Minor musings

• Dana Woods argues that school librarians are needed; on the other hand, the Project Information Literacy Progress Report clearly shows they’re not using us for their research needs.  So, what can we do to change students’ perception of their abilities and our worth?  On a related note, I wonder if it is merely terminology, or something more? We always talk about “stakeholders” but maybe we should talk about “customers“,  and devote ourselves to good customer service We may just win over the Luddites.
• danah boyd’s SWSX talk on privacy gives me hope: “People of all ages care deeply about privacy. And they care just as much about privacy online as they do offline. But what privacy means may not be what you think.”  That’s good to hear, and it’s good to know that students are dealing with some of the same issues I’m struggling with: knowing how much, which forum, and how public.
• I’ve been looking at the different sets of standards (NETS, AASL, ACRL) and now YALSA‘s issued their own standards.  How can I integrate all of them?  NETS/AASL are easy to link; it seems to me that AASL’s “where they should be as they graduate” really needs to be closely linked to ACRL’s “where they should be when the get to college”.  Interweaving YALSA may or may not be difficult… this is clearly a summer project.  Anyone want to work on a ‘global perspective’ with me?  Also, can we drop “skills” and use “fluencies” instead?  Bobbi Newman makes a great point when discussing the 21st Centuries Fluency Project (yet another thing to integrate into our pedagogy and planning).
• Will Richardson is asking us to help continue the Educon conversation.  I’ve been thinking about some of the questions he’s asking (What does an educated person look like today? How does our thinking of the physical space change?) in light of our impending move to the new space; the others are running around my head and pop up as I read others thoughts about the New Education.  This is not something I want to tackle alone – it’s something that I think would make for some great roundtable discussions during a conference like ALA (where librarians of all stripes can mull and ponder and share).
• I love our LibGuides (so do our teachers).  Elizabeth Abarbanal talks about encouraging student participation in their creation… time to rethink/revamp the ones we’ve done and to incorporate this into any new ones (also need to work with teachers on reminding students to participate!)
• And while we’re talking about participation, what about Sqworl?  Loved the WebFooted Booklady’s introduction…
• As part of my Spring Cleaning project, I’m going to delete some of my online identities – not all, just those I created and abandoned.