence at their disposal, they tend to fall back on their feelings, which are personal and, they think, beyond questioning.

The echo of Carr’s article in both of these quotes is unmistakable. Whether or not Google is actually changing the biology of our brains it is difficult to say, but it does seem possible that Google could be damaging our students’ ability or inclination to conduct real research.

I’m not blaming our students. It is not the fault of anyone in particular if they are losing the interest and ability to conduct complex research. They are products of their culture, just as we all are. Just as I am.

In fact, those of us currently in our early to mid-thirties are in a unique position to address this issue. You see, I didn’t grow up with computers, but computers and I grew up together. I can remember, back in grade school, Atari and I bumbling our way through Asteroids. In high school, America Online and I had our first heady experiences in online chat rooms. When I went to college my library’s young OPAC was incomplete and I still had to use the card catalog to find certain items. Computers were leaking into my research in college, but their effect was fragmented. Google was founded the year I graduated from college.

I grew up with computers, but I grew up knowing that they were fickle, fallible, and constantly changing. I still have a collection of old floppy disks with files I will never be able to access again. I greatly enjoy technology, but I maintain a certain skepticism about it.

That said, I had to make a conscious effort to read Nicholas Carr’s article all the way through. The first time I linked to it, I skimmed the first few paragraphs and bookmarked it. The second time, I skimmed further into the text. I didn’t actually read the whole thing until I chuckled at Darlin’s observation on how few had read it and realized that I was not one of them.

What happens to our libraries in a culture where sustained reading and deep research are skills that our students and patrons increasingly do not value? There is no easy answer, but the most critical thing we can do is reflect passion for our work and share it with our students. Benton writes, “Effective teaching requires embodying the joy of learning — particularly through lectures and spirited discussions — that made us become professors in the first place. It’s extremely hard, but teachers have been doing it for generations.”

Notice his admission that playing such a role is “extremely hard”; we can all appreciate his honesty there. It is hard to be an intellectual in a culture that values actors over educators. It is hard to face a constant onslaught of superficial research when we know how much richer and more inspiring information can be. But the payoff comes when we open the door and a student steps through, leaving Google aside for the moment, to consider the wealth of research tools at their disposal that they never knew existed.

If only it happened more often.

Many thanks to my ITLWTLP colleagues Derik and Brett, and to Rick Stoddart, Tom Hillard, Ellie Dworak, and Elaine Watson for offering feedback that helped shape this post.