Key Quotes from “Ashley”

• I can’t get myself started.  I mean I love to write, I can sit and write when I write what I want to write about , but sitting down and typing out, I mean, the whole APA style format is…freaking me out. There’s so many rules, so much do this do that don’t do this, don’t do that. I mean, I like to write, just freestyle. Just let me type it.
• I can’t sit there and read about this, then write about it. I’m no good with research. Figuring out [what’s in the books], I think. And then having to write about it. I don’t want to write about that stuff. I know I have to, I know I do, but I don’t like to. It’s hard for me. It’s just, just the whole research from start to finish. It’s hard. I guess, I don’t want to say I’m lazy, it’s I don’t, I just know that a research paper is stressful. And I do what I can to avoid stress.
• when you write your paper, you’re gonna screw it up. You’re not gonna get the header right, you’re not gonna get this centered, you’re gonna mess it up somehow. When we were in the writing lab, she went over, god, So many things… And I had a hard time following, and she would end up standing behind me saying “No, click this, click that, click this…”because I would get lost… My, I can’t, process it fast enough, I guess.
• The library people, half the people there don’t know what they’re doing anyway. Because I have problems with the computer, or…um somebody has to ask someone for help (with the margins) they say I don’t know, I don’t know…and you sit there for 20 minutes (while they try to figure it out). And finally they go find somebody else who might know what they’re doing. But anyway they’re all in there because they know what they’re doing, right?
• Smart people intimidate me.
• I’m a lost cause.
• I’m stronger than I thought.

Key Quotes from “Veronica”

• [If] I’m passionate about it, I just write. Then if it’s something I don’t understand, and it’s something I need to understand, then I’ll outline it. … If it wasn’t for me writing that, being passionate about that and she just gave me something. Like, “Can you write about that?” That might have been a struggle for me. That’s totally something, you know, if I’m not interested in that, the last thing I want to do is research about it, you know?
• Time’s a Factor Here!
• It’s [Time Mangagement] been hard. I hadn’t got that down yet. I’m kind of just taking it by the horns. Usually, when I know I got the assignment, usually what I try to do is get it done or work on it right after. And if I have to split it up, fine. You can just kind of make a cycle out of that. Things get thrown at ya, you know, and you’ve gotta … just get to it. But I mean, I just deal with it as it comes more or less.I mostly do my writing in the evening when the girls settle down … and when they got their things done. And, um, yeah mostly in the evening time. But, ah, like on my long days, Tuesdays and Thursdays, when I’m here all day so I have a big gap, and I just get everything that I possibly can done in them four hours or whatever. So I utilize them days to get homework done and my classes and stuff.
• [The Librarian] was in his office and he came downstairs and he helped me search what I needed. And like I said, there was several peer reviews that he was shocked that they didn’t have… He just showed me that there were other venues to go, you know.
• I think for next semester, every paper that I wrote for this semester, I think I need to give more love and attention and time into these next papers next semester. More critical research on them, you know? And take my time writing them.
• I know that library has a lot to offer….If I can just get the time to go there, find out what I need to do, and get help in finding that kind of research in there. You know, I do want professional papers. You know, I love papers that possibly my professors will use. You know, after I graduate, you know, I do want to find the papers and I can’t say that any of the papers that I wrote are that good or good enough for them to use.

When I was in 10th grade, I found myself in a bit of a quandary. I enjoyed band, and was a decent (if not spectacular) percussionist. However, the high school had just started a new creative writing class, and several teachers were encouraging me to take it. I didn’t really need the encouragement. I loved (and still love) writing, to the point that I currently have a second semi-active blog while working full time and doing a PhD program. The dilemma was this: Band and creative writing were offered in the same time slot. I could take one, but not both. I waffled, and I thought a bit, but ultimately my course was clear. When it came time to enroll, I dropped band and added creative writing. I still remember the conversation I had with the assistant director for percussion, who was more surprised than I would have expected given my mediocre skills. He asked me why I made the shift.

I sighed, and told him, “I wish I could do both. But I had to make a choice, and while I like band, I love writing.” As a guy who loves music, I saw the light click on in his eyes, and he smiled and nodded.

During the sublimely weird year I’ve had (see my last post where I address a few of the more germane aspects of it obliquely), a question has been building in my brain and heart. Do I want to stay in academic library management and continue moving toward a directorship, or do I want to use my doctorate to make the leap to a tenure track faculty gig, either at my local SLIS or at a half-dozen others in interesting areas that I’ve identified as realistic shots? After careening back and forth between the two options over the course of 2012, somewhere in October, it all finally became clear.

I like the idea of becoming a tenure track faculty member, but I love working in an academic library.

OK, there’s a little more to it than that, but here’s what made my decision for me.

1. Perfection versus happiness.

While we can and should work as hard as we can to attain our goals, aspects of that process are always and necessarily out of our hands. I’ve spent my life driven toward attaining this, that, and the other thing in a drive to prove myself “worthy”. But somewhere in the last few months, that drive lost a LOT of its appeal. I’ve seen through my life and those of others how a single-minded focus on success can actually cost one a surprising amount when it comes to friendship, fulfillment, and happiness. I got into this in more detail last time during all my babbling about Chaos theory, but it boils down to this: Whatever career path I take, it needs to put me in the best position to increase net total happiness of myself and those I serve as a teacher or librarian. In my case, given how I’m wired, I think administration would be a better fit for me and make me and those around me happier than if I became tenure track faculty. Here’s the biggest reason I made that call.

2. Research is fun, but only fun.

If I were to be a TT faculty, I’d do it in a SLIS. (I don’t really have a major interest in teaching higher ed studies). Most SLISes I’d been considering are at R1 or similarly research focused institutions. Therefore I’d be doing a LOT of research. Worse yet, I’ve seen the CVs of the people my first pick school hired recently (mostly folks who were full-time students in LIS PhDs), and I’d have to be doing a lot of research RIGHT NOW to play at that level. Worse, I’d be doing it without benefit of any professors who really have similar research interests. I simply don’t see how I work full time, take 6-9 hours of classes, conduct 8-10 CV lines worth of original research and keep my sanity and/or marriage intact. Plus, during the course of my pilot study this semester I learned it’s not a joyful pursuit for me—it’s just another line on the to-do list.

I tried doing it all the last 10 years or so, and while a lot of it was necessary for the life I built in my late 20s and early 30s out of the rubble of the dot com bust (a life that I wouldn’t trade for anything), that drive led me to make a few decisions that I will regret for the rest of my life. I don’t know that I would have lived those years very differently knowing then what I know now (with one glaring exception). However, I am not that antsy 20-something desperate to get out of a dead-end job and use my capacities at a higher level. I’m older, with a more nuanced view of the benefits and drawbacks of success. While I still believe with every fiber of my being I owe a debt to those who came before, I’ve started to suspect I’ve been paying that debt with the wrong currency. If, as I’ve started to consider since mid-May, the good life is about increasing net happiness and human connection rather than accomplishing a grand and glorious destiny of some sort, then jumping on the publish or perish hamster wheel for the next 7-10 years of my life is pretty much the LAST thing I should be doing with my time.

3. I’m a Constructivist, but a Pragmatic Constructivist.

I’ve always been quite aware we all have expiration dates, than you very much. But the second biggest lesson I’ve learned in 2012 (beyond watching the best laid schemes of mice and men ganging aft aglay in some of the most dramatically positive and negative ways imaginable), is that one’s accomplishments matter the most to the extent that they influence other people. Our most innovative research notions may flop with patrons and professionals (or more likely, lie unread in a journal), whereas the random nonsense we spew off the top of our heads may get thousands of hits. (My How to read a book in an hour post, which essentially grew out of a five-minute discussion with some classmates, is STILL the biggest hit-getter on this site). Of course, simply chasing popularity or trends is just as much a fool’s errand as hiding in an ivory tower, and something I dislike on general principles. In any case, I’m no good at it. True wisdom has to contain an element of your own voice, but it also often comes out of a conversation with ideas and with the people with whom you are trying to share your wisdom. My personality and my shifting understanding of the nature of “success” lead me to think that I can do the most good for myself, academic librarianship, and undergraduate students by standing with one foot in practice and one foot in theory, and engaging in the dialogue between the two.

4. I have a low tolerance for inane Drama.

I hate interpersonal drama on general principles. As is often the case in times of flux and unpredictability, I’ve seen a LOT of it this year, some of it related to issues so unspeakably inane that I refuse to admit them here out of fear of being found stupid by association. And yet, there are many people who not only participate in, but seem to thrive on Drama. Unfortunately, more than a few of these types wind up in Tenure Track faculty positions. I’ve always had a struggle hiding my disdain for those types of games—they’re possibly a bigger pet peeve than incompetent and uncaring teaching, and that is one of the few things in life that will send me into snarky, eye-rolling disgust. Life’s too short to put up with that, especially when I’d be spending the next few years groveling at the bottom of the tenure totem pole, putting up with idiocy in the desperate hope I’d be allowed to join the cool (tenured) kids’ table. Basically, Tenure often devolves into a higher-stakes version of 7th grade based on the reports I hear. For better and worse I didn’t play that game in 7th grade, and I’ve got even less interest in playing it now.

So…that’s it. I’ve made my decision. I feel as sure of it as I did when I dropped band for creative writing. All I can tell you is that when I made this decision, a feeling of peace and rightness came over me, and overwhelmed the perpetual question of “But is that ENOUGH?”

That question, while it helped drive me in many useful ways, held me prisoner for the first thirty-five years of my life. I’m beginning to suspect it has a lot less relevance to the decisions I will have to make in the next 35 years of my life. If nothing else, I’m sure my mother would tell me this is all very age-appropriate.

OK, I’ve been a lot quiet this summer. I could try to explain why, but it would take about 3 hours and I’m not sure most it would make sense at the end. The short version is this: On May 12, I lost an old and very dear friend. We grew away from each other slightly in recent years, in part because of geography, in part because we both were focused (in our own ways) on “growing up” and building our careers as educators rather than nourishing our friendship with each other.

Those ebbs and flows in friendships are the way of the world, I’m well aware, but that loss made me re-evaluate a lot of things (as well as reconnect closely with my two other “besties” from that early 20s social circle). Over the ensuing summer I have been rethinking a lot of things about my goals, ambition, and the need for more compassion and silliness in my life to balance out my quest for wisdom and significance. Oh, and while grappling with that I completed a 5K walk, took 9 hours over the summer, 6 plus a research project this semester, and started my new position as Associate Director on July 1. (How am I not dead?)

I’ve tried to write a few things for this site this summer, like a piece on “Why Math Education Sucks” (which I’m still noodling on here and there), but most of my Infoliterate thoughts have been on what David Allen might call the 50,000 foot level: specifically, what does it mean to make a difference as an instruction librarian, library administrator, Ph.D student, etc.? Those thoughts have been so squishy in my head that it’s really only now that they’re firm enough to commit to a published form.

The longer I live, the more it seems that most of us as individuals have very little control over which achievements or actions will “make an impact” in our lives, or in the lives of those we hope to reach. Most of us can think of personal or professional projects we care about deeply that wound up flopping, and offhanded comments we tossed off that made a profound effect on someone else’s life, for good or ill. Everything we do makes ripples, which combine and interact with other ripples, and we can never control (and only rarely understand) their full impact.

I can set goals to earn my Ph.D, become a LIS Professor or library director, teach library students how to engage effectively with the new information landscape,  perform research to identify and highlight the blind spots in information literacy theory and practice, but I HAVE LITTLE TO NO POWER over what actually takes hold in the minds of others. It’s like doing a one-shot instruction session. Some days all the students will be glazed over, checking Facebook when they think nobody’s looking, no matter how charismatic and insightful the librarian is at the front of the room. Other times students are exploding with excellent questions and insights.

At least when viewed through the “lens” of this summer, this fact leads to one inescapable conclusion: Tying your self-worth into achieving a goal (or even a series of goals) is a fool’s errand. That’s not to say I don’t want to achieve big things with my life anymore—I’m just accepting that most of the variables that could lead me to publishing that seminal book that revolutionizes academic librarianship are out of my control. That’s scary to a person whose self-worth has long been tangled up in the need to “make a difference”, but it’s kind of freeing too.

That realization has also led me to look at what a “post-goal” mindset and career might look like. It seems to come back down to some sort of daily practice, where I simultaneously stay open to opportunities presented by the world while building the skills needed to seize those opportunities, whatever they may be. I’ll share some of those thoughts on a success-oriented daily practice next time, but for now I’ll just sit back and shake my head ruefully at the elegant chaos inherent in the way that one event, like a butterfly flapping its wings in Florida, has unexpectedly influenced change in so many other areas of my life and the lives of others.

My Ph.D Cohort

All Ph.D programs, or at least all Ph.D programs designed for working people, should be cohort-based. I’m a pretty diligent and motivated student (when I can stay away from the funny pictures of celebrities on Tumblr), and I like to think I’m decent at my coursework. However, I can think of two occasions in the past year where I might have dropped out, or at least slowed my pace, had I not had a cohort-mate to vent with, and had I not known that my departure would leave a hole in a group of friends I had come to care for very much. In this post I’ll share what I think are the benefits of the cohort, and suggest ways that students and faculty can prevent or address common issues that keep cohorts from working as smoothly as they might.

Benefits of the cohort

Built-in support system

If you haven’t gotten the memo yet, doctoral work is stressful. Having not ever tried grad school while not working full-time (I also worked 40 hours a week during my MLIS due to those pesky light bills) , I can only assume that juggling a Ph.D with a day job is even more intense. To make matters worse, when you start a Ph.D your free time largely vanishes. Most doc students cut their socializing to the bare essentials. I’m getting out a bit more now that I’ve gotten my bearings. However, for the first year I really only hung out with my husband, a few very close friends, and my family. That meant my cohort became a very important aspect of my social life.  They also “get it”. While I have the most amazingly supportive husband who is interested in and supportive of my work, and has even taken over laundry and dishes for the duration (!), he isn’t undergoing the lived experience. Ditto my work colleagues and other friends. The cohort understands.

The whole is greater than the sum of its parts

Everyone has strengths and weaknesses—for instance, I’m good with social theory, but was happy to escape Calc 1 with a C. I helped my friends earlier in the program during our theory heavy courses, and now that we’re hitting the quant research sequence, they’ll probably wind up nursing me through all these icky numbers in the stats classes. Plus, sometimes you’ve got more going on at certain times than others, and group members are there to pick up the slack. (this can also be a drawback, which I’ll discuss in a sec)

Get out of your comfort zone

Being an academic librarian, my closest colleagues are librarians. Oh, I have good relationships with a lot of faculty, but I really don’t know much about life in the administrative/staff realms, except to the extent it touches our lives directly. My cohort, on the other hand, encompasses people from community colleges, regional universities, a flagship branch and a private liberal arts school. In addition, our job descriptions include just about every possible administrative department or experience level, and a few faculty members to boot. Hearing each others’ perspectives have given us all a greater understanding of the bigger picture, and we’ve already identified many ways we can help each other succeed.

Cohort Pitfalls

That said, it’s not all sunshine and roses—I have an awesome cohort, but cohorts can be toxic just as easily as any other group. Here are some common issues that come up, and how to deal with them.

Interpersonal drama

Like any group, Drama can evolve in a cohort. There is only one cure for Drama, and that is maturity mixed with a common goal. You may think one or more of your cohort partners are insane or infuriating, but when the rubber hits the road, you need to be prepared to set that aside and work together. Also…don’t date anyone in your cohort till you’re ABD. Fortunately that’s not an issue in our group, but I’ve heard tales that this often leads to Bad Things.

Seeing the faculty as the enemy

Especially in this age of accountability, in most cases your professors genuinely want you to succeed and will help you to the best of their ability. That’s not to say they’ll make it easy on you. Understand they’re working in your best interests, and take things in the spirit they’re intended. Also, by the point you enter Ph.D work, it should be obvious that Professors are People Too. They have failings, frailties, are overworked, and just plain screw up sometimes. While you should expect a quality education, also understand that by the time you reach Ph.D, you will be interacting with professors on a more-or-less equal level. Lower your expectations of them at the same time you raise your own expectations of yourself.

Lazy study mates

Fortunately, this is another one I have only heard about, not experienced. However, there is a surprising amount of group work in a doctorate, and one weak link can cause a lot of damage. While everyone can and does have a bad semester where others pick up their slack, there comes a point where you must be ruthless in the service of your education as well as the greater good of your cohort. Speak to them privately, quietly refuse to be on their teams, or simply have a chat with their advisor or your instructors. Once is ok, twice is coincidence. But as soon as laziness becomes a pattern, you have to find a way to nip it in the bud.

So, those are my tips! Hope you enjoyed. This is looking like it’s going to be a great summer, and I’ll be back “soon” as class and research project events warrant. I’m working on an IRB right now for a project that I will (hopefully!) get a chance to present at ACRL 2013, so I hope to share that experience in a forthcoming post.

 I’m keeping it short today but I wanted to recommend that everyone take a look at Alison Head’s awesome webinar on the latest Project Information Literacy research: the PIL findings informed a lot of my Qual 1 work, and will be a major touchstone in my independent study this spring. The replay of today’s talk isn’t up as of this writing (4:15 on Tuesday, waiting for class to start), but I imagine it will be by the time this article posts. I live-tweeted my thoughts and a summary of the high points at @oklibrarian, and will hopefully have time to critique the session in-depth in my next post. Which brings me to a final point—during the spring and summer I put a lot of pressure on myself to post here 1-2 times a week, which eventually led to writer’s block and burnout. While I hope to return to a weekly-ish schedule, I’m only going to post articles when I have something worth saying, and my other projects allow. This will make for more irregular volume, but hopefully higher quality of content. Thanks, comment if you feel moved, and I’ll see you again soon!

Courtesy http://www.fabbrunette.com

In addition to the start of the semester and the experiences that brings, it’s been a busy week on a few non-academic fronts. As is my wont when Big Things are happening, I’ve been musing on many issues related to my professional interests and where I want to go, and how they fit into my larger life plan. For instance, I’ve found that I truly enjoy working for a small school in ways that I didn’t really expect when I started here. But at the same time, I find myself driven to think and write about big issues that, according to conventional wisdom, can only be addressed by the Right People with the Right Pedigree on the faculty of the Right School.

For a long time I accepted both assumptions as given, and as contradictory. I don’t want to inject myself into the pressure cooker of an Elite School, either as librarian or as LIS faculty.  I can’t bring myself to take those kinds of political games seriously—it’s the same reason I was an utterly horrible corporate drone. And yet, for some of those same reasons I want to use my skills to reach a greater understanding of how students do research, how those practices help or hinder their learning process in the classroom and beyond, and how libraries can evolve to help students succeed. How can I (or you) resolve this conundrum in ways that are both personally and professionally satisfying?

 I was working the late shift last night, and spent some time catching up on my sorely neglected “Read/Review” folder where all my listservs and RSS feeds go to die. A few screens down the folder, I was delighted to find that Madeline Li had finally written the final (?) article in her series on being denied tenure at an R1. It was as near to a happy ending as is possible in academe, as she settled happily into a teaching-intensive position at a rural college. She even found that the lack of serious publishing pressure actually freed her to be a more prolific and creative researcher than she had ever been while on the publish-or-perish hamster wheel. The comments were particularly good on this article, and one in particular by Richard Tabor Greene (who I promptly googled and found quite interesting) addressed this conundrum:

 We hang our shingle at a local place but we work at conferences, around the world, and on panels and editorial boards.   To keep productive you need the local audience that you can respect and the global audience that can respect you.   It is easy to play in both courts at once.   I have probably never met anyone happy being entirely local… . Everyone in my limited circle and world I have known who is happy is plugged into some local audience they respect and also plugged in to some global audience that they respect and that respects them.   They alternate like yo-yos between these poles.  

 So enjoy being set locally and celebrate it by coming up with globally powerful things [which] local loves help you generate.   The local if deeply enough engaged can amaze the global and vice versa.

 And the Light bulb went off, though in fairness it’s been flickering for a while. It is not only possible but desirable to have a career that is both global and local. By immersing myself into serving a community that’s actually representative of the Typical American University, I can learn lessons that all of us will find useful, and can then share those lessons with others. In that conversation I learn from their experiences, and we all make our own colleges better for the global conversation. While there are two or three other places in the world I could happily live (all of which have never seen 115 degree summers) I don’t HAVE to go charging off to Nationally Prestigious University to make an impact. And that’s true for everyone reading this. Wherever you are, what changes can you promote in your own community? How can you take the lessons learned in your research, teaching, or practice and share them with others in the wider world?

50,000 foot level: Purpose and Values

Per David Allen, the highest level of planning relates to your life purpose, and the values or ethics you live by in getting there. Stephen Covey argues for defining your mission as well, though unlike Allen he strongly suggests you determine your mission first, not last. However, both seem to argue that you will be able to sit down one afternoon, think deeply, and generate a Profound Life Mission that will essentially remain static for the rest of your life. After being a pretty hardcore time management nut for almost 10 years (First Covey, then GTD), I couldn’t DISAGREE more. While it is important to have a reasonably static purpose in order to serve as a roadmap, mine’s changed a lot over 10 years, especially during my 20s. This is not because of any major personality change, but due to natural growth and the simple fact that as you get older, you understand yourself better.

My core values have remained a lot more static, but wording has changed a lot. The biggest change is that both have gotten substantially shorter. If you can’t express your mission in 10 words or less, you may need to go back to the drawing board. Also, don’t try to capture every least little nuance of your core values—just pick the 3-5 most important tenets of your code of ethics.

40,000 feet: 5-Year Vision

What will your life to look like in 5 years if you are following the above vision? What do you want to be doing, where do you want to live, what kind of social life or personal development do you want? How are your finances? What about your family life? Write answers to these questions and feel free to blue-sky it—there’s absolutely nothing wrong with a stretch goal. I always revisit these annually—some years I write out a “day-in-the life” type of narrative; this year I jotted down about half a dozen long-range goals, each roughly correlating to one or more of my Areas of Responsibility (more on those below).

30,000 feet: Mid-range goals

So, you’ve established (in vague terms at least) what you want to do with your life, and how that will look in 5 years. As we descend in altitude in the model, the questions become more concrete. The 30,000 level of planning asks: what do you need to accomplish in the next 1-2 years to advance along the path to your 5 year vision? Each of the facets of your vision will probably have at least one or two subgoals that can be started now, and revisited quarterly or so (The post-finals lulls in December and May are good times, ditto the August annual review time). These, and the level that follow, will be very helpful in framing your tactical decisions about which projects to take on and which ones to jettison.

20,000 feet: Areas of Responsibility

Everyone wears different hats in life. Mine, listed in rough order of importance, are

• Self-Care
• Wife
• Friend/Family member
• Librarian/Educator
• Grad Student
• Investor
• Adventurer (Can be travel, but not necessarily)

Whatever other hats you wear, if self-care (what Covey calls “Sharpening the saw”) isn’t at the top of your list, you’ve got a problem. This encompasses the physical, emotional, and spiritual work you do daily to keep yourself sane and healthy. Most of the others are pretty self-explanatory. My Husband Kevin and I are focusing pretty heavily in the next year or two on transitioning into hard-core retirement saving, so I’m wearing the Investor hat often enough for it to qualify as an AOR. I also crave adventure—every year or so I seem to need to go on a big trip, volunteer with a group I’m unfamiliar with, or otherwise get out of my comfort zone. Otherwise, I get twitchy and bored, regardless of how much stuff’s on my plate. In addition, a big part of my mission is to learn and experience as much as humanly possible, so by making that an AOR, I will always have at least one project going that forces me to try something new.

Below 20,000 feet are the tactical levels, projects and tasks, and they merit their own post. The important takeaway is not that you should follow exactly this process in exactly this manner, but to understand this as one of many possible frameworks for your personal strategic planning (assuming of course, you even want to live your life according to a strategic plan!) Each level informs the others as you can imagine, as a change in job responsibilities, marital status, or even your desired goals will have repercussions up and down the model. For me at any rate, understanding where I’d like to go (and why) relieves a lot of stress that I am making the best choices possible for myself, my husband, my friends, my coworkers, and my students. In addition, when things change, it can help a lot to have a starting point and an understanding of your ultimate goals.

A couple of weeks ago, I had the opportunity to speak at unCOILed (a local library workshop). I think I’ll share more about my talk in coming posts, but a topic came up that merited its own post. Before the first breakout session, all of the day’s speakers participated in a panel discussion about why information literacy matters and the best ways in which to teach those skills. As the conversation unfolded, several audience members spoke out about the need for information literacy instruction to be immediately relevant and practical to student needs, and that  Library schools needed to focus less on theory and more on teaching those pragmatic skills. As you might imagine if you’ve been reading this blog, I began to squirm.

As soon as there was a natural pause in the conversation, I raised my hand, and said the following (approximately):

I’d like to push back a little on this. Practical teaching skills are important to librarians and becoming more so, and I think Library schools can and should make sure that there is space in the curriculum for all students to become grounded in the basics of pedagogy and curriculum design. However, we can’t discount the importance of theory, which I think many library schools teach fairly well. While it’s important to learn how to be an instruction librarian, theory teaches you the reasons WHY information literacy matters to students and my extension to the university. Understanding and communicating those reasons will help us be better educators, and give freshmen more reasons to pay attention to Peer-Reviewed sources at 8:30 AM.

A decent response as far as it goes. But I got to thinking about the Theory Thing, and realized there are at least five detailed reasons why theory matters to practitioners and the students we serve.

Theory explains why something is worth doing

Librarians (and educators/universities in general) are here to help student learn the skills they need to succeed in life, however they personally define that success. Universities, educators, and academic librarians have a shriveling pile of resources with which to accomplish that goal. Understanding theories about student learning can help librarians understand what services and resources should be emphasized to get the biggest return on investment, and what activities can and should be left behind.

Theory can Describe or Suggest

In a recent course on Educational Leadership, our Prof talked about the difference between descriptive and prescriptive theory. I’d never heard the distinction, but it made total sense and helped me grapple with theory more effectively. Briefly, Descriptive theories attempt to describe the impact of one phenomenon on another one—Say a student’s SAILS score versus their CLA score, for schools who can afford those kinds of Blue Chip assessments.  Prescriptive theories actually suggest a course of action: For instance, if you teach source evaluation skills via a constructivist-based pedagogy, then students will score better on SAILS than if you used a post-positivist lecture-based approach. Both types of theories provide possible explanations for how your students learn, but they work very differently.

Theory helps make assumptions explicit, which allows practitioners to critique them

Every profession is grounded in some basic assumptions, which may be captured in concepts like The Five Laws or Kuhlthau’s Sense-making Model, or which may be more informal. Some somewhat informal assumptions that ground much of what the library does could be worded like this:

1. All knowledge (or at least all scholarly knowledge) is worth preserving.
2. All knowledge can theoretically be collected.
3. All knowledge can and should be arranged into a tidy, logical and unbiased form of organization such as subject headings and shelf call numbers to promote ease of access.

This is something that most of us librarians believe in our bones, but a 19-year old postmodernist sophomore could demolish this assumption with one hand tied behind his back. For that matter, Wikipedia’s much easier to navigate than your average library catalog. (Yes, I hear you screaming about Source Authority. I’m not getting into that here. Let’s just say Authority opens its own epistemological can of worms which I will be exploring in coming weeks) In short, by laying out this informal assumption and making it explicit, it becomes a theory which can be refined, critiqued, challenged, tested, and implemented.

Theory explains the significance of what you do to a wider audience

This cohort has provided a fascinating insight into the way that administrators think. Most good administrators want their universities to implement programs to help students learn the skills needed for success. They also want this process to be explainable and provable to other administrators, donors, local businesses who hire graduates, grad schools who recruit them, and the accreditors who allow us to operate. At the end of a presentation about your new information literacy curriculum, after showing charts and tables full of wonderful test results and quotes from students, some wiseacre VP will inevitably ask: So What?

Theory, if worded in plain English, gives you an answer to that question. 

Theory helps you verify whether you’re doing the right thing

FInally, if you’re a good librarian or library director, you are constantly asking yourself whether the things you are doing will help you reach your end goals. The good news is, theorists in student learning and librarianship have been pondering these issues longer than you, and in a more focused manner. By reading theories, evaluating them against your own knowledge and experience, and acting on what seems right, you build your own knowledge as a practitioner, manager, and leader. Theory, when implemented well, can lead to stronger librarians, stronger libraries, and universities better equipped to prepare students for the challenges they face.

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Trying to decide what I think about the apparent resolution of the most recent Unshelved storyline. I enjoyed and it was pretty true to life, but something about Colleen falling on her sword seemed a bit anticlimactic. I’m waiting to see if they bring in a new character at some point to shake things up a bit. They couldn’t be an employee for obvious reasons, but…maybe the chair of the library Friends or something?

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Infolit Librarians: Have you readPaulo Freire? Go read Paulo Freire. I only agreed with about 75% of what he said, but there’s a lot there that challenges how we do business. If nothing else, see if you can read his description of “Banking Education” without squirming uncomfortably in memory of your last instruction session.

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After discovering 2 philosophers, 3 books, and a half-dozen articles i want to read this week alone, I am coming to the sad realization that I will never get it all read, even if I was a ‘traditional’ grad student. I frankly don’t know how those in broader fields keep up.

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Earlier this spring I heard of an intriguing looking workshop that the University of Stirling in Scotland is putting on next week. While at the time of application what I knew about Ed. Theory could fit in a teacup while leaving room for Jimmy Hoffa, the Lab for Educational theory puts on a lot of intriguing-looking workshops and such through the year. I’ve just about decided to put in an abstract for their next conference if I can work around other classes. A: I’d like to build a network on that side of the Atlantic, and B: highs in the upper 60s sound VERY good right now.

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Next week at Infoliterate:

Monday: OFF (Happy Independence Day to the American readers, and Happy All the Americans are on Vacation Day to the rest of the planet!)

Wednesday: Copyright, library rights, and the future of scholarly publishing (may post late due to another commitment)

Thanks, and have a great weekend!

1. Skipping the structures: I worked in the telecom industry in the early 2000s, just as broadband voice and data pipes were reaching South America, Africa, and other areas of the developing world. At the time there was a lot of handwringing over how long it would take to wire these areas locally, with pessimistic projections of decades-long projects being required before there would be any significant demand. The problem was: we were thinking about land lines in a world that was on the verge of going wireless. Instead of digging miles of wires, entrepreneurs and/or state telecom companies simply set up wireless towers and started selling cell phones (and in time, smartphones). In a way, microlending for students could work the same way. The concept developed because the no-collateral, low-interest student loans that can be found easily in the US are practically impossible to find outside the First World. As the education opportunities and the middle class started growing in developing nations, so did the need for financing. Traditional banks didn’t move fast enough, and microlending is filling in the gap.

2. Doing well by doing good: The microlending phenomenon is actually a win-win on both sides of the transaction. Investors know that there money is going to a particular cause (and often a particular student), and have a good chance of a decent return financially as well as socially. On the other side of the transaction, a student receives the seed money needed to make the jump into a more financially stable life that will enable them to serve their community more effectively, and he or she can pay the loan off at a rate that makes sense for that situation.  

3. If there is a need, then there is a market: Higher Ed has a lot of problems right now, and it’s even more obvious in a field like librarianship, where technology, funding, and theory are forcing us to ask some very deep existential questions about our theoretical foundation and the types of work we do. Instead of wringing our hands or mourning what is past, there can be opportunity in taking a step back, looking carefully, and seeing what our students need NOW in order to succeed. While they may or may not need a given collection or service, they DO need access to high quality information, and the tools to find that information and evaluate it critically. All three are essential, and all three are things librarians have done since the days of Dewey, if not longer.

So what does all of this tell us about the world of education entrepreneurship? Simply put, all of us are entrepreneurs, in the sense that we build our own careers and have a responsibility to seek innovative solutions to the problems we face. Some of our solutions will work, and some will go down in flames. However, most of us are blessed with either tenure or government employment, which often works out to the same thing. If those terms mean anything, then we have both the ability to take risks in our own careers and the obligation to create an environment where others can do the same.