Book Review: Literacy in America

 (Crossposted from The Itinerant Librarian) 

Lawrence R. Samuel, Literacy in America: a cultural history of the past century. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2024.  ISBN: 9781538189542.

Genre: literacy, reading

Subgenre: history, education

Format: hardcover

Source: Hutchins Library, Berea College 

This book presents a history of literacy in the United States over the last century. Literacy here refers to learning how to read and the ability to read. This is not a book about what Americans may or not have been reading.

The book makes some good points, but it is a seriously slow read, and it is pretty much a dry textbook. Sure, it considers how literacy is a contested ground for race, gender, and class, and those are important topics. However, the important ideas get buried in the constant citing of scholarly articles, trade publications, and other academic sources. To be honest, the book reads like a student research paper where the student, instead of being selective in what sources to cite to support their claims, just cited everything they found to fill up the page quota. Whatever voice the author has gets lots in citation after citation of this scholar in a journal article or that teacher in an education magazine.  

This is what the author intended with the book: 

"Supported by hundreds of research studies conducted throughout the years as reported in scholarly journals and popular magazines, the book intends to make a contribution to the histories of education, language, and literature, sociology, and the United States as a whole" (vii). 

Oh, he lays those research studies and periodical articles pretty thick. As for the contribution statement, that is an ambitious declaration.

I was honestly hoping this would be more interesting, but it was not. One detail I will mention is that history often repeats itself. Some of the concerns today on whether kids can read or not are pretty much the same as concerns back in the day. Every time a new technology comes along, be it radio, television, or the internet educators freak out about kids abandoning reading. For the most part, the kids are still reading, even if it is not the "classics," but that is another conversation. 

For example, back in the 1920s aand 1930s, pearls were clutched because kids were not reading classics or wholesome books: 

"Students tendency to choose less than hearty literary fare was just one problem associated with literacy in the 1920s and 1930s" (1). 

Gee, the generation coming out of the Great War (World War I) and its horrors wants to read light, fluffy, escapist fare. The humanity! I would say not unlike today with readers seeking light, fluffy, escapist fare to forget the Hard Times for a while. 

Overall I would say this book was just OK. For libraries, this is highly optional. If I had been able to read a review copy beforehand, I would not have ordered it for our library. This may be one for larger academic libraries with comprehensive collections in education and maybe some large library school libraries. Small academic libraries can pretty much skip this. 

2 out of 5 stars. 

Book Review: Verified

 (Crossposted from The Itinerant Librarian)

Mike Caulfield and Samuel S. Wineburg, Verified: How to think straight, get duped less, and make better decisions about what to believe online. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 2023. ISBN: 9780226822068.

Genre: reference

Subgenre: information literacy, internet, research

Format: trade paperback

Source: Hutchins Library, Berea College

 

This book is an essential guide everyone using the internet needs to have handy. This book teaches how to be skeptical of what you see online and how to evaluate it. In these Hard Times where the internet and social media are full of scams, click bait, rage bait, and all sorts of assorted bullshit, this book gives you the tools to separate the crap from the few good things that remain. This guide can help you navigate the enshittified internet. 

The book is arranged as follows: 

• Introduction.
• Chapter 1: Get quick context.
• Chapter 2: Cheap signals. 
• Chapter 3: Google.
• Chapter 4: Lateral reading. 
• Chapter 5: Reading the room.
• Chapter 6: Show me the evidence. 
• Chapter 7: Wikipedia.
• Chapter 8: Video games. No, it is not about games. This is more about how videos are used to deceive. 
• Chapter 9: Stealth advertising. 
• Chapter 10: Once more with feeling. 
• Chapter 11: Conclusion. 
• Postscript, which briefly covers large language models, so-called AI, and verification.
• Notes and bibliography. 

Caulfield, one of the two coauthors, created the SIFT method (Stop, Investigate, Find other coverage, Trace the claim). Along with Wineburg, they basically give you a full course on how to evaluate what you see online so you can be empowered and act accordingly. The authors take you through the process step by step. These are skill you can learn with relative ease, and you develop the critical habits taught in the book you'll be able to better navigate the internet. A strength of their lessons is that often they do not take a lot of time. That is because you learn to assess quickly. If you decide to pursue a topic further, the authors show you how to do so. If you assess and decide something is not valid, relevant, or just not worth your energy, you can swiftly move on. Being efficient is a key element here. 

The book is relatively easy to read. Each chapter gives you practical examples and then they explain how to best handle each situation. You then learn the overall lesson so you can apply it when you go online. Chapters also include various tips and pieces of advice. Every chapter ends with a list of takeaways summarizing what you are learning. 

By now I am sure many academic librarians apply the lessons from the book in library instruction. We've done some some of it, but we will be working on adding more formal elements from the book in our instruction sessions. However, you do not have to be in an academic setting. This accessible book works for anyone wanting to learn how to find reliable information, evaluate it, and avoid the rest of the crap out there. In a time when Google largely has gone to shit, this book gives you steps and advice for making some good from Google. You learn how to do lateral reading like fact checkers do, and Wikipedia can be your ally, contrary to what some old time educators may claim. Learn that and more reading this book, then keep it handy for when you need a reminder now and again. 

This book is essential for all libraries. Librarians who have not ready it need to read it and then promote it to their patrons. The book can be beneficial for students in composition classes that require research. It may also be of interest to journalism students, journalists, and other writers who do or should be doing research. I recommend it fully, and I would buy a copy for my personal shelf. 

5 out of 5 stars. 

Additional reading notes: 

What this book can help you with: 

"Instead of being driven by emotion and outrage, you'll come to see your gut reactions as precious gifts that signal you to pause, take a breath, and ask a basic question: Is what I am looking at even what I think it is?" (3) 

 

Google is a search engine, not a truth engine:

"Google is not a dispassionate partner in information seeking who diligently corrects you when you've taken a wrong turn. Google is out to please, trying to determine what you want-- even if doing so means giving you a dubious answer but one you want to hear" (78). 

 And with its high commercialization, predominant advertising model, and now integrating LLM and AI features, it's gotten worse in terms of finding what you actually need. 

Need to beware expertise cynicism: 

"In authoritarian regimes, creating a broad cynicism about all sources of expertise-- the press, academics, professionals-- serves to make sure political power, not truth-seeking, is the ultimate arbiter of what is true" (109). 

This book qualifies for the following 2024 Reading Challenges: 

Booknote: Confessions of a Bad Teacher

(Crossposted from The Itinerant Librarian)

John Owens, Confessions of a Bad Teacher: The Shocking Truth from the Front Lines of American Public Education. Naperville, Ill.: Sourcebooks, 2013. ISBN: 9781402281006.

Genre: Nonfiction
Subgenre: Memoir, Education reform.

I enjoyed this book very much, and I found myself nodding a lot as I read it. I am a former school teacher, and I can relate to a lot of what Owens went through. From the inane pre-semester new teacher training to tyrannical principals, I've experienced much of what he describes as well. I was also labeled as bad teacher for wanting to actually teach and having high expectations of my students. I was young back then, and I have learned a lot and grown as a teacher since then. So many memories and thoughts ran through my mind as I read it. This book spoke to me without the "wonder teacher" syndrome or excessive sentimentality that so many teacher memoirs have. Once I started it, I was not able to put it down.

Public school teachers should find something to relate to in this book. In some cases, it may hit very close to home, especially for good teachers who care and work hard for their students for this is not a book about a "bad" teacher. It is a book about a teacher caught in a very bad system. A lot of parents and community members have no idea what really goes on in public schools; they often fall for the brainwashing scam that school teachers are to blame for every poor school and for every child's ills in schools. That is simply not the case, and John Owens shows why in this book.

The book is organized into fourteen chapters where Owens takes us through his school year at Latinate Institute.Then, like a good teacher, he ends the book with a summary of lessons learned from the classroom experience.  He also adds some strong suggestions on what can be done. Additionally, the book includes footnotes here and there that serve to bolster his arguments or to illustrate his points. Plus, there are some segments selected by Owens where other teachers speak on their experiences. Given the culture of retaliation that exists in the education establishment, some of those teachers remain pseudonymous. Owens does note that names have been changed to protect others as needed.

In this book, not many people come out looking good, deservedly so. Ms. P, the principal, is in essence a tyrant more worried about the school as a pageant than in actually educating kids let alone giving teachers the resources and support they need. Owens' teacher colleagues vary: one or two were brave warriors trying to educate in impossible conditions; others were nothing more than dead weight protected by tenure and/or sycophants of Ms. P. That latter group are the truly bad teachers, the ones we should get rid but fail to do so. As for the students, we get a broad range of issues and experiences. They are challenged by issues such as poverty, living conditions, parents with various degrees of neglect and self-entitlement, lack of institutional support, and in the case of special education students, lack of legally mandated classroom assistance and support. To a large extent, it is no wonder there are so many discipline problems. However, in the ultimate insult, teachers are made powerless to deal with disciplinary problems in any efficient way. As for Ms. P, she pretty much washed her hands when it came to student discipline. She left it up to the teachers but then in essence ordered them not to discipline. The way Ms. P managed Latinate evokes Dilbert's pointy-haired boss. Yet Dilbert is a funny comic strip (even though for many workers it does hit close to home). The situation at Latinate Institute is a farce and a tragedy. It is a tragedy that happens in schools across the United States.

Parents do have to shoulder some blame here. Owens at times may go a bit easy on them due to their often bad conditions. But there are moments when parents simply have to take responsibility and discipline their kids, and they often simply flat out refuse to deal with their kids. That is neglect and irresponsible parenting, and it needs to be denounced as such.  Then again, between neglectful parents and lack of consequence for bad behavior in the school, is it any wonder the kids lie, cheat, and steal as well as act up? The adults, as Owens shows, have abdicated their responsibilities. It's easier for them to label all teachers as "bad" teachers than to actually look in the mirror, accept responsibility, and do what must be done. Now, there are some bad teachers out there, and they need to be removed from classrooms. But most teachers are decent, hardworking, knowledgeable and dedicated educators that get labeled with the "bad" teacher mark for no other reason than it is easier to do so. As for parents, it seems one or two are the good ones, the exception rather than the rule. That has to change.

I don't really care for teacher memoirs as they often turn into miracle worker narratives that don't really say anything other than "we done good." However, Owens' book truly exposes what goes on in classrooms across the United States, a view from the trenches. This is a book that parents and policy makers need to read, and then they need to start some long and hard conversations to fix the educational system over time. It can be done, but it won't happen overnight.  And while there are truly bad teachers out there, the majority of teachers are good, and they care for your children and wish to educate them well. But they need your support, and this means more than just platitudes, some kind words on some "Teacher Appreciation Day" or yet another mug. They need serious help support, and resources. It's time to change the narrative of blaming and labeling all teachers as bad teachers. Read this book, learn more, and take some action.

If you ask me, this one gets a 5 out of 5 stars.




Librarian note. Books with similar appeal that I have read:

• Samuel G. Freedman, Small Victories: The Real World of a Teacher, Her Students, and Their High School. I read this when I was getting ready to do my student teaching. The book came to mind in reading Owens' work. If anything, I think things have gotten worse since Freedman's book was before NCLB, and NCLB basically launched the "test everything and teach to the test" mentality running rampant now at the expense of actual education. 
• The works of Jonathan Kozol related to public schools such as Savage Inequalities.

Note to appease The Man: I read Owens' book as an electronic galley provided by NetGalley in exchange for a fair and honest review. The book is scheduled for release in August 2013.

ACRL 2013 Conference Notes: Geoffrey Canada Opening Keynote

ACRL Opening Keynote
Speaker: Geoffrey Canada, President and CEO Harlem Children's Zone.
Date: Wednesday, April 10, 2013, 4:00pm

• Opens the keynote by pointing out that President Obama is asking for funding to replicate his work and that of the HCZ. 
• Librarians control knowledge of the world. Librarians understand how quickly the world and knowledge are changing. 
• Those growing during the 1960s worried over the soul of America. Note the various assassinations during that time period: the Kennedys, MLK, Malcolm X. 
• He sees 60 Minutes as a place of social justice, a show of hard news with a social message; he was featured on the show and interviewed by Ed Bradley.
• Later, he realized that the show to be on was Oprah.
• National trauma. The U.S. Senate is bringing forth a very watered down version of guns and background checks (we know now that the legislation failed to pass, link to CNN).
• We have lost more children to guns in the U.S. since (at least) the Korean War. 
• Problem: Millions of children not prepared for present nor future jobs and careers. This is a national problem.
• Current policies allow kids to fail in schools. Men end up in jail. Women and their children end up in poverty and then continue the poverty cycle. Why is this allowed? 
• Referred to the report "Ready, Willing, and Unable to Serve." From the report, Mr. Canada mentioned the following: Youths unable to qualify for military service due to lack of skills, felony arrests (at least 10% of youths). not being able to pass exams to get in (about 30%). Add in about 17% of youths are too obese to join the military. This is society's fault. 
• Educated people know better and (usually) care for their kids to not allow them to fail. 
• Overall, in the end we have to take responsibility for leveling the playing field. However, there are no plans to educate America's children. 
• Education as a business has refused to change. A system where the business does not care for its customers fails. Education has been failing for decades, and no one has cared. 
• Studies constantly confirm poor children lose ground over the summer months. 
• Teaching is a real profession. Not just anyone should teach. A bad teacher will destroy a child. 
• "If you cannot fire lousy teachers, ship them to good communities. Maybe they can afford a lousy teacher. Poor kids can't." And yet we do send the lousy teachers to the poor. 
• And even then, good teacher or not, parents have to work for their kids' success. 
• In a pinch, always do what rich people do. They only have one goal for their kids: college, and a good college at that. College level skills are the entry tools for the job market. 
• Teaching: Hold all the community accountable for it. Provide arts, physical education, so on. You [rich people] provide them for your kids, so why not for poor kids? Parents of means know it's good. For poor kids, suddenly we "need data" to justify it (talk about a serious double standard). 
• Providing comprehensive support is critical. 
• In the end, our job is to educate. Do what it takes. Have to work weekends? Do it. Have better teachers and start working with the kids early. 
• Mr. Canada gave the example of the 2-year old child who spills a cup of water. Consider the educated parents versus the poor parents and the different messages they give the child. Educated parents tend to give affirmative messages (it was an accident, these things happen, no big deal sort of thing)  versus the negative messages from the poor parents (that dumb kid can't do anything right, made a mess, so on). This has an effect on the kid's development. 
• As a country, we can provide pre-K education. It is an investment that can and should be done. The truth is that money does exist to educate our children. 
• We are willing and prepared to incarcerate kids who fail but not willing to pay to educate them, which costs less. For the cost of prison, we get no return on investment or good outcomes, yet we fail to pay to educate, which can yield benefits and positive outcomes. We have a failing strategy. 
• Issue: the willingness to allow kids to grow up in danger: guns, crime, bullying (real and online), etc. Many parts of this country are not safe. When one lives in fear of not being safe, it is hard to concentrate on esoteric or any other ideas. Kids worried about their lives can't worry or focus on math, reading, etc.
• Libraries are safe places to think and learn. 
• Challenges: 
• Make sure to provide youth with diverse range of opportunities. You never know what will save a kid. 
• Think outside the box. 
• We need teachers who know how to give kids what they need and ought to have. 
• Part of our job is to open the world to kids until they find what they need to save them. We have to do this constantly. 
• World is changing. We have to think strategically and lead change. 
• Mr. Canada told the story of being a psychology major and struggling with a statistics course. He flunked his first exam. By luck, the professor helped him with a new book and line of thinking, so he managed to pass the class. It was not "slant." The guy got him to read two books. The professor figured out a way to keep students' egos intact and to work harder. 
• We have to be prepared to think outside the box. 
• U.S. is conditioned that if the kids are not yours (literally yours or belonging to your group), then it's "who cares," they are someone else's kids. We have to fight for all the kids, and it will be a fight. 

From the question and answer segment:

• How do we make the "missing plan" happen? 
• As big as the federal budget is, see the spending on war. Someone decided that was a priority (I would add that someone elected those who decided that was was a priority. After all, politicians do not just spring out of thin air). Why are kids not a priority that we sacrifice for? 
• Average Americans believe their voices are not heard. A starting place is for Americans to actually get informed (and librarians can certainly can help with that. Just ask your local friendly librarian). Then, after you get informed, call your legislators and comment. Do not forfeit your voice to the lobbyists. Find groups that support your cause and work with them and support them. 
• On educating teachers, especially if those teachers work, have families, so on. 
• Teachers as a profession are just not paid enough. 
• Get smart people, pay them well and a lot, then work them hard. Otherwise, who wants to work in a stressful job with bad conditions and poor or no wages? This is how you attract lousy teachers. 
• Pay good teachers for their performance. If they deliver, pay them. This is better than paying for prisons. 
•  How to raise awareness of issue of danger? 
• Common response: "we did not expect it to happen here" (ain't that the truth? People always think it, whatever it is, will happen someplace else, until it happens to them).  But we are fine about Chicago or Detroit. We have kids growing on war zones, and this should not be acceptable. A sense of outrage is needed. 
• Implications of Common Core Standards.
• Good, but they are not still preparing the educators or the kids. All they did was change the test that kids did not pass before and make it worse. This is cruel. 
• Changing teaching and learning strategies is needed. 
• Librarians can help with this, if only they were given time. 
• Community colleges often get the least prepared students. You can solve the issues when the students get to college. 
• Use science and work on kids sooner, early. Education currently is run on myths. 
• Need to connect support. Good schools throughout. Hold people accountable and have a good education pipeline. 
• Need better connections between high school and college. Transparency means less places to hide. Again, accountability. This does mean stopping things like social promotion. 
• Our college kids fail quietly and anonymously. We need to get information on those at risk kids as soon as possible. 
• Look at the data, then work backwards. 

Article Note: On teachers as second career librarians

Citation for the article:

Lambert, Claudett, and Nadine Newman, "Second Career Librarian: Teachers Transitioning to Librarianship." Library Review 61.6 (2012): 428-446.

Read via Interlibrary Loan.

Right away I was interested in this article because I am a teacher who made the transition, after a few long winding roads and some bumps, into librarianship. I knew that many school teachers did jump into school librarianship, often as a way to get out of the classroom or as a way to advance that did not involve moving into administration. In my years, I have not seen many school teachers transition into academic librarianship like I did, but I am sure there are some out there. I can say that having training in pedagogy and education has been invaluable in my career as an instruction librarian. I think it does give me an edge over other librarians who fill instruction positions that lack such training. While you can gain some knowledge and training in programs such as ACRL's Institute on Information Literacy (a.k.a. Immersion), having the teaching degree does go a long way.

The authors start by reviewing the literature to point out that librarianship has gained benefit from professionals in other fields coming to librarianship such as scientists, lawyers (in fact, one of my classmates in library school was a lawyer who had served as public defender. Boy, did she have tales to tell), teachers, and managers. Many of them came to the profession by serendipity. I know I came to it because someone pointed me to it at the right time. The authors also go on to point out that the teaching profession has had a series of challenges and troubles: classroom conditions, low pay (not that librarianship is any better depending on where you are), politics, etc. Many teachers leave within the first five years of entering the teaching profession. To make their point, the authors go on to observe that librarianship has relatively good levels of satisfaction. Overall, and this is something I have known, the service orientations of teaching and librarianship tend to be very compatible.

The article is reporting on a qualitative analysis of data from interviews conducted with library degree graduates at the University of the West Indies in Jamaica. It was a small sample size. The authors wanted to see what issues had influence on teachers leaving the profession.

Some additional notes:

• As I was reading and the authors discussed the loss of teachers to that profession, I wondered if education as a while is really bothered by the losses. Does it really lose enough good teachers (I don't mean the weak ones who just get weeded out) for it to make a difference? 
• And then another question was the eternal issue of the non-existent librarian shortage. I don't know right off the top of my head if library jobs are any more plentiful in Jamaica. But here in the U.S. we have a serious excess of library school graduates, new and old, plus librarians looking for work (be it promotions, lateral moves, so on) competing for an extremely tight number of jobs. So, what happens to those teachers who now became librarians? Public schools have been chopping school librarian jobs left and right. Let's not forget as well just the tight market for other kinds of librarians. So, what do those former teachers do? Languish? Do something else? Go back to teaching? I am thinking these questions could provide further room for research and study. 
• This caught my eye a bit: "In terms of second career librarians, the literature has failed to give adequate coverage as it relates to public and special libraries. From the literature gleaned, it would appear as if many of these career changers have opted for academic libraries" (433). This may sound cold, but it could be because academic librarianship is often seen as more glamorous and/or prestigious in the librarianship hierarchy. Again, here is another possible field of investigation, a look at public and special librarians. 
• Again, those of us who came in with teaching skills may have an advantage. The authors cite the following: "McGuiness (2011) notes that most teaching librarians lack not only teaching expertise but also good role models. However, for those teachers who transition to librarianship, they are already equipped with the skills and competencies for the job" (433). I was fortunate that I had one or two good librarian role models when I was coming into the profession. 
• The authors drew various conclusions from their study (see pg. 442) including: 
• Teachers had a desire to get advanced education/degrees.
• They came to the profession due to various conditions (this does seem kind of vague, but I think they are trying to say that for teachers they often had their own reasons). 
• For many, it was not their initial field of choice. 
• Librarianship (very often) low paying, but it did not deter them. Keep in mind, teaching is also low paying in most cases.
• Librarianship is a service profession very compatible with teaching (this is something I have always said and believed since I became a librarian). 
• The authors were doing mostly fine for me until they gave some credence to the by now discredited meme of "the greying of the profession." Let me make it clear again: there are no massive numbers of retirements coming in our profession. In fact, in many cases, people literally drop dead on the job rather than retire; people are just working longer, and there are not that many jobs out there. Need proof? C'mon, a few of us have been talking about this since at least 2005.

Booknote: Generation on a Tightrope

I am posting below the small review I wrote for my GoodReads profile. I will follow that with some additional notes I wrote from the book and some commentary that I felt was better putting on the blog. For me, this was one of those books I come across now and then where I already know a lot, if not all, of what it says already. This is usually because I have often reads parts of the content in blogs, articles, and other places, so by the time the book is put together, it is old news. What can I say, it is a hazard of being the librarian who "reads a lot of the LIS literature so you don't have to." That does include stuff in education as well. Having said that, the book does have some insights, which is why I am blogging about it here.

The initial review:


Generation on a Tightrope: A Portrait of Today's College Student by Arthur Levine
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I gave this book two stars not because it was bad but because a lot of it is redundant. If you work in education, and you have been doing so for a while, you probably already know a lot of what has been written in this book. When I started reading it, my initial reaction was, "do we really need another book on the Millenial students and how different they are and how they have to be treated with kids' gloves because they have been coddled all their lives? How clueless can administrators and educators be on a topic that, to be honest, has been tossed around and dissected for a while now?" So, unless you have been living under a rock for a while, you can safely skim this book for the few good insights it has and move on to other things.

At times they can't even get their generational labels right, such as what is commonly agreed to be Generation X versus Generation Y for example (at least the sources they use for their definitions do not seem to be the best based on all the others I have seen and read, and I have read a lot in my line of work). I think at that point the authors were just grasping at labels to make the point that a generation is hard to label. Yes, we get it.

I did take some notes because I often found myself arguing with the authors or just plain wondering about some things. I will likely post those to my blog soon. However, for now, I will say the book is ok, but it is not great. The authors are drawing on a more recent study of undergraduates that covers them after the Great Recession of 2008, but again, it is stuff that we have heard before. A lot of it has already been on the news even. So, unless you really need a primer on this topic, you can probably skip this book. However if you do need a reminder, this may be a book for you.


View all my reviews



My additional notes and comments:

Now, let me rant a bit. What we have here is a challenging generation of college students. They are the way they are, in large measure, because their parents and adults in their lives failed them miserably when it came to raising them with some decent values and work ethic. In other words, those adults failed at their jobs-- pure and simple. As the authors write:

"Parents have not been able to teach their children to be more responsible about their health. Schools have not improved their students' academic skills. Colleges have continued to inflate undergraduate grades. Our political leaders have not given college students any more reason to trust government or be hopeful about the future of the country" (Preface, xi).  

To which I can only say, "duh!" All we've had in society as of late is a lot of passing the buck, failures of will, and attitudes of doing the least amount of work to get by while expecting the high end rewards. Then we wonder why things are as bad as they are. I could go on a longer rant, but for now, let's place the blame where it belongs: on the egg and sperm donors who fail miserably at being parents. I am a parent. It is hard work, and you have to put the work in. You have to be the adult, not your child's college drinking buddy (as we see later in one example from the book). You have to know when to say no, and once in a while, it is ok to let little Susie or little Jack skin the knees a bit. As a high school teacher, and later college teacher, I saw plenty of these coddled self-entitled kids and their helicopter parents. In fact, those parental failures were the real obstacle in terms of teaching. And from them, the rest of the vicious cycle goes on. 

In brief, what the book does:

"This book presents a snapshot of US undergraduates enrolled in college between 2005 through 2014" (1). 

The first chapter going over the whole generational differences thing between the Millenials and their tech fixation/fetishism (in some contexts, this could be labeled as twopointopianism) and their parents who are mostly clueless and left behind. In other words, there is nothing new here unless you have been living under a rock. As I read, I honestly hope this book gets better because so far, I've seen all this before, and I am not impressed. After finishing the first chapter, I can say that most readers can probably skim the chapter or skip it altogether to get the substance of the book.

The book discusses how digital technologies have shaped today's undergraduates. Yes, this is the whole natives versus immigrants rhetoric we have seen before. The authors do point out that the technology has often made them more selfish and annoying:

"Digital technologies have made current college students a 24/7 generation, operating around the clock, any time, any place. However, they attend colleges with fixed locations and fixed calendars-- semesters, course schedules, and office hours. How many of us have gotten e-mails at 3AM from students who are annoyed when they do not receive a response within a few hours" (21-22). 

I don't think that is a trait worthy of praise. It tells me these students don't know when to close the laptop, put down the cellphone, and take a break. It also tells me that no one taught the good manners or consideration given most people are usually asleep by 3am (except for them apparently). Does any of my four readers remember the old rule of no phone calls before 9am and after 9pm? At the end of the day, these kids just do not know how to take a break. To be blunt, they will be the frazzled dumbasses who take their Blackberries on vacation, then whine because they have too much work. Me? My time off is mine and sacred.  Notice the authors make the point of how there is a disconnect between the colleges and the students. However, that should be taken with a grain of salt. Students do need to learn that the world is not just all going to bend over to their schedule of waking up when they feel like it and showing up to work when they feel like it. Granted that non-traditional students do benefit from flexible hours when it comes to their education if they are also working, but even then, they still have to learn things like managing their time and doing the actual school work. Calendars, so on are the reality of life. We are not doing students any favors by wanting to abolish them, which, while the authors do not right out say that, it seems implied in the book.

There is more on what digital technology does, including adding to incivility, which is a problem:

"New technologies change the way students meet, entertain, protest, get their news, shop, participate in politics, spend their time, and use campus. They change rules for how people conduct their lives, establish new standards of decorum and create new opportunities for incivility" (23). 

The incivility is a serious issue. Need proof? Just go into any Internet comment area with little to no moderation, or think of the last time you experienced an asshole with a cellphone in a movie theater. I am not a Luddite by any stretch, but technology should not be a license to be rude, condescending (something that often happens in librarianship courtesy of certain high falluting twopointopian librarians, whom I will not name in the interest of protecting the not so innocent), or obnoxious and inconsiderate.

Finished the second chapter. In brief: Yes, students want more technology. They are more rude with it. Professors think they are lazy because all they do is try to pass Wikipedia and Google for research. Inflated grades and plagiarism.

I did find an amusing part in this otherwise dry, statement of the obvious book: Stories of the helicopter parents. Just when I thought overbearing, clingy parents could not get more ridiculous, here is further proof that they can exceed any expectation with their sense of self-entitlement. The chapter was amusing in a sad way. This is the chapter that features the story I mentioned earlier: When parents visit their kids in college over the weekend, and the kids are teaching them how to play beer pong (because they are such good "buddies"), it may be time to cut the umbilical cord. Just a thought.

This next part made me think a bit about library outreach, and why at my previous MPOW it was so difficult to get student participation at events. I really had to put a lot of effort in planning and especially timing so events would not take place at certain times I knew for sure were bad. For instance, avoid Wednesday nights, they tend to be "church night." And heaven help you if one of the Texas colleges has a football game the same evening. That sort of thing did make a difference, and that was in addition to other factors, such as the ones the authors describe:

"A majority of students attending college part-time or working twenty-one hours a week or more are not involved in campus activities or events either, with the exception of using the library. Undergraduates over the age of twenty-four are also poor attendees of campus events (Undergraduate Survey, 2009)" (qtd. in 54). 

At least they use the library, but they do not attend events in the library for the most part. Here in my current MPOW, the college is residential, so that does make a difference. Then again, the college makes a very active effort to inculcate in students the value of attending cultural and educational events. And unlike in other campuses, all students here do work (part of the labor program), which means the "excuse" of "I have to work" does not fly around here. The contrast just made me think a bit. I think we may have a bit of an edge here where I currently work.

Moving along, this next statement can be good and wonderful, but it also highlights how teaching information literacy is much more important now and how more challenging it is to teach it as well:

"Young people today have an astounding array of choices for getting news-- every website in cyberspace, thousands of radio and television stations, and an enormous assortment of print media. The consequence is that there is no common source of news content or even what could be called common content. The common sources of content of the past have largely disappeared" (139).

Further along, in discussing some solutions, the authors provide what I think is a simple and useful definition of critical thinking. This is something undergraduates (and a lot of adults today) really need to learn. Critical thinking is:

". . .the ability to ask hard questions, the capacity to formulate and solve problems, and the balanced judgment necessary to make decisions and choices" (164). 

Add information literacy to this because in order to make those decisions, you need to have the best information possible, and you need to evaluate that information and know how to use it well. In addition, the authors also argue that, given a constantly changing world, the students today need to learn creativity and continual lifelong learning.

A small aside: The authors write about how higher education should look up to, or at least use some ideas from for profit colleges. Given ethical lapses of for-profit colleges, their questionable practices and results, I would not be holding them up as something to emulate for colleges and universities, which are nonprofits with a mission to actually teach, not just sell a diploma. Higher education in general often gets into trouble trying to act like a business. Education is not a business, and the sooner institutions as well as students and their parents realize that the sooner things may start to get better.

Now, let us summarize the current undergraduate generation. No matter how much the authors try to ameliorate, it is not a great picture. These students do have some very strong assets, and they do have some very noble moments. But that is simply not enough, and I also think libraries can and should playing an active role in making sure these young people and those who come after them learn what they need to learn (more on that a bit further down):

"Their digital experience and networking skills will need to become literacy in the use of technology, information, and media. Their comfort with diversity and globalization will have to grow into multicultural and interpersonal competence. And their demand for change will need to translate into a set of skills required to live in an era of continuing flux and to work for the changes they desire" (163). 

The authors, as they keep on ameliorating, go on to write:

"This should not be taken as a slap or dismissal of current undergraduates. . . " (163).

The ones who need a serious slap are the parents who raised these full of potential yet very deficient students who were always given awards, often for just showing up.

And what do you know? The authors actually mention the library and it having a role in making things better. This right here is more than you see in other "higher education in crisis" books you see out there. I have said this to a few folks: that indeed we should be the knowledge authority on our campuses. That we should be about more than flair and flash:

"The library must move from the periphery of the college campus to its center. It has to be transformed from a storehouse for content to the central campus authority on knowledge-- the discovery, incubation, distribution, application, and recombination of knowledge. Colleges and universities are populated by faculty members who are experts in content but they know relatively little about the structure and use of knowledge. Libraries will have to lead their campuses in this regard" (169-170).

And here is another thought, and this will be the final items I will note. Colleges and universities need to make a stand: a brick campus, a click campus, or brick and click? By the way, I think libraries also need to be asking this question and deciding where to stand. I get the feeling a few are already going to be click libraries, which may or not be a good thing. But that line of thinking may be for another time and blog post. Meanwhile, I am thinking of my current MPOW. Here at Berea College, we are clearly and proudly planting our flag as a brick campus, but we still strongly embrace and seek to learn from and about technology to enhance the primary personal learning experience. As I often say, you do what works for you, and that is what works for us. It is who we are. Other campuses have to think and see who they are and what they want to be, and I will add, without adding any delusions of grandeur (if you are primarily a teaching campus, for example, you are not going to become a research campus overnight no matter how much wishful thinking you do. And yes, I have been in places where this was the big delusion, places that will remain nameless, again, to protect the not so innocent). What happens at brick campuses then when it comes to technology:

"At brick campuses, technology is a means of enriching, expediting, expanding, and supplementing face-to-face education by enhancing instruction, expanding services and resources available to the college community, and enlarging the scope and reach of the campus" (170). 

Now note the contrast to what a click campus does:

"At click campuses, technology is the primary means by which instruction, services, and resources are provided" (170). 

Book Review: Quiet

The only reason I am including this review here instead of over at my personal blog is that I think this is a book that librarians should read. Given that our profession does include a lot of introverts, I think a lot of librarians will appreciate the book as well. I have not posted in here for a while, and there are reasons for that I don't feel like going into at the moment. So, I am first including my review, as I posted it to my GoodReads profile, followed by some additional notes I took. You can read the review to get the gist of it and skip the notes if you wish since the notes may be a bit more personal.

The review:


Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book could have been a bit shorter. It does make some excellent points, but it also has a lot of filler on it on the way to making the good points. If you are an introvert, and I will disclose that I am introverted, you will find yourself nodding often as you read it. There is going to be a lot of validation for you. If you are an extrovert with an introvert in your life-- a loved one, a family member, maybe a child who seems a bit too quiet or less social-- then this book will go a long way to explain why those people are how they are and also how to love and deal with them.

In addition, I would have rated it higher, but there was a lot in this book that I already knew. I've taken Myers-Briggs and done other exercises and studying to know quite well about my introverted nature. So a good amount of stuff in the book I already knew. Having said that, I did find a few things of interest, and I did learn some new things. It did give me some additional ideas on how to work in a world that, to quote the subtitle of the book, can't stop talking (or rather, a world that just can't shut the hell up). For many, I think the insight may well be how the extroverted ideal is way overrated and overvalued and how workplaces, if they wish to truly succeed, need to balance things by being inclusive with their introverted folks. Also, the parts on how a lot of group work is bullshit, which I have always known since childhood (just never had the evidence to back it up) will provide good insight. It is not that collaboration is bad, but most of what passes for it in current workplaces is horrible and even detrimental. The book does give other options to make things work better.

To those in the know, the book will likely serve mostly as affirmation and validation material, which in itself is not a bad thing. To those needing to learn, this is definitely a good resource, albeit it could have been a bit shorter. I did take some notes, which I may add to my blog at some point for future reference.




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* * * * * 

My notes and reflections from the book:

As an introvert myself, this is one of many statements in the book that I can mostly agree with:

"Introverts, in contrast, may have strong social skills and enjoy parties and business meetings, but after a while wish they were home in their pajamas. They prefer to devote their social energies to close friends, colleagues, and family. They listen more than they talk, think before they speak, and often feel as if they express themselves better in writing than in conversation. They tend to dislike conflict. Many have a horror of small talk, but enjoy deep discussions" (11). 

That describes me quite a bit, and I will admit as I write this that I feel like I am taking a risk admitting it. Even in our profession, the gregarious extrovert ideal is valued above all. Whether it is the ideal of the public services librarian as outgoing and sociable to the social moments in an academic job interview (my three readers know what I am referring to. During such interviews, things like the lunch segment where you go out to eat, and you have to make all sorts of small talk with little substance in order for them to see if you are a good fit. It is what it is, and I can say I am pretty good at it by now. Then again, Cain does have a point about introverts who are very good at bluffing or passing). Overall, I do have pretty good social skills, but I do strongly prefer to devote my social energies to those that matter the most, namely family and my few very close friends. I do listen more than I talk, and while I do not have a horror of small talk, I often find it highly annoying and fake. That last is also a reason why I don't particularly see what the big deal with going to conferences to drink and schmooze, which seems to be another thing a lot in our profession seem to value more than the learning experience (yes, they may argue learning happens at the drinking party in the evening. To each their own I suppose).

There is a difference between shy and introvert:

"Shyness is the fear of social disapproval or humiliation, while introversion is a preference for environments that are not overstimulating. Shyness is inherently painful; introversion is not" (12). 

I've often said that I would rather not become a manager in my profession. Notice I use the word "manager" and not the word "leader." There is a big difference (a topic I have discussed a few times in this blog, and in the few times I've gotten comments, it is usually from people who feel the need to defend managers even when they are bad, but I digress. However, if you are one of those people who say, "oh yea?" this post is one example). At any rate, what I am trying to get at is that, if anyone ever put me in charge, this is the kind of leader I would aspire to be, a kind that is sorely missing in our profession, all flashy displays aside. This is a description of an introverted, effective U.S. Air Force wing commander. I think it is something a lot of library managers, and managers overall, can learn from:

" . . . people respected not just his formal authority, but also the way he led: by supporting his employees' efforts to take the initiative. He gave subordinates input into key decisions, implementing the ideas that made sense, while making it clear that he had the final authority. He wasn't concerned with getting credit or even with being in charge; he simply assigned work to those who could perform it best. This meant delegating some of his most interesting, meaningful, and important tasks-- work that other leaders would have kept for themselves" (56). 

By the way, the theme of letting people do what they do best and getting the right people to work for you is a theme I have seen elsewhere. The basic point is that a lot of management boils down to hiring the right people in the first place. That is a crucial skill the manager needs to have, and one that, when it fails, can have catastrophic results for a workplace. The book that comes to mind now in regards to this is First, Break All the Rules, which I read last month (link to my brief GoodReads review). It's another book I took some notes from that I may or not post to the blog in the future.

Next, a lesson often missed in workplaces where groupthink is the norm:

". . . an explanation that everyone can learn from: introverts prefer to work independently, and solitude can be a catalyst to innovation" (74, emphasis in the original).

And here is an example to further argue about the importance of solitude, why it is good and often necessary:

"College students who tend to study alone learn more over time than those who work in groups" (81). 

Solitude works because it is the time when you can engage in Deliberate Practice:

"When you practice deliberately,  you identify the tasks or knowledge that are just out of your reach, strive to upgrade your performance, monitor your progress, and revise accordingly. Practice sessions that fall short of this standard are not only less useful-- they are counterproductive. They reinforce existing cognitive mechanisms instead of improving them" (81).

And why is Deliberate Practice best done alone? (also on page 81):

• Takes intense concentration. 
• Other people can be distracting. 
• Requires deep motivation. This motivation is often self-generated. 
• It involves working on the task that challenges you the most (emphasis in original). 

Deliberate Practice does set up the groundwork for performance and success, but you need the right working conditions to do it. Such working conditions are often not easy to find, according to the author.

And again, why solitude and independent work are great:

"That's because top performers overwhelmingly worked for companies that gave their workers the most privacy, personal space, control over their physical environments, and freedom from interruption" (84). 

Now, does your workplace love meetings, brainstorms, and a lot of group work? Well, it turns out a lot of that stuff does not really work:

"Studies have shown that performance gets worse as group size increases: groups of nine generate fewer and poorer ideas compared to groups of six, which do worse than groups of four" (88). 

And if you are going to say, "but but, in brainstorm, no idea is a bad idea" or some other pablum, read the sections on this book about group work and get a clue. There are solid reasons why that little cliche does not work. So if you are piling all your workers into a conference room to brainstorm, say your strategic planning, this can help explain why some of the ideas are less than desirable, why some people may just hold back and not speak, even when you know they may have good ideas, and other issues. The exception is online brainstorming, say using e-mail or chat. However, the reason for that is that, in essence, you have people in solitude reflecting and then writing or sharing their ideas. By the way, the best way to make the online brainstorm work is to send all ideas to a group leader separately. In other words, don't do the thing where one person writes out an e-mail, then everyone,  using a difference color font, just adds to it their own ideas and spreads. This simply makes you revert to the brainstorm in the conference room syndrome. Have the group leader instead collect the ideas, review, then share them with the group in a summary way. Cain thus gives insight, expanding on why online collaborations, which by the way seem to be the darling of a lot of twopointopian librarians (borrowing the term from the Annoyed Librarian), often fail:

"We fail to realize that participating in an online working group is a form of solitude all its own. Instead we assume that the success of online collaborations will be replicated in the face-to-face world" (89). 

Cain is not saying we should get rid of collaboration. It does need to be substantially refined, and flexible spaces that allow for collaboration in various forms as well as private work spaces are needed.

By the way, here is what I was referring to earlier in terms of some introverts' ability to pass:

"In other words, introverts are capable of acting like extroverts for the sake of work they consider important, people they love, or anything they value highly" (209). 

Very often they do it so well you can't really tell someone is an introvert. For what they value: their students, their jobs, their families, so on, they will rise to the occasion.

Finally, I thought the following can be useful for introverts who may out in the job market. Cain argues for the importance of restorative niches. Certainly, this seems like pretty good advice:

"Introverts should ask themselves: Will this job allow me to spend time on in-character activities like, for example, reading, strategizing, writing, and researching? Will I have a private workspace or be subject to the constant demands of an open office plan? If the job doesn't give me enough restorative niches, will I have enough free time on evenings and weekends to grant them to myself?" (219-220). 

Booknote: Teachers as Cultural Workers

I debated for a while whether I wanted to post this review or not in the blog. I was reading this book during ACRL Immersion this past summer (mostly during the trip back and forth and in the evenings before bed). I have been meaning to write down some of my reflections from that experience here in the blog, but the daily grind at work means that has gotten sent to the back burner. Then again, a lot of my blogging has been sent to the back burner as of late, but let us look past that for now. I am posting my small review as I posted it on my GoodReads profile, and then I will jot down a couple of ideas from the book that I jotted down in my personal journal that are worth sharing (well, to me anyways).


Teachers as Cultural Workers by Paulo Freire

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


I finished this a couple of days ago, but it took me a while to finally get around to reviewing it. I am giving it three stars, but it is not because it is a bad book. The book can be a bit repetitive, especially if you have read some of Freire's other works, and a few passages can be a little dry. Having said that, there is a lot in this book for teachers and educators to reflect upon. I found myself making notes in my personal journal at various times, jotting down passages and quotes I wanted to remember for later. Freire covers a lot of ground in this book from the teaching of reading to the behavior of teachers, from the teaching act to political action and activism. I think a lot of what Freire wrote in this book is very relevant today if educators would take the time to read the book, reflect on it, then take action. I also think that the book has a lot to say to librarians, who are educators as well, and who often do a lot of teaching (especially if you are an instruction librarian, but even at the reference desk some degree of teaching goes on). Some of it also speaks to our profession in terms of the idea of library neutrality, a topic I have considered before (I have a book just on that topic listed in my GoodReads lists if anyone is interested).

I took this book with me when I went to Immersion (ACRL Institute on Information Literacy for those not in librarianship, an intensive institute for instruction librarians) this past summer. In part, I was looking for a bit of inspiration. I think I also longed to read something that is not necessarily present in the Immersion curriculum (or if it is, it is very well hidden or unacknowledged). I think Freire has a lot that can speak to librarians, if we take the time to listen.


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Additional notes from and about the book:

Freire gives a suggestion on writing:

"If we think about the intimate relationship between reading, writing, and thinking and about our need to intensely experience this relationship, we might accept the suggestion that at least three times a week we should devote ourselves to the task of writing something. That writing could be notes about something read, a commentary about some event reported in the media, a letter to an unknown person--it doesn't matter what. It is also a good idea to date and keep these writings and, a few months later, critically analyze them" (45-46). 

This sounded to me like a pretty good argument for keeping and writing in a personal journal, which is something I have been doing for years now, even if not in the most consistent way. This may also be another explanation, for me, of why I keep a journal. I need to experience that intimate relationship between reading, writing and thinking. I have expressed before in some previous writings of mine that writing helps me think and work out ideas. Lately I have been doing more writing in my personal journal than blogging. Part of it has been time constraints. Work has been very busy, and at the end of the day, it is easier to just write in my journal for a while than fire up the computer and open the blogging program. Another reason is that, to be honest, a lot of the drama in the librarian sector of the blogosphere just does not interest me, so I would rather just not blog about certain things. I am still reading a bit of the library literature; I just have not gotten around to blogging some of those notes.

There are a few other things I jotted down, but I am choosing not to blog them here. However this passage on progressive educators moved me, and it made me think about our profession as well. Freire writes:

"Progressive educators need to convince themselves that they are not only teachers--this doesn't exist-- not only only teaching specialists. We are political militants because we are teachers. Our job is not exhausted in the teaching of math, geography, syntax, history. Our job implies that we teach these subjects with sobriety and competence, but it also requires our involvement in and dedication to overcoming social injustice" (103-104). 

That may be a large reason why I became first a teacher and then a librarian. In fact, I think this is very applicable to to librarians, especially those of us in reference and instruction. To me, this takes me back once more to the question of library neutrality. How neutral can we really in a world of social injustice? I know what I would answer, but I also know a lot of my professional brethren choose to ignore the issue, evade it, or in some cases just do not care. And as Forrest Gump would say, "that's all I got to say about that." By the way, if you are interested in the topic of library neutrality, this book may be of interest.

Article note: On alternatives to ERIC, and a few extra thoughts

Citation for the article:

Strayer, Jean-Jacques. "ERIC Database Alternatives and Strategies for Education Researchers." Reference Services Review 36.1 (2008): 86-96.

Read via Emerald.


I am in the middle of a weeding project for the library's reference section. I will spare my two readers the details, but I will say it has been a bit of a learning experience. Anyhow, my director had sent me a printout of the ERIC list of changes since 2004. Of course there was an ulterior motive for this, which was to ask if we could get rid of the ERIC fiche collection (the collection does take an awful lot of space). Based on the list document, if I am reading it right, we can probably weed out anything from 1993 to 2004, with the caveat that there may be the rare document missing from the online system due to copyright reversals (i.e. those people who for some reason decide they do not wish to have their work made available online. And no, I am not even touching that).

Anyways, that's the background to go with the article I am featuring in this post, which deals with research alternatives to ERIC. Strayer looks at journal indexing coverage in ERIC (the old and the new) as well as in alternative databases. What I found really useful in this article was the discussion of suggestions and research strategies for librarians and education researchers. I am going on faith that a good number of education librarians have read this or have it on their pile of stuff to read. This is probably the kind of article that education faculty should look at as well.

Some highlights from the article:

• What's the big deal? The Department of Education announced in 2003 that it would close down the clearinghouse system (87). In essence, ERIC had a decentralized system of clearinghouses that provided the information and materials for ERIC; the clearinghouses each collected information and materials on specialized areas of education. In my view, this was probably not of the brightest ideas for the DE.
  
• Strayer on the "new" ERIC: "The 'new' ERIC started in September 2004, is improving in some ways: its website is more user-friendly; more and more ERIC documents are digitized and available in full-text; its search engine features and functions have been improved. Generally, however, it is not indexing and keeping up to date with the same number of important education journals that the "old" ERIC covered before December 2003 when the US Department of Education closed down the ERIC clearinghouses, stopped the indexing of education journals and ERIC documents and hired a private company (Computer Sciences Corporation) to create a new database" (87).
  
• The more user-friendly aspect of the site and the improvement of the search engine are a bit questionable at best. There is a reason that EBSCO does pretty well selling us ERIC, a freely available resource online, on their interface (full disclosure: we get that EBSCO option here).
  
• I will keep to myself my views on when the government privatizes something like ERIC in the interests of "streamlining" and "improving."
  
• The results: "The 'new' ERIC is not indexing and keeping up to date with the same number of major education journals as the 'old' ERIC used to. In each study, in all three categories of journals, the 'new' ERIC provides current indexing (indexing for journal issues published within the last 12 months) to substantially fewer titles than the 'old' ERIC (i.e. before December 19, 2003)" (88).
• You can look at the tables in the article for specifics. The checking was done using two recent issues of ISI (Institute of Scientific Information) Journal Citation Reports.

After the numbers, Strayer moves on the discussion, which as I mentioned, is the real useful part for those of us who do reference and teach students how to do research. His three basic suggestions are: "know your databases and research objectives," "know your vocabulary," and "use multiple strategies in multiple databases." Some notes from the discussion:

• At times, Academic Search Premier may work well, especially for quick searches of up-to-date and relevant material. ASP can fare better than the new ERIC and even Wilson's Education Full Text. If the librarian teaches education graduate students, then its time to introduce the students to Web of Science. However, you should also be using EBSCO's Education Research Complete.
  
• Disclosure note: We do not have WoS. We do have Education Research Complete, which I do teach to the couple of education classes that come in for instruction. Since EBSCO is pretty good about combining databases in a search, one can run a search combining ERC and ERIC. I also show them how to use PsycInfo. A lot of what Strayer writes in this section is stuff I know from experience, but it is nice to see someone validating it.
  
• Why use PsycInfo? For its coverage of interest in areas of special ed., ed. psych., and counseling. This is APA's database by the way. Strayer notes that "it is supported by a thesaurus of psychology terms that are specific to learning theory, teaching methods, cognitive and language development, verbal communication, reading comprehension and more that can be applied to education research. PsycInfo is a good source for empirical studies published in peer review journals" (90).
  
• When the students come in asking for an empirical study, PsycInfo is pretty my ace.
  
• If your students are doing in-depth research, teach them how to identify and find the specialized journals in their field. Also tell them which databases index the journals and teach them how set up alerts for the tables of contents for the journals as the journals get published (different from waiting for the database to index it) (91).
  
• If the journal has RSS, so much better. Show them if need be how to use a feed reader. I am thinking this could lead to a post on the library blog on setting alerts.
  
• Teach them how to use a database's thesaurus. Also teach them about acquiring "a thorough knowledge of the current vocabulary in the field of education--standard terms and also those that are coming into popular use and those that appear in author-supplied keyword" (91). This is then how students can create better search strings as part of their research strategies. How the heck do you learn the vocabulary? You read in the field of study, and you discuss with your professors and peers. That's one way I do it, and it works, not just for education (which is my subject specialty), but for LIS as well. In my case, I also blog and make notes like this post, but that may or not work for everyone. Find what works for you.
  
• If you are using the multiple database technique: ". . .it is very important for librarians to emphasize that each discipline has its own thesaurus and its own set of specialized vocabulary and definitions. PsycInfo will, therefore, have its own thesaurus. Its terminology can be different than ERIC's, even when it is describing educational, learning, and cognitive development topics. The education researcher will be well served if s/he is acquainted with the PsycInfo thesaurus as well as the ERIC thesaurus and if s/he proceeds to devise keyword strategies that incorporate both of these vocabularies. As educators, these vocabularies combined comprise a core working vocabulary" (92).
  
• In plain English, learn how to use the tools that have the lingo of your field of study. Learn that lingo and how to incorporate it into your search strategies.
  

Strayer also points out some implications:

• For openers, ". . .we can no longer count on ERIC as the one, comprehensive and reliable source for all aspects of educational studies. . ." (92).
  
• If you are a good instruction or subject specialist librarian, or reference for that matter, you should not just be teaching the database. Instead we should be teaching "a strategic approach to research that can be applied to and used as a means of evaluating a growing number and variety of information sources in various forms and formats and media" (93).
  
• When some snobbish or resistant professor asks what is it we do in library instruction, give him or her that answer. That is where our skills lie. It's not just teaching to use an interface or a tool but what you do with the tools in the box.
  
• What else should librarians be doing? Well, according to Strayer, database analysis work like this article is a good example. Why? Well, Strayer says it better than I ever could, so I will let him say it: "The analytical pursuit of information and rigorous evaluation of information sources, research strategies and information technologies are at the very heart of information literacy. As academic librarians, our role and responsibility is to integrate these critical thinking and informed decision making principles into the curriculum at all levels and across all disciplines. As academic planners and administrators, we bring to this process a knowledge of current and emerging information and instructional technologies (their scope, balance and potential to increase or limit access and usability of information sources) that cannot be matched by the narrow disciplinary, scholarly and administrative concerns of our colleagues in most college and university communities" (93).
  
• When some person wants to denigrate the MLS or MIS degrees, saying that they are not needed to be a librarian (especially an academic librarian), or faculty that think we are glorified clerks taking up space, point them to Strayer's paragraph above. This kind of skills is why people go to library school. If your library school is not providing those skills, then demand better or go to a different L-School. And then work on proving your worth and educating the faculty and administration on your campus about what it is exactly you do.
  

Overall, if you are an academic librarian who works with education students, you have to read this article.

TLA 2008 Conference Notes, Day One: Session on school librarians and professional reading

Session title: Be PRO-active: Encourage Professional Reading.
Presenters: Mary Ann Bell and Holly Weimar, of Sam Houston State University.

(This session was an example of bad advertising. When it comes to conferences, this is a pet peeve of mine: sessions that on paper look pretty good, and then you discover they are not quite what they say on the program description. For reference purposes, here is the description as listed in the program).

Program description: "Overwhelmed by professional literature? Explore management solutions for busy faculty and staff with limited time. Inspire professional reading by providing resources and technological tools to organize materials and encourage critical and creative thinking."

(My first clue should have been that it was sponsored by the Texas Association of School Librarians. Now, that clue would have told me that it was not geared to those of us in academia. Having said that, I have been known to go to sessions for school librarians since I was a school teacher in a previous life, plus being an education subject specialist, it helps me to keep up. However, the program description made it sound like a more general session about professional reading. Somewhat far from that. In essence, this was for school librarians to learn how to get their faculty the professional reading they need. Nice, but not exactly academic level. However, I did find a silver lining: I learned some things that I can pass on to our education faculty and their students getting ready to go into classrooms. I think I will modify my notes a bit and post them over in our library blog with an "education" tag.)

Notes:

Two websites, which belong to the presenters: http://hweimar.pbwiki.com/ and http://forwhomthebelltold.pbwiki.com/.

(By the way, a lot of this presentation boiled down to the presenters simply showing their wikis. If I wanted that, I would ask for the link and look at it myself. Note to any potential presenters out there: don't do that. Actually present and discuss. I can look at the website later.)

• Issue: having time to read. This presentation is based on a study of school teachers and reading. ALA used to have a statement on professional reading collections. This is now gone (would be nice if I could have seen that ALA statement. Makes me wonder why they got rid of it since I would think encouraging professional reading would be in the interests of ALA. Then again, ALA is the American Library Association, not librarian association. Anyhow, tried to do a quick search for examples of places with a professional reading collection, and they are pretty slim. Jackson State Community College offers one as a service to faculty. The South Dakota State Library also offers it. See the note here, then find their bibliography, which is a Word doc. And apparently, the Texas State Library offers a library science collection. I need to look into that later. At one point, in my previous job, I had mentioned having some kind of professional reading collection. Idea did not get too far off the ground. And given the budget where I am at now, suggesting it here is probably not advisable.)
• If we are not reading, we can't be an example to others who are also expected to read (nice idea). Administrators should be seen reading professionally too. If they share it, it is found that staff will do the same. (Careful on this. Forwarding articles because they look good does not equal actually reading them and thinking about them.)
• However, in schools, lacking other reading is discussed. If not professional reading, it is not seen as OK (I think the point here is about teachers actually reading other things and seen doing it once in a while).
  
• Professional reading can lead to other activities. For teachers, it can lead to things like professional development.

On locating the right professional materials (this is addressed to school librarians, but I think with a little modification, we in academia can learn from it t00):

• Talk to teachers to find needs.
• Promote things like WorldCat and TexShare.
  
• Note: observation that teachers often went to bookstores on Friday or Saturday evenings. This was the only time they had available (heck, when I was a school teacher, I often did not even have those times available. However, the point of the presenter was to observe the school teachers went to the bookstore at those free times considering their public libraries were usually closed at that time).
  
• School librarian needs to give some guidance. Maybe start by providing some abstracts to the teachers.
  
• School librarians: while providing services, do collect data as well.
  
• Remember your online resources.
  

Student Population in the U.S. at its Highest Level

ABC News provides an AP report by Ben Feller on the fact that the student population in the United States is at its highest level. Acording to the report, "a total of 49.6 million children attended public and private school in 2003, beating the previous high mark of 48.7 million set in 1970 when the baby boom generation was in school." Mark Mather, a demographer for the Population Reference Bureau, called it "a classic echo effect." Basically, this means that the baby boomers went and had kids of their own. This creates some opportunities and challenges. In terms of challenges:

• Teacher recruitment. More teachers and administrators will need to be hired for the new schools being built. Given funding situations, difficulties in getting certified (actually this varies. Some places are real permissive in giving out "emergency" credentials while making it hard on those who pursue the license by actually getting a teaching degree, for instance), NCLB, just the challenge of finding good teachers overall, this is definitely a challenge.
  
• Helping kids who don't speak English. A large factor in the larger number of students is immigration. One additional consideration, which people who are anti-immigrant tend to forget, is that immigrants have children too. It is not so much children who may be here illegally, but children born here (who are thus citizens) and children of immigrants who are actually here legally too. And we are not just speaking of immigrants from Mexico and Latin America, but from Asia and other places as well.
  
• Managing class sizes. I think this is self-explanatory.
  
• Finding financial aid for future college students. The article explains this nicely as well. Part of the situation is that, unlike the boomer generation, people today need and expect a college degree to have a good job. Someone has to pay for all that tuition.
  

Another quote from the article: "In districts outside Atlanta, Houston, and Las Vegas, enrollment has soared more than 20 percent in the last five years, said Bruce Hunter, who directs lobbying for the American Association of School Administrators." I know I can testify to this in a small measure. I live outside the Houston metro loop, and the school district my daughter is in (not HISD. I was warned when I moved in to avoid it at all costs, which I did, and I am glad. She is in a good school) gives an illustrative example. Her building is a little over a year old, making it brand new. They are building at least one more elementary school and a middle school. Additionally, housing developments are sprouting all over the place.

The various projections are based on Census data, which can be found on the link below. The article provided the link:

http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/school.html

Food, the one thing they don't tell you about in teacher training.

This article by Steven W. Simpson, PhD talks not only about the importance of kids in schools being well fed for success. It also talks about how food can bring a teacher and a student together, but more importantly, it talks about trusting the students as well. The article can be found here, and it is definitely worthy reading.

The Headline: "Social Studies Losing Out to Reading, Math"

Education Week is one of the professional journals I have on alert, meaning I get an e-mail with the table of contents of the latest issue when it comes out. This is called awareness service, and a few other terms. Larger academic libraries often set up such services for their faculty. I have something set up for myself on a smaller scale. Whether I get to it right away is another thing given all the other things I have to do (notice I got to this two weeks later), but at any rate, I do try to keep up with professional reading as part of my job. Since I am an educator, education is one of my areas of interest.

I am not a fan of high stakes testing or the No Child Left Behind Act, which I think simply forces schools to teach to a test at the expense of other things that are important to have a well rounded education to make an informed and active citizen in our democracy. But I won't go into that debate. I just wanted to point out this little article:

Title:	Social Studies Losing Out to Reading, Math.
Authors:	Manzo, Kathleen Kennedy
Source:	Education Week; 3/16/2005, Vol. 24 Issue 27

Abstract:This article reports that social studies task force appointed by the Maryland state schools superintendent is studying the "state of social studies" education statewide, as well as nationally, in order to craft recommendations for strengthening the teaching of the subjects there. Schools in Illinois had already begun paring time allocated to social studies to make way for as much as 160 minutes daily of reading, when the legislature scrapped the state test in social studies. Squeezing social studies in the elementary grades is likely to leave many students unprepared for the history courses they will encounter in middle and high school, and to meet graduation requirements in the subject, according to Jesus Garcia, the president of the National Council for the Social Studies, which is based in Silver Spring, Maryland.

I am a firm believer in that saying by Santayana about those who fail to study history are bound to repeat it, but even if I did not believe in that, taking out social studies is not the way to go. We constantly hear on the news and the media how our young people are doing poorly in general knowledge, how they lag behind in math and science when compared to the rest of the world, and how they lag behind in knowledge of geography, a subject part of social studies. I think one example of this shameful situation is found in the results of the 2002 National Geographic Global Geographic Literacy Survey (latest one available). The link leads to an article with highlights of the results. I don't think you can be an educated citizen if you lack a knowledge of your own country and its history along with a knowledge of your neighbors around the world. If your nation is sending troops abroad, you should at least be able to point to a map to where those troops are being sent. And it helps to know a bit of our history to understand how history today is being made.

The Education Week article points out that research shows teachers will tend to spend more time on items tested on the high stakes tests, and history is not one of those areas. As a result of cuts in teaching social studies, some students would not be exposed to it at all until they were sophomores in high school, if at all. This means students will not be prepared for the history courses in high school required for graduation, and as a former high school teacher, I know that more often than not I had to do remedial teaching to compensate for deficiencies students brought because they were not addressed in middle school or earlier. Cutting back is not going to make it easier. But I do wonder, would graduation requirements eventually change? A lot of the model for graduation requirements is based on college preparation, being ready for college. If schools teach more to the test because reading and math are seen as the only important things, and not that they are not important, but if that is the case, would they down the road simply say areas like social studies are no longer required? Would they become electives? And further down the road, would colleges change their entrance requirements to have less social studies and more math for instance to compensate?

But more importantly, what does a situation like this say about how our society values a good civic education? We have heard about the lack of voter participation, about apathy of young people to vote, so on. True, there was more voter turnout this time around, but it was all thanks to the 2000 debacle, and even with that, a lot of people that could have turned out to vote did not. And midterm elections usually have dismal turnouts anyhow, more often than not because people do not even take the time to be informed about local issues. Social studies, not just history, but government courses, serve to instill a sense of the need to participate in a democracy. I find it ironic that people around the world fight to get a democracy. Other nations have great voter turnout, and a nation like the U.S. which is a beacon to others has to struggle, basically beg its citizens to vote. Now, we could debate about special interests and who really funds what, but without education, things cannot change. The few will continue to pull the wool over everyone else's eyes as long as they see a lack in education, and taking social studies out may be a way. After all, how can one appreciate the democracy that the Founding Fathers built if one does not even hear about them? How do we know we really are protecting the Constitution if we don't even read about it? Just some questions to ask next time you think about how great testing for scores can be.