PVLD Director's Blog

Libraries as "first responders"

This Huffington Post article by Scott Turow about the importance of public libraries says it all!  Thank you Patrick Sweeney for sharing....I just love the love the description of libraries as "first responders" for the unemployed.

21st Century Literacies

Thank you to Helene Blower of LibraryBytes for pointing me to this thought-provoking video of social media educator Howard Rheingold talking about 21st century literacies.  My past couple of blog posts talked about the challengethat people who don't have basic computer skills face in navigating our increasingly digital world.  Mr. Rheingold talks about how the challenge goes beyond skills to literacies, which he defines as the coupling of skills with using them in a meaningful way within a community.    

The video iteself is about 45 minutes long,  but for those who are interested in this subject it is a worthwhile investment of time.  In the library realm we have tended to focus on what we call "information literacy", and what Mr. Rheingold calls critical consumption or "crap detection", as the key 21st century literacy. This is certainly important, but I was intrigued by the other literacies identified in the video - 

• Attention - in a world of multitasking and myriad distractions, how do we make judgements about what to pay attention to?
• Participation - how do we use technology and social media to participate in the wider community
• Cooperation - how do we use technology and social media to engage others?
• Network awareness - how do we identify/build/participate in networks and recognize how our social media actions are transmitted via networks?

With regard to the "attention" literacy I was particularly struck by Mr. Rheingold's comment that the world of social media is "not a queue, it's a flow" - that unlike the world of email and other "point to point" messages which can be processed serially and need to be managed, the world of social media demands that we accept that we will not view or receive every message, and that we need to learn how to "sample" and perform a form of triage so that we get a feel for what is happening and respond to the important stuff without getting bogged down.  This is definitely an area where I am only semi-literate!

Mr. Rheingold questions whether the traditional educational environment is, or even can be, the place for developing these literacies...which of course made me wonder whether/if libraries could play a role.  Given that we struggle to be recognized even as a resource for the information literacy/critical consumption literacy that we see as core to our mission and have not yet come to grips with how to effectively help people build even basic computer skillsand comfort levels  I'm not sure how - but its something I want to spend some time thinking about.  It seems to me that starting with encouraging/helping our staff to gain these literacies is a starting point, though.

Anyway - here's the video (if it doesn't display click here for a link)

(and if you want to dive a little deeper into how to become an effective "crap detector" I recommend this article)

 

Transforming Reading

On Friday our Digital Library Services Manager, David Campbell, told me about this article by Clive Thompson on the Future of Reading in the latest issue of Wired Magazine.  It's a great description of how technology is allowing reading to be transformed from a largely individual act to a social one, which in turn has the potential not to diminish the importance and value of reading but to enhance it.

I need to check out some of the websites Mr. Thompson references, but the idea that technology will unleash the sharing of annotations, commentary and opinions not just on books or written works as a whole, but on excerpts or snippets - and thereby greatly facilitate people's ability to discover things they might want to read - is intriguing.

I am also intrigued by the idea that technology could create a class of what Mr. Thompson calls "professional readers"and I would term "citizen reviewers"...people who share their views on what they read and build a followership based on the quality of their insights and the alignment of their interests with those of other readers and not because they happen to be published in the newspaper or Library Journal.  Of course this is already happening already through blogs and Tweets and Facebook postings and user reviews on Amazon.com and in library catalogs...but the development of sites like BookGlutton have the potential to take it to a whole new level by enabling not only annotations and comments, but real time exhanges of ideas and opinions.

On a professional level I can see how these changes will also be another force for change in the practice of librarianship.  The days when we can base decisions about what to add to the collection based on whether an item was "professionally reviewed" are clearly numbered, and our efforts to develop "social catalogs" need to be stepped up exponentially if we are to offer the same opportunities to share the experience of reading that a commercial site like BookGlutton offers.

On a personal level I just hope the BookGlutton IPhone app isn't too far away!

The Importance of School Libraries

Yesterday my husband emailed me this story from Sunday's New York Times about the changing role of school librarians and the role that a qualified school library media specialist (a term that usually refers to someone with both a teaching credential and a Master's degree in library/information science) can play in teaching the information literacy skills that are so important in today's digital age.

The NY Times story particularly resonated for me because our local school district just announced the layoffs of all of the part-time library aides who run the school libraries at all of the PV elementary schools. In practical terms this means that effective April 1st the elementary school libraries, which like those in many California schools have long been staffed entirely by part-time paraprofessional aides rather than professionaly qualified librarians, will either be entirely unstaffed or staffed by parent volunteers.

The announcement of the layoffs was accompanied by a statement from the School Superintendent (whom I like and respect, and who is having to make very difficult decisions in the face enormous fiscal challenges) to the effect that school libraries "are not core to the educational program".  Ouch!

There is a very large body of research that demonstrates a direct correlation between access to good quality school libraries and educational achievement, and that demonstrates the educational value that a qualified school library media specialist can provide in terms of curriculum support and information literacy education.  Properly staffed and funded, a school library can be at the very heart of the educational program.

I have no criticism of the soon-to-be laid off library aides in PV - they are talented people who do a great job encouraging reading and providing access to books and other educational resources with little training, limited access to professional support, and scant funding.  I've thought for a long time, however, that much more could be achieved if they were supported by a qualified school library media specialist at the District level.  Now it is clear that even that will be a distant dream.

In the meantime we are expecting that our usage will go up as students and parents turn to the public libraries for homework support...we just wish we were better equipped to help.  Our staff resources are already stretched with current programs and rising library use, and while our librarians are outstanding they are not trained educators and lack the pedagogical knowledge that a school library media specialist brings.  We also lack the relationships with individual teachers and the "on the ground" knowledge of what is being taught in the classroom that are a product of daily interactions on the school site.

While I fully understand the fiscal crisis facing the schools, I can't help but wish that something other than the school libraries were the first vicitms.

Reading on the Rise

Recent years have been marked by a steady drumbeat of reports and articles about the decline of reading, so it was gratifying to hear a couple of weeks ago about the results of a recent National Endowment for the Arts survey that actually shows an increase in the rate and number of American adults who read literature. 

The greatest increase in reading was among 18-24 year olds, which I found a bit surprising until one of our library volunteers forwarded me this article by one of my favorite authors, Ann Patchett (thanks Mary!)

Read it, and remember why you are a reader!

Literacy in a Screen-based World

Yesterday's New York Times Magazine was headed "The Screen Issue" and dedicated to an exploration of how screen-based media are changing our world.  I was particulary intrigued by Kevin Kelly's essay "Becoming Screen Literate", in which he describes his view that "We are now in the middle of a second Gutenberg shift — from book fluency to screen fluency, from literacy to visuality."

He is not alone in this view, and there has been much written about how new screen-based media are transforming the very way we think.  Wht struck me about this article was Mr. Kelly's description of literacy as requiring a rich set of tools far beyond the basic building blocks of the ability to comprehend the meaning of a word on a page:

But merely producing movies with ease is not enough for screen fluency, just as producing books with ease on Gutenberg’s press did not fully unleash text. Literacy also required a long list of innovations and techniques that permit ordinary readers and writers to manipulate text in ways that make it useful. For instance, quotation symbols make it simple to indicate where one has borrowed text from another writer. Once you have a large document, you need a table of contents to find your way through it. That requires page numbers. Somebody invented them (in the 13th century). Longer texts require an alphabetic index, devised by the Greeks and later developed for libraries of books. Footnotes, invented in about the 12th century, allow tangential information to be displayed outside the linear argument of the main text. And bibliographic citations (invented in the mid-1500s) enable scholars and skeptics to systematically consult sources. These days, of course, we have hyperlinks, which connect one piece of text to another, and tags, which categorize a selected word or phrase for later sorting.

All these inventions (and more) permit any literate person to cut and paste ideas, annotate them with her own thoughts, link them to related ideas, search through vast libraries of work, browse subjects quickly, resequence texts, refind material, quote experts and sample bits of beloved artists. These tools, more than just reading, are the foundations of literacy.

He then goes on to propose that rapidly advancing computer technologies, including the use of technology to harness "the collective intelligence of humans", are enabling the application of the building blocks of textual literacy described above to be applied to visual images so that they can be searched, sorted, organized and retrieved much as words and text are today.

"As moving images become easier to create, easier to store, easier to annotate and easier to combine into complex narratives, they also become easier to be remanipulated by the audience. This gives images a liquidity similar to words. Fluid images­ made up of bits flow rapidly onto new screens and can be put to almost any use. Flexible images migrate into new media and seep into the old. Like alphabetic bits, they can be squeezed into links or stretched to fit search engines, indexes and databases. They invite the same satisfying participation in both creation and consumption that the world of text does." 

 Unwritten, but implied, is a sense that this new "visuality" will supplant text-based literacy as the primary means of communicating ones thoughts and ideas.  I have to admit that as someone who loves the written word this makes me a bit apprehensive.  Ispend very little time watching movies, television, or YouTube because I prefer to read instead; and while I love the new Web 2.0 and social networking tools I am drawn to those that are primarily based on the written word, such as blogs and written status updates from my Facebook Friends.

One of the things I love about reading is that the words on the page are transformed through my own experience and imagination into images of my own making, and I avoid seeing the movie versions of books that I have loved because the visual images on the screen rarely live up to what I have imagined.

I can't help but wonder whether something will be lost when communication is via a visual depiction in glorious technicolor that leaves little to the imagination, rather than words (whether spoken or written) that demand transformation into an image of my own making....but what do you think?

Adult Literacy- Why I Care

I've been thinking about why I care so much about the current threat to California's adult literacy programs.  Literacy has never been an issue in my family or among my friends, and it's not really an issue in the community PVLD serves...so why do I care more about this than I do about many of the other cuts to "social services" contained in the various budget proposals floating around Sacramento?

Part of it is personal.  I've written before about how important reading is to me and I actually can't remember a time when I couldn't read.  I grew up surrounded by avid readers on both sides of my family, and the fact that this trait was passed to the youngest generation is evidenced by the 50 or so books that my nieces and nephew bought at the Friends of the Library book sale when they visited us this summer! To me reading is like breathing - I can't imagine how you live without doing it.

It wasn't until I was an entry level librarian in my first professional job at the Pasadena Public Library that I realized that there are many adults in our society who can't even read enough to fill out a job application, get a driver's license, or help their children with homework.  That realization came to me thanks to my friend Vickey Johnson, which is the second reason I am so passionate about the topic.  Vickey and I went to library school together, and then worked together at Pasadena Public where she helped implement one of the first adult literacy programs in the State...funded in part by the then brand new State Library program that became the "English Acquisition and Literacy" program that is now under threat.  Vickey was passionate about literacy and reading, and took that passion with her when she later became Director first of the Sunnyvale Public Library and then of the San Mateo County Public Library.  Last May Vickey lost her long battle with cancer, and I can't think of a more fitting tribute than to protect public library literacy programs.

In addition to the importance reading has to me personally, and my desire to honor my friend Vickey's memory, I have had the opportunity to learn how literacy changes lives.  At Pasadena Public Library I had my first exposure to the transformative power that learning to read can have not only on the adults who struggle with functional literacy but on their entire families, and the stories that people who work in the adult literacy field tell are no different today.  The following case stduy comes from Fresno, not Pasadena, but there are thousands like it from across California:

Bette's Literacy Journey:  a success story (note:  Bette is not her real name)

Older adult; dropped out of high school in the 11th grade.  First language is English.  Lives in a small, rural Fresno County town that has only a post office and a library.  Assessed a first grade reading level when she started in 2004.

Goals met in 2005 - reading improved to 3rd-4th grade level:  Read the Bible.  Read for pleasure.  Read to her grandchildren.  Help grandchildren with homework.

Goals met in 2006: Used a map.  Voted for the first time.

Goals met in 2007:  Write checks.  Pay bills.  Read medicine labels.  Fill out medical forms.  Read the newspaper.  Access community resources.  Write letters to friends.  Read a bus schedule.

Now imagine your life if you couldn't do these things! Imagine the cost to the economy and society if as many as one in five adults can't do these things!

Finally, I know the power of words!  Just check out this video that has been floating around the Internet to see how the impact of the ability to use words effectively -

Now tell me that investing in literacy isn't one of the most important investments we can make....