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Uploaded by ReachOutandRead on 2017-10-05.

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The Evolving Epistemology of Librarianship

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The Evolving Epistemology of Librarianship

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Will the internet and e-publishing kill librarianship? This question is perpetually at the forefront of news about libraries. Researchers measure the numbers of people reading ebooks as compared to print books and compare library users who access digital materials to those who show up in person. We're encouraged to debate the digital future in our library school courses. Patrons who keep up with trends in the news may express surprise at the number of people using computers in the library, while parents try to tell us our databases don't count as resources for their children's "no internet allowed" research assignments.

Sometimes, the pre-digital age looks like an easier time for librarianship. Way back when books were rare treasures, the simple fact of that form conveyed authority. Eventually, as books became more available, information gatekeeping was established through editorial processes and publishing houses, and librarians developed our own heuristics for identifying reliable sources. As the keepers of official content, we were trusted and consulted in ways we just aren't anymore. Now, we're beginning to define a role as information literacy guides for a population that's increasingly aware of the dangers of unverified and unreliable information. Whether we'll convince the rest of society that they need us (and should continue to fund us) for that role remains to be seen.

However, there's one significant way in which we collect, organize, and share information that hasn't yet been described in the post-print world: relationships. Patrons enter the library with information needs beyond what they find on our computers, and the growing number of social workers and social service providers in our libraries is one sign of that. But the more we rely on social workers, the more questions arise about the meaning of our own work. If social workers address needs beyond the scope of librarianship, is there a role for information services in those patron interactions? If social workers give patrons what they need, what use are librarians? Why not just let public libraries become social service hubs and community centers?

The core of my response is: librarians are important curators of community relationships. This is a social gap librarians are perfectly positioned to fill.

We're not used to thinking of relationships as elements of information. They don't fit neatly into discussion of "information packages." But they are the most basic channel of information-sharing in all of human experience. Before there were libraries, and even now where languages are primarily oral, history is transmitted from one generation to the next through family, clan, and relational culture. Historically, when people looked for a husband for their daughter or a trustworthy car mechanic, they turned to personal relationships for recommendations. In some respects, we're still able to replicate this network of relationships online, through things like Angie's List, Facebook, or Next Door. Those sites provide the transactional piece of human information-sharing: a recommendation, piece of news, or local source of services. What those online relationships don't provide, though, is all the information that goes unrequested but is still needed by each of us: safe places in times of crisis, resources for when we're foundering or when we have something to share but don't know how or where. There are times when we don't know what to ask for, or we're too ashamed, or we just don't realize what's possible. Those are the times when it's crucial to make contact with someone who has the network of relationships to help us and the contextual understanding of our situation to divine what's missing.

This is essentially what social workers have been doing in outreach to our patrons experiencing homelessness. They see a need they're trained to address through their professional connections. The library provides an important setting because our patrons - their clients - can show up without even knowing that they need a particular service, or they might just feel safe in our space. There's no pressure to ask us, and they don't have to have a question in mind beforehand. They're present, and the social worker can find them. There are some very important differences between what a social worker is able to offer and what a librarian is able to offer, though. Social workers have well-developed networks around a particular issue or type of client service they provide. They're not trained to know a whole set of connections and resources, much less organize them and make them accessible. They are specialists in one kind of personal help.

As librarians, as information specialists, we can gather and index community relationships in a way that social workers can't - and shouldn't. The services we know our local social workers provide are one type of resource, and our relationships with those social workers give us a path for connecting patrons to their specific information. But there are so many other areas in which we can apply these same relational methods. For example, if a young person shares with me that they've been writing poetry and want to read it to others, I'm a much better resource if I can connect them to the person I know who runs a local open mic night than if I am only able to provide books or show them how to run an internet search. If someone with a brain injury asks for my help completing an online application, I'm a much better source of follow-up information when I can connect him to my contact who works with veterans at a job readiness center. These are reliable paths to greater opportunity that can only happen through personal connection.

The more I work in community engagement, the more I see and believe that the new reference service is the one in my mind and heart. Where we once selected the best reference materials and turned to those books for answers, we now collect community relationships and prepare to steer our patrons to them. This is important for its own sake but is also complementary to the work we do on information literacy. In the past, our authority derived from physical materials and respect for social roles. Now, when people are distrustful of traditional roles and formats, a librarians can demonstrate our trustworthiness through reliable, community-connected service.

I believe that there's a kind of "cataloging" we can do with relationships, such that they're as much a part of our organization of knowledge as any periodical. Every community has different types of resources to connect with and explore: community education, food shelves, religious organizations, art galleries, etc. There are ways to approach a new community and get a baseline understanding of its needs and strengths through demographic information and structured observation. These are the elements we need to start building into all LIS education if we truly intend to provide equitable, whole-person service.
Kudos and thanks to Mary Nienow for helping me name these thoughts.

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The Evolving Epistemology of Librarianship

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Will the internet and e-publishing kill librarianship? This question is perpetually at the forefront of news about libraries. Researchers measure the numbers of people reading ebooks as compared to print books and compare library users who access digital materials to those who show up in person.

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The Ounce of Prevention Fund supports high-quality early learning to give children in poverty the best chance for success in school and in life.

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Change the First Five Years and You Change Everything

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Change the First Five Years and You Change Everything

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The Ounce of Prevention Fund

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Change the First Five Years and You Change Everything

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Dr Dipesh Navsaria is a pediatrician, occasional children's librarian, public health professional and child health advocate.

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Libraries Join National Initiative to Transform Public Housing into Book-Rich Environments

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Libraries Join National Initiative to Transform Public Housing into Book-Rich Environments

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When I was a child, the library was my escape. I couldn't always afford to buy books. Often while others were out playing I was immersed in a stack of books borrowed from the library. They included everything from sci-fi to biographies of people I admired. The library was a home away from home for me, and I would ride my bike there as often as possible. The books I read inspired me to be a writer, and are in large part the reason I am an author. The ride there was two miles each way, no small trek for a kid on an old ten speed. I often wished I lived closer, or could move the library closer to my house.

Libraries are different now than they were then. More than just books and a reference section filled with microfiche, magazines, and newspapers for research, they are community centers. Most offer Internet access and computers. Many offer makerspaces and other educational programs. Ideally, everyone would have access to a library close to home.

It's happening in Chicago. Thanks to a partnership between the Chicago Public Library and the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA), mixed income housing developments will house small libraries. "This is leadership and creativity at its best," said Molly Sullivan, senior director of communications and media relations for the CHA. "We follow the lead of Mayor Emanuel on this. We will join a few other cities like Los Angeles, Milwaukee, Brooklyn [and] New York in [building] actual libraries that are co-located in publicly supported housing."[1]

It's a good financial decision, as building the libraries will be more affordable and they will be more accessible to patrons. The libraries will not just be mini-libraries filled with books either. They will all sponsor programs in their respective neighborhoods.
Social Workers
As part of the community outreach, social workers who specialize in providing social services for parents and children will conduct parental training and other workshops at the libraries. These workshops are designed to help patrons deal with everyday stresses associated with balancing work, children, and other family obligations. At the same time, libraries face other challenges. The same things that make them great leave them vulnerable, and keeping them safe and drug free can be a challenge. In this effort, social workers are often like first responders, helping detect issues and direct patrons to where they can get help.
Early Childhood Active Learning Spaces
Children will have access to great resources like makerspaces, technology, and the Teacher in the Library program. Undergraduate education students will assist children with their homework during after school hours. This not only provides children with more resources, but also develops a pipeline for "teachers in training" to gain hands-on teaching experiences. Libraries will work with local university teacher certification programs, as well as other programs which require students to acquire a certain number of service learning hours. University of Illinois at Chicago was the first institution to participate in the program.
Teen and Adult Technology Support
The library will of course offer technology and teacher support to teens as well. Adult programs will also be offered including everything from financial counseling and job search support to writing resources, guides, and classes. Neighborhood artists and authors will be encouraged to showcase their work through events and workshops. Programs will on environmental responsibility also are planned.

Not only are these kinds of libraries good for the neighborhoods where they are located, but they are serving as a model for other library districts all over the country. The days of large central libraries may never be gone entirely, but small satellite branches in the neighborhoods where patrons live certainly seems like an affordable solution to making libraries readily accessible.

References

The Columbia Chronicle, "Mixed Income Housing To Be Co-located With Libraries."

Tags: Chicago Public Library, community outreach, community partnerships, libraries in CHA buildings, libraries in public housing, makerspaces, social services, social worker

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Bringing the Library Home: Mixed Income Housing and Libraries

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When I was a child, the library was my escape. I couldn't always afford to buy books. Often while others were out playing I was immersed in a stack of books borrowed from the library. They included everything from sci-fi to biographies of people I admired.

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Language-Gap Study Bolsters a Push for Pre-K

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Language-Gap Study Bolsters a Push for Pre-K

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But at a time when a majority of public schoolchildren in about a third of the states come from low-income families, according to the Southern Education Foundation, those who are pushing for higher preschool enrollment say that investing in the youngest children could save public spending later on.

In the latest data available from the National Institute for Early Education Research at Rutgers University, 28 percent of all 4-year-olds in the United States were enrolled in state-financed preschool in the 2010-11 school year, and just 4 percent of 3-year-olds.

The National Governors Association, in a report this month calling on states to ensure that all children can read proficiently by third grade, urges lawmakers to increase access to high-quality child care and prekindergarten classes and to invest in programs for children from birth through age 5. In New York, the Democratic mayoral candidate Bill de Blasio has said he would tax high-income earners to pay for universal prekindergarten in the city.

"A lot of states are saying, 'Let's get to the early care providers and get more of them having kids come into kindergarten ready,' " said Richard Laine, director of education for the National Governors Association. That way, he said, "we're not waiting until third grade and saying, 'Oh my gosh, we have so many kids overwhelming our remediation system.' "

Currently, 17 states and the District of Columbia have policies requiring that third graders be held back if they do not meet state reading proficiency standards, according to the Education Commission of the States.

Now, with the advent of the Common Core, a set of rigorous reading and math standards for students in kindergarten through 12th grade that has been adopted by 45 states and the District of Columbia, educators say the pressure to prepare young children is growing more intense.

Literacy experts have previously documented a connection between a child's early vocabulary and later success in reading comprehension. In a study tracking children from age 3 through middle school, David Dickinson, now a professor of education at Vanderbilt University, and Catherine Snow, an education professor at Harvard University, found that a child's score on a vocabulary test in kindergarten could predict reading comprehension scores in later grades.

Mr. Dickinson said he feared that some preschool teachers or parents might extract the message about the importance of vocabulary and pervert it. "The worst thing that could come out of all this interest in vocabulary," he said, "is flash cards with pictures making kids memorize a thousand words."

Instead, literacy experts emphasize the importance of natural conversations with children, asking questions while reading books, and helping children identify words during playtime.

Even these simple principles may be hard to implement, some educators say, because preschool instructors are often paid far less than public schoolteachers and receive scant training. In one study, Robert Pianta, dean of the Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia, found that in observations of 700 preschool classrooms across 11 states, teachers in less than 15 percent of the classes demonstrated "effective teacher-student interactions."

"There is a lot of wishful thinking about how easy it is, that if you just put kids in any kind of program that this will just happen," said W. Steven Barnett, director of the National Institute for Early Education Research, referring to the development of strong vocabularies and other preliteracy skills.

Literacy experts and publishing companies are rushing to develop materials for teachers. Scholastic Inc., the children's book publisher, for example, began selling the Big Day for Pre-K program to preschools three years ago. Collections of books come with specific question prompts like "I see a yellow taxi. What do you see?"

Educators and policy makers say they also must focus increasingly on parents.

In Vallejo, Calif., where about 400 children up to age 5 attend publicly funded prekindergarten programs, the district invited Anne E. Cunningham, a psychologist and literacy specialist from the University of California, Berkeley, to conduct a training program for preschool teachers that included the development of parent education workshops. And in Kentucky, the governor's Office of Early Childhood started a social media campaign last year that offers simple tips for parents like "Talk about the weather with your child. Is it sunny or cloudy? Hot or cold?"

Middle class and more-affluent parents have long known that describing fruit at the supermarket or pointing out the shape of a stop sign are all part of a young child's literacy education.

But even in low-income families, parents who speak to their children more frequently can enhance vocabulary. In separate research, Ms. Fernald, working with Adriana Weisleder, a graduate student in psychology, recorded all the words that 29 children from low-income households heard over a day.

The researchers differentiated between words overheard from television and adult conversations and those directed at the children. They found that some of the children, who were 19 months at the time, heard as few as 670 "child-directed" words in one day, compared with others in the group who heard as many as 12,000.

Those who had heard more words were able to understand words more quickly and had larger vocabularies by age 2.

"Even in families that are low income and perhaps don't have a lot of education, there are some parents that are very engaged verbally with their kids," said Ms. Weisleder. "And those kids are doing better in language development."

Correction: November 22, 2013

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Language-Gap Study Bolsters a Push for Pre-K

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But at a time when a majority of public schoolchildren in about a third of the states come from low-income families, according to the Southern Education Foundation, those who are pushing for higher preschool enrollment say that investing in the youngest children could save public spending later on.

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BY: Robert Needlman, MD

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http://www.reachoutandread.org/FileRepository/ContempPeds_Jan2002.pdf

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Early Intervention Can Improve Low-Income Children's Cognitive Skills and Academic Achievement

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Early Intervention Can Improve Low-Income Children's Cognitive Skills and Academic Achievement

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Early Intervention Can Improve Low-Income Children's Cognitive Skills and Academic Achievement

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Children who live in poverty benefit from early intervention tempering the effects of environment on their cognition and achievement in school.

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SLJ Ohio Storytime Turns into   Life-Changing Program 

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SLJ Ohio Storytime Turns into   Life-Changing Program 

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2016

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The Children Who Grow Up in 'Book Deserts'

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In many high-poverty urban neighborhoods, it's nearly impossible for a poor child to find something to read in the summer.