LM-Net

The original read/write internet - LM_Net

You Know You're a Librarian in 2005 when... 5. You know more librarians in Texas than you do in your home state because of LM_Net. 

Peter Milbury and Mike Eisenberg, the moderators par excellence of LM_Net for the past 15 years, announced this morning that they are passing the torch.

For those of you who don't know about LM_Net, it has been the mainstay mailing list for an estimated 100 million school librarians in 2 million countries, on a dozen other planets, and at least two identified alternative universes. It produces in excess of a billion e-mail messages each day - 10 billion on "recipe day." (These number are rough estimates.)

I was an early subscriber and participant on LM_Net -  palsdaj@vax1.mankato.msus.edu back in 1992 when I first joined. I am not sure if I was among The Hallowed First One Hundred or not, but I was in there pretty early. And this was 1200 baud modem dial-up, line interface, pre-www, uphill-both-directions-in-the-snow Internet days. Not soft and easy like you young'uns have it today with your blogs and wikis and RSS feeds. And the computer screen was hard to read by candlelight too.

Anyway, I owe LM_Net big time. Here's why...

It was my second year as library media supervisor here in the Mankato Schools and I came home very, very angry and frustrated one night. I was getting lots of push-back from the librarians I had inherited with in the job. I was determined to make them tech integration specialists and they seemed determined to remain print-only librarians. I turned on my computer, opened my e-mail, and just let rip about the reactionary, troglodytic, myopic, etc. nature of librarians, especially school librarians, concluding that they had better damn well wake-up and smell the coffee or they would all be replaced with techs and not to let the door hit them on the butt on the way out. I knew as I was writing it that I had better sleep on the matter, re-write the message, and THEN send it to my friends on LM_Net.

What I had forgotten was that I had a new e-mail client (Eudora) that automatically sent my queued mail as soon as the program was opened. The fiery diatribe was sent out, and as we all well know, an e-mail once sent can never be taken back.

Let me put it this way, I got a little reaction from the message. I knew librarians had good vocabularies, but even I learned some new words from the responses to that LM_Net message. I believe other LM_Netters opened my e-mails from then on simply wondering what idiotic thing I might say next.

I kept contributing to LM_Net and eventually some of my postings became columns and columns became articles and articles became books which led to speaking engagements etc. (The column version of that nasty e-mail became The Sound of the Other Shoe Dropping, I think.) In LM_Net I found my voice, and more importantly, like-minded colleagues who offered encouragement and support.

I spent a few minutes earlier today looking over some names from the earliest LM_Net archives still available (March 1994).  Forgive me in advance to all those I've left out.

• Betty Dawn Hamilton
• Mary Alice Anderson
• Carol Simpson
• Michele Missner
• Frances Jacobson
• Ken Haycock
• Floyd Pentlin
• Paula Gallard
• Eugene Hainer
• Marg Stimson
• Esther Sinofsky
• Gail M. Szeliga 
• Ann Symons
• Diane Durbin
• Debbie Abilock
• Guusje Zimmerman Moore

Quite a line up and I'm guessing some of these folks are still alive and some even have many of their marbles yet today. Amazing!

I also have to LM_Net to thank for introducing me to lots of really, really smart and interesting people, both virtually and in person, including Joyce Valenza. At the 1997 AASL Conference in Portland, Joyce and I were both invited to participate in "Late Night with LM_Net with Your Host, Mike Eisenberg." I told lame Ole and Lena jokes, but Joyce was the hit of the evening, doing impressions of single-cell organisms. And Mike kept all of us LM_Netters in line.

Mike and Peter have kept us all in line on LM_Net very well over the past 15 years. It's been a civilized, useful, supportive resource that has been the best professional development of my career.  A remarkable accomplishment since managing librarians is, as the saying goes, like herding cats. Unlike science teachers or kindergarten teachers, school librarians are usually the sole practitioner of their craft in their buildings. The virtual community built by LM_Net (a professional learning community before they were so named) was a lifeline and sanity-keeper for lots of us.

Hats off to you, Peter and Mike. You're a credit to your profession. 

The power of positivity!

Earlier this month, Adam Janowski, media specialist extraordinaire from Naples, Florida, wrote a guest blog entry on computer gaming in libraries. Sadly, in a follow-up comment to his defense of games, he wrote:

"Oh, how things can shift in days. Our superinendent was sacked yesterday, and today I get a message from our principal say NO to games.

"No discussion. Just an ultimatum.

"Such is life in a public school."

Happily, here is the rest of the story which is less about games and more about proactivity. - Doug 

I will start this post with an anecdotal story. For three years now, "Edison", a junior, has been the first person I have busted for playing Internet games on the computer. This year he said, "But Mr. J., this is an educational game!" It was. Very much like "Lingo" if you are a Game Channel addict. "Edison, for three years now, you have tested me, the rule is still the rule, "No Games"!
 
Some of you know from an earlier post that my principal had issued and edict banning computer games in the LMCon the basis that they violated "academic integrity". No discussion, that's all I had requested. After much back and forth, she told me that I could bring it up at our school Leadership Council meeting, but that still bothered me. I did it, but then tabled it. I wanted to talk about it first.
 
Someone who responded to my post on your blog, led me to a great article in support of gaming. I also contacted our District Coordinator, who told me there was no district prohibition on Internet games, and that they were, in fact, reviewing a Math gaming program to be implemented district-wide.
 
Today my colleague and I had an informal meeting with the principal in our office. We plied her with freshly-brewed Colombian coffee and home-made (I made them) pecan sandies. We brought up the issue of gaming. We gave her the article. We talked about the fact that we were not "normal" librarians, and that we were leaders in the field, that we had one of the few high school Reading is Fundamental (RIF) programs in the nation, that we were one of the few libraries that embraced a totally paperback fiction collection, that we had implemented an Information Commons to encourage creativity, and that we were recognized nationally for our innovations. I told her that we were tired of being the "games police" and that students would still play games, but just close windows as we came close. It was only the slower students that we caught. We told her that we were just encouraging students to become more sly, not a good thing.
 
Still, she was not convinced, until I pulled out my trump card! She still wanted it to go to the Leadership Council. But as she read the list of reasons that Doug Johnson posted about gaming and came to "Kids might be finding school fun and we all know life isn't about fun," she laughed out loud and said "OK, I give, it is really your room and you should set your own rules." "I just don't want them playing violent or inappropriate games. Let's try it as a pilot program for the semester."
 
At lunch today, I told Edison that we had persuaded the principal that games would be OK as a pilot program. We played his "Lingo-type" game together and he and I were able to advance to the next level. He said he had never been able to do that before as he "High-Fived" me! Life is good!
 
Adam <okadam (at) comcast.net>

The Need for Community

I am still trying to get my head around the tragic shooting at Virginia Tech earlier this week. Is it even possible to understand the depth of loss experienced by those who cared about those killed and wounded? Is it even possible for undersand the psyche of the young man who perpetrated the violence? And it is possible for anyone to reduce the likelihood of this happening again?

Two years ago, Minnesota experienced a school shooting on the Red Lake Indian Reservation and these were my thoughts I shared in a column that appeared in my Head for the Edge October, 2005. I guess I am reposting them here because I needed to re-read them.

The Need for Community
As I write this, Minnesotans are still in shock and mourning over the tragedy at the Red Lake School and its community. On March 21, 2005, sixteen year-old student Jeff Weise brought a gun to school and killed five students and two staff members and wounded seven more before killing himself. This was after he had earlier killed his grandfather and his grandfather’s companion in their home.

According to news reports, Jeff was considered an “outsider” in his closely knit, but impoverished community on the Red Lake reservation. He participated in online “communities” – ones that espoused violence and intolerance at nazi.org and www.abovetopsecret.com. Ones made accessible via the Internet even in this remote northern Minnesota location.

One of my first questions was how much did Jeff’s access to the Internet contribute to his terrible decisions and actions? I am sure I am not the only parent, educator or community member who wondered if he not been able to express his violent thoughts and receive support from other like-minded individuals, would he have made the choices he did?

Establishing cause and effect in incidents like these will always be speculative, and there are plenty of places at which we can point accusative fingers. Jeff’s life had been horrific. He reportedly had been abused and neglected as a child. His father committed suicide and his mother lived in a nursing home after a serious car accident. Jeff was American Indian, one of the state’s (and nation’s) most impoverished and disenfranchised ethnic minorities. And of course, the “bad seed” theory always surfaces as well. Jeff did not leave a note explaining why he took the actions he did, leaving us only sadly speculating.

One factor might be that Jeff, like all kids, looked for and did not find a sense of community “on the res.” When he could not find like-minded, sympathetic, caring individuals around him physically, he looked elsewhere and found it online.

So what does this have to do with technology, libraries and schools? We can ask how and why was Jeff “allowed” to visit and interact with others on web hate sites? Do the dangers and risks of such groups outweigh the useful, productive resources available on the web? Who was monitoring Jeff’s Internet use? Were the adults in his life even aware such vicious places on the Internet exist? Important questions, to be sure, but to me, Jeff’s Internet use ought to be considered more symptomatic than causal.  

Most kids look for and find “communities” with values that are life affirming and socially responsible. Boy and Girl Scouts, 4-H clubs, church groups, and both formal and informal groups revolving around special interests such as bicycling, hunting, literature, or sports play a big role in most young people’s lives as they grow up. Schools provide opportunities for socialization through athletics, music, drama, newspapers, business or art clubs. In these groups, young people learn not just about personal interests, but also about one’s fellow students and mentors and why they are worth caring about. And they are where kids often find that others care about them as well.

In our efforts to improve our schools and reduce school expenditures, extra-curricular activities are often first on the chopping block. Politicians and taxpayers see music, arts and athletics as superfluous. The “basics” are reading, writing, math and other purely classroom pursuits. Guidance counselors, teacher-librarians, coaches and club sponsors are nice extras only tangentially related to the real purpose of school. Sigh…

How many of us as teacher-librarians or technology coordinators make a conscious effort to create “communities” for our own students, especially for those kids who do not seem to have much success with the traditional organizations? Do you have a “geek squad” in which members gain self-esteem by helping students and staff with technology problems? Do you have library volunteers who watch the circulation desk, help re-shelve materials and created displays? As a former member of the “projector sector” – students who assisted technology-challenged teachers set-up 16mm projectors in my high school, I personally recognize how important such a seemingly small thing helped me establish a sense of belonging and camaraderie in school. And it’s why I, as an educator, encourage all of us to enlist the aid of kids for whom football or band are not exactly their thing.

I am not so naïve to believe that there is a single cause of school violence or a single way to prevent it. But St. Paul Pioneer Press reporter David Hanners wrote, “In the online world where he felt most at home, Jeff Weise has gained more attention in death than he ever did in life.” We all crave attention. What small part can we as teacher-librarians and technologists do to make sure the Jeffs in our schools get that attention in positive ways? Are we helping create “communities” for everyone? You never know what one thing may make a difference.