What Does the Future Hold?

I have been thinking today about the future of librarians. I hear a lot of murmuring about whether our roles are diminishing (due to our students ability to find ALL on the internet), or conversely expanding (due to the evolving complexity of the information landscape). Will our work be really different down the road a piece? Will there be libraries on college campuses, or just study centers? What title would the future "me" have in an academic setting and what would I actually do? No one who knows me will be too surprised to learn that I think the role of consultants and teachers who help people learn to use information will grow.

Here's what I see the future me doing with my work time:

• Designing learning activities that attend to the ways we use information
• Helping others to understand the evolving information landscape
• Teaching people how to use information to learn
• Teaching about the information landscape (as the content)
• Researching aspects of the information landscape and our engagement with it

Of course, much of this I do already. I guess what I am thinking is that the need to further develop this work will actually increase over time - particularly if this need can be articulated well to the parties who stand to benefit, e.g., students, teachers, administrators, parents, etc.

I would love to hear others thoughts on this too.

Clarence

Getting the Word Out

Some days I have to look for the inspiration... particularly long about the end of February. But I usually manage to find it. My uplifting March moment came this year when I was asked to work with Glynis Asu, the Coordinator of Information Literacy at Hamilton College, to do a workshop on informed learning for some of the librarians at Hamilton and a few visitors. The workshop, based on the one Hilary Hughes did at Colgate, will focus on the 6 frames model for understanding different pedagogic approaches and how to leverage them to enable students to learn to use information as well as subject content. I am very excited at the idea of planting more informed learning seeds out in the world and see what comes of that. Much to be gained for learners I think!

As of Today I am Renaming This Blog!

Ah, I got it. I started this blog when I started my doctoral studies and then promptly realized that I wasn't ready to share a lot about my initial journey at that point. Too much new thinking to do. Yeah, yeah, maybe that is a reflection of leftover 20th century ways of going about things. Anyways, hence I did not produce too many blog entries. But now I think I have found the path and thus plan to communicate in this forum more regularly having now figured out what it is I want to talk about and discuss.

My journey of researching information literacy has led me to focus both my research and practice on "informed learning," which you will remember from an earlier post is a theoretical construct identified by Christine Bruce (2008). At the heart, informed learning is a pedagogy that emphasizes teaching in ways that enable students to learn how to use information while learning the subject. I believe the pedagogic ideas inherent in informed learning are key to developing learners capable of successfully navigating the evolving information environment.

I can already hear colleagues saying, well what about other emerging theories, such as transliteracy. I have been listening on the fringes of late to the conversation about the implications of transliteracy to information literacy. For my part, I think transliteracy extends the concepts underpinning information literacy very nicely and the two fit together quite well. I think the same is true of transliteracy and informed learning - one big happy family of theories for understanding the complexities we live with and need to work out daily. But lets save going deeper with this discussion for another entry.

Onward!

Bruce, C. (2008). Informed learning. Chicago, IL: American Library Association.