I presented this on Tuesday, November 17th at the Progressive Librarians Guild - UA Chapter LIS Skillshare.
I have about 8 years or maybe a little more of event planning experience (including outreach/promo/marketing/pr), so I thought I would share my accumulation of skills. Since I've done educational events, festivals, music shows, library student group workshops and a symposium, community social events, and fundraiser events, I wanted to capture all event types for the attendees, but of course all the information could be relatable to libraries (public, academic, or otherwise).
September 4, 2009
From one stereotype to another
I'm a little torn. On one hand, I think it's great that the librarian stereotype is being re-vamped; instead of shushers with buns, we are now considered techie hipsters with tats. But that's also the problem: librarians are still being stereotyped.
One of the reasons I was so enamored with the profession when I began library school was that there were so many different kinds of people with many different interests. It's part of what makes the LIS discourse so varied and interesting.
Two recent articles prompting me to write this are today's CNN article, The future of libraries, with or without books, and the write up about the roller derby librarian, Tiny librarian is hell on wheels, also from CNN. Of course, the NYT article about the Williamsburg hipster librarians can also be credited for being in the back of my mind, but that came out right when I started my program.
I've been thinking about if this is really a good thing to be thought of as being mostly urban, young, technologically inclined, and pushing out the "old-school librarians" (CNN). What kind of impression does this give a younger patron (at any kind of library)? That they might only want to ask for help from a librarian who fits this description or they won't get as good of service? What kind of impression does this give an older patron? That if they aren't up on technology they might feel intimidated?
Another problem with this stereotype is it falls heavily on those who are white and middle-class. Granted, that seems to be who makes up the majority of the profession (myself included), but pushing this image discredits the diversity we do have and the diversity the profession is trying to acquire.
To depict LIS professionals as being varied in appearance, age, class, race/ethnicity, and areas of specialty would probably benefit the profession more than jumping from one narrow stereotype to another.
One of the reasons I was so enamored with the profession when I began library school was that there were so many different kinds of people with many different interests. It's part of what makes the LIS discourse so varied and interesting.
Two recent articles prompting me to write this are today's CNN article, The future of libraries, with or without books, and the write up about the roller derby librarian, Tiny librarian is hell on wheels, also from CNN. Of course, the NYT article about the Williamsburg hipster librarians can also be credited for being in the back of my mind, but that came out right when I started my program.
I've been thinking about if this is really a good thing to be thought of as being mostly urban, young, technologically inclined, and pushing out the "old-school librarians" (CNN). What kind of impression does this give a younger patron (at any kind of library)? That they might only want to ask for help from a librarian who fits this description or they won't get as good of service? What kind of impression does this give an older patron? That if they aren't up on technology they might feel intimidated?
Another problem with this stereotype is it falls heavily on those who are white and middle-class. Granted, that seems to be who makes up the majority of the profession (myself included), but pushing this image discredits the diversity we do have and the diversity the profession is trying to acquire.
To depict LIS professionals as being varied in appearance, age, class, race/ethnicity, and areas of specialty would probably benefit the profession more than jumping from one narrow stereotype to another.
July 7, 2009
New PLG-UA newsletter out
Although I haven't had much time to write any new posts lately (I have been so busy!), I did want to share the new Progressive Librarians Guild - UA Chapter newsletter. I contributed two articles, and there are recaps of events, book reviews, and more. If you haven't tried Scribd before, it's a social publishing platform, allowing tagging of uploaded documents. It uses its iPaper document reader to make text documents like PDFs more readable on the web. As the site says, "[it] transforms 'print' files like PDF, Word or PowerPoint into web document[s] — with all the fonts, layout and artwork that makes your document unique."
Chris Anderson's new book is also available for free on Scribd -- pretty cool! But anyhow, without further adieu...
PLG Newsletter 2(1)
Chris Anderson's new book is also available for free on Scribd -- pretty cool! But anyhow, without further adieu...
PLG Newsletter 2(1)
July 2, 2009
Finished products
To make the tutorial I created with Wink viable for subsequent KEYS internship sessions, so my supervisor would not need to have the item re-created, I edited my work so student names were blocked out and the tutorial is more clear as to what the objectives are (since they were originally just stated during the presentation).
You can view what a final product created with Wink looks like here, and the PDF version for printing is here. As you can see, the quality of the PDF image is not very good for the web.
Some more things I learned about Wink while re-editing:
You can view what a final product created with Wink looks like here, and the PDF version for printing is here. As you can see, the quality of the PDF image is not very good for the web.
Some more things I learned about Wink while re-editing:
- you cannot bold or italicize individual words or phrases in a text box - it is either all or none
- rendering the flash component is unnecessary with static tutorials, although the instructions in the user manual made it seem like it was required either way
- the numbering order for the PNG files seems odd (and gets even more strange when saving more frames) and it is necessary to take care when matching them up with the different sections in the HTML file
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