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  • What Would You Ask an Academic Librarian?

    By Joshua Kim May 17, 2010 9:27 pm EDT

    This Thursday (5/20 3:00pm EST) I'm participating in a Webinar entitled "Everything Librarians and Learning Technologists Wanted to Know About Each Other and Never Bothered to Ask: An Open Forum".

    You can register (for free) at the blendedlibrarian.org site.

    The description of the webinar reads:

    Join Steven Bell and John Shank, and their guests, Joshua Kim and Laura Braunstein, in this open forum in which instructional technologists and academic librarians ask each other questions about helping faculty and students with technology, handling and management of digital collections, achieving better collaboration, and working in the same space.

    Over the past few weeks I've been working with my academic librarian colleagues to come up with with a set of discussion questions that straddle the line between provocative and informative. One of our goals is to get on the table any misperceptions or stereotypes that learning technologists and academic librarians may harbor regarding our roles on campus. The hope is that through honest dialogue, and a lively exchange of views, that we can find common cultural ground in order to continue the collaborative library/technology work that so many of us are engaged in.

    I originally got to know Steven Bell last year when he invited me and a colleague to talk about "becoming an educational change agent" in the webinar series. Subsequently, I blogged about Steven (and his academic library blogging colleagues) in this space, and Steven has used one of his blogs to link his community to the learning technology world. I'm sort of an academic librarian groupie - and have made it my mission to take every opportunity to collaborate, learn from, and engage in joint project with my academic librarian colleagues. Therefore, I'm very excited to have the opportunity to hang out with the Blended Librarian community via webinar this week. How can we reciprocate this sort of invitation to academic librarians from the learning technology side?

    I'm hoping you will consider attending the webinar - and perhaps even suggesting some questions that you'd like to ask an academic librarian (or a learning technologist). A brief sampling of some of the questions I plan to ask Steven, Laura and John include:

    --Are librarians trained for learning design in library school?

    --If you were to design an academic library from scratch, would you make it like it is now? What would you change?

    --How come it takes so long to get a book that a librarian orders when I can have it from Amazon in a day?

    --What do you wish other people (colleagues, librarians, faculty, students) knew more about what you do?

    --Which one of us (librarians or technologists) is more like faculty?

    I'll hold off on sharing some of the questions that my academic librarian colleagues have come up for me (I think you'll find them a bit more provocative than I was willing to offer), but again I'll be sure to pass along any suggested questions.

    Additional questions (or answers) would be great?

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Comments on What Would You Ask an Academic Librarian?

  • librarian to learning technologists
  • Posted by Ridie Ghezzi , Head, Research & Instruction Services, Baker-Berry Library at Dartmouth College on May 18, 2010 at 9:15am EDT

  • Hi Josh, I am sorry not to be able to attend the webcast Thursday - I will be cheering on my youngest as she graduates from college. But, as a public services librarian, I would *love* to be asked the questions you raise above. They are a good example of a desire to understand, basically, another culture. And that is what we're dealing with here, really. You are trying to get at a "thick description" (see Clifford Geertz, "An Interpretation of Culture") of what, how and from where a librarian reaches their world view.

    We librarians are in just as much need of a thick description of learning technologists. Sometimes there is a cross-over of understanding in those librarians and learning technologists who have gone the route of the academic first. Completing a doctorate provides us with an insight into the faculty world, however deep or shallow, that informs the work we do with faculty in whatever direction we finally take. This is where the crossover is, and doesn't mean those without the higher degree don't work successfully with faculty (they often work better with faculty, actually, without all the baggage!).

    But, aside from this area of common ground between librarians and learning technologists, we have a lot to learn about each other and how we can integrate our services to those whose teaching and research we support. The key is understanding what each other does sufficiently to be open, creative and effective in our future work. If some of us have it our way, we will be working more and more in an integrated environment and our community will only benefit from our understanding of and collaboration with each other.

    So I start my questions to learning technologists by asking: what do you do? how do you see your role in the process of teaching and research support? what is the goal of learning technologists in their work with faculty? what are some things we can do collectively, librarians and learning technologists, to promote effective collaborative work to achieve these goals?

    Thank you for this opportunity to participate.

    Ridie

  • Define "faculty"
  • Posted by Dr. Pepper , Academic-in-Training at Northeast on May 18, 2010 at 9:45am EDT

  • Being in academia for the past ten years, I've had times when faculty have looked down upon staff positions because they see staff as inferior (be they academic technologists, IT help desk, facilities or the server people - just to name a few staff positions).

    To this extent I would say that (1) you need to define what faculty do, and how EduTechies and Librarians fit/do-not-fit in that mold.

    My personal opinion is that we are all employees of the institution, no one person is more important than the other because if one area fails, it affects other areas of the university, and we should foster that view of employees in the institution.

    My question is this:

    - We all deal in information (librarians one kind, EduTechies/IDers in another), why have our departments not yet merged and why aren't we working in collaborative teams yet?

  • librarian as learning technologist
  • Posted by Walt Lessun , Director, Learning Resources and Inst. Tech. Ctrs. at Gogebic Community College on May 18, 2010 at 11:15am EDT

  • At least at my small, rural community college, I am both the librarian and the learning technologist (big title, small paycheck). Advice on dealing with multiple-professions disorder would be appreciated.

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