Virtual interview

My geezerdom is sometimes confused for a standing in the library field and I am occasionally the subject of some poor library student's dreaded "interview a person in the field" assignment.

I've gotten a bit more fussy about these lately, mostly because writing about oneself tends to be pretty boring. But I will respond to interview questions provided the student has taken the time read my bio and to compose interesting questions.

Lindsay, a student at Indiana University, did both. Her questions, my replies:

1.    In your article entitled, “It’s Good to be Inflexible” you speak of a need to have some fixed scheduling built into the School Media Center, which is convergent from the recent trends in the field. I am interested to know how you define and develop this type of scheduling.
I am not so sure fixed scheduling is a “recent trend.” It has been considered best practice for some time by AASL and many library professionals. My argument is not against flexible scheduling, but an acknowledgement that fixed scheduled programs can also have positive aspects for students. Ideally, the staffing of a media center would allow a combination fix/flex – the ability for the media specialist to meet with all kids for story times, book check out, mini-lessons, etc, on a regular basis, but also have time to work with teachers and classes on integrated units. I would encourage people to read not just my article, but the responses and papers in the links associated with it.

2.    In the past decade local and national acts of violence and terrorism have impacted security and intellectual freedom in public places, including schools. How, if any has this affected your Media Center and policies?
Parents are more aware of a child’s need for safety. Parental concern is then relayed to the administration or school board members that then sometimes makes knee-jerk reactions about student access to Internet resources. Districts blocking all blogging sites, all e-mail sites, and over-blocking websites with filters are examples of this.

The second fallout of school violence is perhaps more interesting and more consequential to education in the long run. Parents are insisting their children have cell phones with them at all times, including in class. (Some districts are being sued over this.) With the growing functionality of cell phones, students are therefore pretty much guaranteed having an “information appliance” with them at all times. We have all been in meetings where more work was being done on laptops and PDAs than face-to-face. So just think of how compelling a F2F classroom will need to be to compete for students' attention with the online world accessed through cell/PDA/slate/e-book/laptop gizmos! The question remains if teachers will be able use these devices to help educate kids as opposed to just railing against them.

3.    How do you feel about using Pod casts as a teaching method? Is it worth the time and effort? Do you think it will help serve as a form of entertainment or lack interest for students?
Since reading, not listening, is my personal preference of learning style, I am a poor person to ask. On the one hand, any way that information can be presented to a student that is appealing is good; on the other hand, a post-literate generation who learns only auditorilly and visually, not through the printed word is very foreign to me. I am just not sure that a person who has heard The Grapes of Wrath is getting the same experience as someone who has read The Grapes of Wrath. (But I have to say, I prefer to get my history via books on tape during long car trips rather than reading it.)

Oh, if it is only teacher lectures that are being podcast, it’s pretty safe to rule out the entertainment factor.

4.    How can you reach teachers that teach in isolation and you have no common interests with?
I am not sure it is all that important that one tries. I’ve yet to see the media center staffing that allows a media specialist to work with every teacher. We have an expression when doing staff development in our department – ‘Work with the living.”  My experience is that any media specialist working collaboratively with 50-75% of her/his staff is doing a pretty darned good job.

5.    I was reading an article you wrote that suggested initiating collaboration with atypical subject and/or staff areas i.e. Physical Education. How could you collaborate with the Physical Education teacher to stop the spread of obesity? How can you integrate technology in this area without taking away from the physical activity that youth today so desperately need?
One collaborative activity that our media specialists do with the PE department is  heart monitoring unit. The PE teacher has the kids use the monitors to record their resting, walking, running etc. pulses and then the media specialist helps them plunk those numbers into a spreadsheet from which graphs are made, allowing the kids to see the differences.

6.    During my experience as a student teacher I had a situation where I was perceived as apathetic to a faculty member even though I highly respected him. Have you ever had any similar experience(s) and if so how did you overcome the initial reaction?
Hey, I am apathetic to a lot of people, I suppose. It might only be when apathy shows itself through in poor service that it becomes an issue. I find poor service is usually a result of poor communication resulting in a lack of understanding of needs.

7.    Do you feel it is worth it to fight to keep a controversial material in your collection or do you avoid controversy at all costs? Have you had any unusual experiences with censorship issues?
You are asking the original intellectual freedom fighter here. Absolutely one should have as wide a variety of voices and opinions expressed in one’s collection as possible. So long as material is age appropriate, well-reviewed and meets a curricular or personal interest need, it should be in the collection.

Having said that, I would not fight to have any particular resource retained per se, but to make sure that due process is followed whatever material is challenged.

I don’t know how unusual it is, but we apply the same philosophy for websites that we do print materials – unless it is specifically prohibited by CIPA (basically porn), we allow access to Internet materials at the district level. If someone requests a site be blocked, it needs to go through the same process as a challenged book. The bulk of the blocking requests have actually come from librarians and computer lab aides who see blocking as a convenient way to enforce no gaming, no chatting, no e-mail, no jokes, not whatever rules.

 

10 questions about library facility design

A school design expert send me these questions last June. I am just now getting around to answering them. I feel very guilty.

Let me preface this by saying that all teacher-librarians should be interested in facility design. And here is why:

I once caught a glimpse of what purgatory must be like for school librarians. While student teaching in the mid-70’s in a small Iowa town, I watched the most hapless librarian I have ever met trying to do her job – which at that time was mostly keeping study hall students quiet and busy.

Her media center was, as are too still many yet today, two classrooms pushed together with perimeter shelving and a high circulation desk at the front of the long room near the door. The floor held just two tables near the circulation desk. The main seating was provided in rows of tall-sided study carrels running in long aisles down the length of the room.

The librarian spent most of the time I observed her running up and down those aisles of carrels trying to detect which students were making the little bird noises they knew drove her crazy. I believe this happened every hour of every school day of all 180 school days of every year. At least it was going on each time I visited the library. (That school building has since burned down. I like to think it was the act of a merciful God.)

A few years later when I was a school library media specialist myself, I overheard my principal say that he thought tall-sided carrels would be just the ticket for helping students work quietly in the new media center we were planning. My ears pricked up quicker than a dog’s. I decided it might not be a bad idea to be a bit more involved in the library design process.

I avoided getting study carrels in that new media center I actively helped design.

1.    If you were to make one “grand” prediction about the future of libraries to kick-start our conversation, what does your crystal ball tell you?
All libraries will need to redefine their “value-added” qualities. The reality is that information seekers no longer need to visit a physical library to meet their basic information needs. Growing affluence means that many readers can and will purchase information rather than borrow it. The “Net Gen” prefers the visual and the virtual.

I see three primary things libraries can do:
    1. Become the high touch environments in a high tech world. (Think Barnes & Noble)
    2. Offer our services in a virtual environment. (think online banking)
    3. Become uber information experts. (think a highly competent, highly personalized travel agent)

2.    What experience have you had in terms of the planning or renovation of library spaces?  What has been the most successful project in terms of what the librarians and the school community needed?  What has been the least successful, for whatever reason?  What was the biggest take-away you had looking back on these projects?
I’ve had a role in helping design 4 new library media centers and remodel quite a number of others. You can read my “take aways” in a set of handouts I used with a (now somewhat dated) workshop I give on facilities design.

The last media centers I designed were in the early 90s when technology was just making its presence felt in schools. I have always been proud that the libraries I was working on then assumed the library would be the technology hub of the school with lab spaces, wiring closets, and research mini-labs as an integral part of them.  At the same time, we designed for flexibility, great aesthetics, comfort,  social interactivity and community use.

It’s hard to call a media center “unsuccessful” based on its design alone since I have seen excellent media programs run in very poor facilities. The biggest mistake I’ve seen was in trying to create a good program by simply redesigning space without paying attention to staffing. The firm that hired me was not happy when I suggested this.

I was recently in a school that had an “E-library” that was nothing but at couple computer labs pushed end to end. It was a very cold and sterile place. To be fair, it just opened and it takes a while for most places to start looking homey and lived it, but I am not sure if this area ever will. For now, I am sure the kids will glom on to the area, but once portable information devices take hold, it may well sit empty.

3.    Identify and describe one school library that has really managed to ‘get it right’ in terms of design/planning/layout (etc) in your opinion.
I wish I could. I think our St. Peter library was right for 15 years ago. I am impressed by the new Minneapolis Public Library – lots of small, intimate spaces within a grand space. I am anxious to see the new Winona High School library since it was designed with “Barnes & Noble” as a model and the media specialist, Mary Alice Anderson is a forward thinking person.

4.    There seems to be a tension today between the way we design, manage, and use libraries in traditional terms and what seems to be a call for change, for innovation, for re-thinking the entire concept of what a library is.  What does your experience tell you the right balance between tradition and innovation is when it comes to protecting the core principles of a library?
Most professions, I am sure, go back and forth on this. For me, professionally, my mission has not changed since I started in library work over 25 years ago – “Teaching people to effectively find and use information to meet their needs.” For sure the tools have changed (print to electronic information sources), skill emphasis had shifted from finding to evaluating information, and the teaching role as opposed to the “providing” role of librarians has grown.

I’d also argue that some core values of librarianship are as important if not more important than ever: commitment to intellectual freedom, teaching respect for intellectual property; working toward information access for all citizens; the promotion of information as a basis for good decision-making; that education is really about teaching people to teach themselves.

5.    Should the library of the future be a ‘sacred’ space dedicated to honoring the book or a dynamic interactive space dedicated to honoring the student and community?
I would hope the library will be a sacred space dedicated to honoring those who use the library to meet whatever informational, educational, socialization and personal needs they might have. The libraries with the broadest mission will be those that will remain vital. Let’s face it. The Net Generation wants its information and entertainment in digital formats. Ours may well be the last generation to use cellulose-based information storage technology (paper).

6.    The other day, I listened to a group of major urban superintendents discuss the growing concern that libraries (no matter how well designed) in their district rarely have more than a handful of kids in them.  What are your recommendations to school designers to inspire more interest in library spaces by students and young people?
I’d again look at places where kids DO want to be and see what might be learned from those spaces. To me, the coffee shop should guide us tell us kids want a social learning space. Online preferences tells me we need to give kids a lot of access to digital resources. Gyms and theaters indicate that libraries should be performance spaces where kids can share information, not just absorb it. And finally, looking at social networking sites and You Tube, we need to make libraries knowledge production areas.

Quite frankly, I would also ask the superintendents to look carefully at their library staffing if their libraries are not being used. Are there kid-friendly, kid-knowledgeable professionals running their libraries who have figured out how to develop broad ownership their programs. I would bet dollars to doughnuts that the physical space itself has little to do with why kids might be staying away.

7.    One major US university has radically re-approached university design by essentially removing all books from what had been their undergraduate library and in its placed created a state-of-the-art information center.  In addition, with the advent of the Sony Reader and additional efforts by Google and others to make every book of the planet searchable on-line, do you see a day when most school libraries will begin moving away from storing huge numbers of books and dedicated spaces to stacks/bookcases in order to become more ‘virtual’ information centers?
A lot of this will depend not on technology, but on how well Google does in the courts with its “scan now, ask permission later” approach to copyright. If intellectual property laws don’t change and ownership of the 70% of books that are not now in print but are not yet in the public domain remains in question, I see a lot of information remaining accessible only in print form. I guess what I am saying is yes, libraries will become virtual information centers, but probably not as quickly as one might think. And I always say, design for the technologies that are available NOW, not those just over the horizon. The horizon might be further away than you anticipate.

8.    From reading your Blue Skunk blog, I’ve come to sense 2 significant elements weaving their way through all of your writing:  a) Technology is a powerful agent for change but ultimately human interaction is far more powerful/dynamic; and b) Books matter and will always matter, and spaces for research, quiet reflection, and simple reading will always matter.  If I am roughly correct in noticing these biases of yours, what do they tell you about the way that we must re-think designing future library spaces?
Yes, I suppose these are my biases. People can and will always be the most powerful factor in any equation – for change or for reactivity. I am reminded of a prediction from the mid '80s by a Department of Education staffer (if I remember) who said that in the future poor kids will have technology and rich kids will have human teachers. Look today to see what socio-economic groups are being placed in front of computerized reading programs and what groups are getting small classes sizes and highly qualified reading teachers?

I hope books in whatever format they exist will always matter. There is some talk about a post-literate society in which most people will only need to read enough to interpret simple signs and instructions and the reading longer works will be seen as a personal hobby much as enjoying opera is today. Or worse, a skill only employed by the "ruling" classes. But for the next 10 years or so, yes, books, literacy, and library spaces are important. And I am hoping that quiet reflection will remain a need of humans for a very long time.

9.    First, play devil’s advocate:  Make an argument that schools should get rid of dedicated library spaces and integrating their book collections into existing school spaces.  Once done, make an argument for why schools should forever protect the book-oriented library no matter how far along we come in terms of technology.
In a rather cynical fashion, I believe I made the case for no physical library in my “Letter from the Flat World Library Corporation.”  There the argument is made not to integrate books into existing spaces but to eliminate them altogether.
The opposite case can be made from an economic standpoint that libraries are (and always have been) essentially a means to distribute information in a cost effective manner. Quite simply, it is cheaper to buy one book and share than it is to buy a copy for everyone. I worked this one over in a column called “Common Sense Economy.”

At this point, I think we can still make a case for a “book oriented” library for developing good reading skills based on the arguments of Stephen Krashen and others who maintain that voluntary free reading is the best way for kids to improve their reading skills. And kids will only read voluntarily if they have access to a wide range of materials that are at an appropriate reading level that are on topics of interest to them. In other words, good library book collections.

10.    Give 1 piece of advice to a young school designer looking ahead at a career in terms of planning libraries.
Be very broad-minded about the function(s) of the school’s library and get planners thinking less about designing an effective library, but an effective school with a library program that supports its goals.

Any library planning advice you'd like to share? 

The professional stick

Wanted: One professional stick that would have the following effects on the person struck:

• Whack!  would be able to work with others despite personal dislikes.
• Whack! would be unable to whine, only offer practical suggestions for improvement.
• Whack! would not race the kids out the door at the end of the day and actually attend  training outside the contract day.
  
• Whack! would never again mention how many days (hours, minutes, seconds) he/she has until retirement.
  
• Whack! would actually try something before complaining about it.
• Whack! would read a professional book once in a while.
  
• Whack! would frame all arguments in terms of what is best for kids.
• Whack! would join a professional organization and not complain about paying for dues.
• Whack! would actually volunteer to do some work for said professional organization.
• Whack! would act happy to be alive.
• Whack! would treat kids and fellow workers with the same respect she/he would like to be treated.
  
• Whack! would probably not comment on the lack of professionalism of others. (Ouch)
  

 

Why yes, it has been that kind of week. Thanks for asking.
Add your own features to the "professional stick." I'm taking orders - want one?