Library School 2.0
Well, the whole Library 2.0 thing has finally made its way onto the JESSE library education listserv in the form of a question posed thus:
“There has been considerable under-the-table discussion about Library 2.0 and Web 2.0 tools, capabilities, philosophies, and approaches to information organization and retrieval.
Facebook, myspace, delicious, blogs, Second Life, and many others represent user-centered approaches to content creation and content organization.
How are you integrating these concepts and philosophies and techniques into the core courses for LIS education? Are they important? Why or why not?”
It will be interesting to see the responses, given that I for one have found that teaching these things *does* in fact and in turn impact the way in which the material is taught, in a somewhat different way than simply getting better and better at “covering the material” as in some other courses I’ve done. For instance, one of the projects that came out of my LIS 5433 class last fall was a comprehensive exam preparation wiki developed by students for students, which I think represents exactly the kind of artifact that whoever is studying the diffusion of the Library 2.0 “meme” into library schools should be analyzing. (I’m using the “m-word” here because the variations on the L2 concept are too disorganized to be considered a normative theoretical framework.) Another project from the same class is the Ambient Librarian wiki, which I have just noticed is an external link from that Wikipedia entry. So, we may not have theory yet, but at least we’re starting to have data!
Update: Googling “library school 2.0″ just now brought up “Kirsten’s” post on Library School 2.0 and the 5433 class for this fall. (Though I’m horrified to read that people may think that the class is intended to replace cataloging as a choice: maybe I should petition to move it back into the technology category!) “Kirsten”, however, is right about the OLA presentations (and, even worse, some outstanding projects from the class, such as Free-the-Elves and TellMeYarns, didn’t make it there, and my screenshots certainly didn’t do them justice.) By the time the class starts again in August, though, there will be many more opportunities for fascinating projects in our sandbox, given the calibre of people that I know are coming into the class *and* the availability of cool new tools. This is exactly the type of thing I meant above: welcome to Library School 2.0!
Hi DocMartens,
To continue from your comment on my blog…
It isn’t so much that I think the class is intended to replace cataloging as I think it will simply end up doing so as those students who are perhaps intimidated by the more traditional options avoid them, or folks just take whatever class fits their schedule. It’s the way school goes, I suppose — choices get made for the darndest reasons sometimes.
I must admit that the reason I’ll be taking your class is that cataloging wouldn’t fit into my schedule because of how infrequently it’s taught. And anal ex-copy editor that I am, I was actually quite disappointed!
As for the theory of Library 2.0, have you read Michael Habib’s thesis? I just started on it today and so really can’t comment yet, but I read his blog while he was writing it and so know there’s some interesting stuff in there. Found here: http://etd.ils.unc.edu/dspace/bitstream/1901/356/1/michaelhabib.pdf
And I love playing in sandboxes!
Hi Kirsten (sorry for the earlier scare quotes, now that I’ve recognized you!),
Thanks for sharing the Habib link: I look forward to seeing his model, which indeed I hadn’t come across before, and to comparing it with that of Ross Dawson, who offers a more general Web 2.0 framework.
I suspect that the fall semester’s sandbox will be even more interesting, as I hope that there will be several people who may want to play in the NextGenCat section, which wasn’t very popular last time around. It’s a shame, though, that you’re missing out on the advanced cataloging class!