Author name: Kevin Seeber

Eighteen months ago I grabbed coffee with my department head. We had a few things to talk about, but the main item was the creation of a new position in our department. The person would be charged with challenging myself and my colleagues to grow as teachers. They would oversee new instruction initiatives and hopefully […]

Something happened at ACRL in Baltimore last week. A group of people were criticized, but they weren’t immediately aware of that criticism. The reason for that lack of awareness is that this criticism was taking place in a discourse community that these people don’t regularly occupy. They know it’s there–people have told them about it.

It’s been four months since the election, and the rhetoric around “truth,” “facts,” and “fake news” doesn’t seem to be dissipating. I wrote about this a few months ago, though I’ve continued to be flummoxed when considering how to address these ideas with students in class, or in conversations with friends. Meanwhile the librarian profession

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,

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

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

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

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