Teaching the Librarians of the Future Without Online Instruction
March 23, 2010
I teach at the only School of Information and Library Science (SILS) on the east coast of the United States that does not offer a single online course—not a program or a blended option either. (I discovered this through a search of the American Library Association accredited programs, which maintains a list of LIS programs with online course options.)
Are were a bunch of luddites, teaching our students the way of the past, when libraries were the primary sources of high-quality information, and librarians were the gatekeepers to that world of knowledge? Certainly not.
Despite having no online classes, Pratt SILS in New York City has a reputation for being a high-tech program. How do we maintain this reputation? We do it by maximizing our face-to-face time, keeping class sizes small, and challenging our students to push the limits of their creativity and digital know-how to become the librarians of the future.
How do we accomplish this? I will not speak for all my colleagues on the faculty, but rather from some of the strategies I use in my own classes.
Digital Curricula
I currently teach four classes that rely heavily on digital technology:
- Digital Libraries
- Digital Archives
- Social Media
- Teaching and Instruction Methods for Librarians.
In each of these classes, I attempt to get students to understand that we are currently amidst a wave of socio-technical change. We read the works of Yochai Benkler, Manuel Castells, Henry Jenkins, David Weinberger, Walter Ong, danah boyd, among others, and watch videos such as Frontline's Digital Nation.
By unseating students from "how things are supposed to be" and encouraging them to see that many things are "up for grabs," subject to individual efforts, they come to believe that they can have agency in shaping the future of information environments.
Having a sense of agency is essential. Because librarians face extremely challenging funding issues, they need to be able to design future information environments and be advocates of their work. Being passive and modeling cultural stereotypes of librarians is simply not an option.
The Method
Once students come to realize that the future is up for grabs and subject to individual efforts, I introduce them to the collaborative process they will use to design innovative programs, services, or tools—whatever it is that they really want. The process I use relies heavily on the one popularized by the design firm IDEO and used extensively in design schools, such as Stanford's D-School. Working in small groups, the students are asked to focus on their shared interests and spend the majority of their time coming up with a strong project idea. Next, they write down their project idea and create a paper prototype. At the end of the semester, they submit a design document that clearly articulates the project visually and conceptually, and they deliver a project pitch.
I let my students know that they have done well on the project not by the grade or feedback they receive from me, but by suggesting that if they want to keep working on the project and make it a reality after the class ends, they should.
The Projects
Through this process, a fascinating variety of projects have been developed that reflect student interest and willingness to design future information environments. For example, one group of students in my Digital Libraries class found that they were all interested in dance and mobile technologies, and so they designed an iPhone application that combined the New York Public Library's Performing Arts Collection with a participatory function that connected users to dance classes in New York City. See the demo of the application on YouTube.
In addition to designing cutting-edge information environments, students also develop digital projects that meet current library needs. For example, in the Digital Archives course, we have partnered with the Dalton School's library in Manhattan to create a digital archive around a collection of oral histories about the school history and culture. The class of 15 evaluate the different digital archiving options available, decide how to proceed, and then enact those decisions. Students evaluate different digital archiving packages that are available (such as Omeka, DSpace), and figure out how to make these packages work best for the specific project. At the end of the course, they will have delivered a digital archive from scratch. The aim of this project is to not only teach students about digital archiving, but also give them the confidence and skills they need to create a digital archive.
After finishing this ambitious project, my students should feel like experts in their ability to create an oral history digital archive.
The class on Social Media that I'm teaching emphasizes creative thinking. Students are asked to use what we are beginning to know about social media to come up with new programs, tools, or services that could have positive social impact. It's both both exciting and challenging because many students have not thought beyond using social media as a marketing device to promote services or events via Facebook, Twitter, Youtube. But the primary goal of the class is to move students from the question, "Should my library have a Twitter account?" to, "How might information organizations and professionals leverage the networked information environment to advance longstanding professional values, such as a commitment to democracy, community building, and individual efficacy and fulfillment?" Answering that question requires a view from a thousand feet up because students must first understand the social and economic changes our world is undergoing, and be able to see in great detail the specific affordances within these technologies (such as ambient presence, approaches to control and authority, uses of language and image, among other design decisions).
I look to create the librarians of the future by providing them the skills to do today's job, as well get them into the habit of using their creativity to create innovative information environments. I have colleagues who similarly push the boundary of what librarians can and should be doing, such as David Walczyk, who teaches Information Architecture and Interaction Design, Usability Leadership, and People-Centered Methods and Design. Through the concentrated efforts of our faculty, we will have created the future librarians that will breathe life into libraries for decades to come, even though we're doing it in a traditional classroom.
About the Author
Anthony Cocciolo, EdD, is an assistant professor at Pratt Institute School of Information and Library Science in New York City. His research interests are the emerging uses of information and communications technologies to enhance libraries and education. He received his degree from the Communication, Computing, Technology and Education program at Teachers College, Columbia University.
