I’m writing this on my last workday of the year, so I thought I would look back on what 2016 meant for me personally and professionally. It’s all very odd–in a year I suspect will carry notoriety for the next several decades, I had a lot of successes. While the headlines seemed to go from […]
Ahead of a critlib chat that’s happening today, my friend Lisa Hubbell asked that we take some time to write up how we engage in critical reflection, and how that reflection informs our practice. For my part, I journaled for my first year or so as an instruction librarian, keeping notes on what worked in
Earlier this semester I was in an assessment meeting with a bunch of people from my department, going through student work samples and evaluating them with a rubric. The specific assignment had involved students comparing two articles–one from The Atlantic and another from a scholarly journal–and asked them to compare things like style of writing,
Against Simplicity Read More »
Tomorrow I’m flying to Orlando to attend ALA Annual. I’m participating on a panel with some brilliant people, and I’m really excited to see some old friends, but I’m also having a hard time reconciling how I feel about the whole endeavor. I know that several of my colleagues requested this conference be relocated in
Is Information Enough? Read More »
I wrote this entry as part of the December 15, 2015 CritLib chat about #feelings. The first time I ever used the #critlib hashtag, I was sitting on a bench in the Park Blocks at Portland State University. It was the second day of Library Instruction West, and I was getting ready to give a
Locations and Residents Read More »
I started a new job last month. Making the change has brought with it a lot of fun and a lot of challenges, and while I’m still learning the ropes and figuring out my new role, I wanted to write at least a little bit about the transition and adapting to a new organization. I
Snake People, Dear Reader Read More »
I rode the bus in elementary school. (Middle school and high school, too, but this is about me in elementary school.) At the end of the day, if the buses were late in arriving, all of the students who rode the bus would be gathered together in a large room and watched over by a
The Conundrum of Mrs. O’Leary’s Cow. Read More »
The last six weeks have been a bit of a blur. Between ACRL, LOEX, and wrapping up the semester, I’ve mostly been focused on what was immediately in front of me, and haven’t had a chance to slow down and look around. Now that the academic year and my two big presentations are behind me,
It’s been eight months since I was in Portland for Library Instruction West. As I wrote last summer, LIW was the best conference I’d ever attended, in that everyone with whom I spoke was engaging and engaged. It was a bunch of instruction librarians set to the “on” position, and the ideas that were sparked
Earlier this week, the ACRL Board voted to file the Framework for Information Literacy (PDF), which means, amongst other things, we can finally stop calling it the “Draft Framework” (thank goodness). I’ve been following this process pretty closely for the last year and a half, and have written about it, presented about it, talked with
We Made It. Let’s Keep Going. Read More »