Bell (2018, para. 2) cites Harvard psychologist Dan Gilbert in noting that happiness is more in small joys than in grand events. He focuses on how librarians can contribute to users’ everyday joys. One recommendation is fostering serendipitous discovery (Bell, 2018, Acting with Intent section). In another post Bell, using the term “collisions with collections,” Read More…
Tag: Holiday
Vintage Recipes and Information Sharing
October was American Archives Month, and Thanksgiving is coming. Why don’t we bring the two themes together with vintage recipes? USM’s Franco-American Collection has recipes in a range of formats: formally published cookbooks, Church/community cookbooks, handwritten recipes, and notebooks of recipe clippings. These formats show the varied ways in which information–in this case, recipes–can be Read More…
Cyber Security and Information Literacy
October is National Cyber Security Awareness Month. Issues of information privacy and security can be seen in the ACRL Framework. The Introduction notes the need to monitor the changing information landscape and use information ethically (Association of College and Research Libraries, 2016). Privacy concerns are part of the information landscape, and honoring another’s privacy is Read More…
Beach balls, Koosh balls, and better searching
We play in the summer. We can also play during library instruction. Bonnet, Herakova, and McAlexander (2018) tested two different active learning techniques, one involving a beach ball with different sources written on it. In a game of hot potato, students choose a source and discuss its usefulness for their public speaking assignment (p. 502). Read More…
Diverse Voices in the Scholarly Conversation
July 4 honors our right to participate in civic conversations. Let’s celebrate our right to take part in scholarly conversations (Association of College & Research Libraries, 2016). Women Also Know History is a database of female historians, and Women Also Know Stuff is its political science counterpart. People of Color Also Know Stuff highlights political Read More…
The Heart of Attribution
My recent posts have images from two stock photo sites: Pexels and Unsplash. Since these sites require no attribution, we have few rules for crediting the images we use from them. Then we think about why we attribute images. First of all we want to give the photographer credit. Secondly we want to help our Read More…
Self Care and Strategic Searching
Valentine’s Day honors our relationships. How do we nurture ourselves, so that we can nurture those relationships? We can use this question to demonstrate strategic searching. Part of search strategy is finding the right initial scale of a project (Association of College & Research Libraries, 2016, Searching as Strategic Exploration section, Knowledge Practices subsection). For Read More…
The Info Lit of Quotes
As part of a Holiday gift I gave a pair of candles. I included a slip which read, “A candle loses nothing by lighting another candle.” When I had researched the quote’s source, I found conflicting answers. How do we manage such inconsistencies (Association of College & Research Libraries, 2016, Research as Inquiry section, Knowledge Read More…
Top Ten of 2017, Part Two
Pickard, E. (2017). From barrier to bridge: Partnering with teaching faculty to facilitate a multi-term information literacy research project. Collaborative Librarianship, 9(3), 175-182. Pickard has collaborated with a faculty member to research information literacy instruction in online classes. Though she and her partner have tweaked the instruction each semester, the article concerns the partnership itself. Read More…
Top Ten of 2017, Part One
Where has the year gone?! Already it’s time for my top ten articles of 2017. In alphabetical order (by first author’s name) here are the first five: Deitering, A., & Rempel, H. G. (2017). Sparking curiosity–Librarians’ role in encouraging exploration. In the Library With the Lead Pipe. Retrieved from http://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2017/sparking-curiosity/ The authors discuss different types of Read More…