by Betty Story

Developing research/technology curricula for International Baccalaureate and Middle Years school library programs the last few years has given me reasonable expectations of research and technology capability for middle and high school students who have continual practice with technology.

Fortunate young people have moved way beyond simply using Power Point for presentations. In elementary years they are mastering Glogster, Prezi, Story Bird, Garage Band, and pod casts. Innovative teachers use Moodle and Webquests for Internet enhanced lessons. Some middle and high schools use Noodleworks to craft research papers and citation software to create bibliographies. Electronic grammar and spell checks are taken for granted.

Although these students may be “future ready” with navigating software, how much they comprehend and adequately assess what they Googled or found on databases is a concern. Some students have learned writing by completing “report writing” and grammar worksheets; crafting sentences and paragraphs is an undeveloped skill. Plagiarism detection software as such as Turnitin are now part of high school and university teachers’ tool kits.

Research Strategies: Finding Your Way through the Information Fog, by William Badke, talks of “remedial information literacy”, that is needed to provide methods for students to sort and synthesize the overwhelm of information. From the my perspective, with capable librarians and teachers, motivated students (especially those in private schools or public school college prep programs) will rise to expectations of independent and critical thinking required for online research. Unfortunately, while these students learn to ably sort out information and go beyond paraphrasing, under served public high school students can lack information literacy.

Since public school library positions are being cutback, the digital divide may widen. A recent statement from the American Association of School Libraries ( AASL) and case studies backing up the report, School Libraries Work!, examines the impact of public school libraries that are under staffed. ( The impact of public library cutbacks and loss of computer access to many is a whole other post.)

Regardless, to end on a positive note, this digitally able generation is constantly evolving but does need guidance. Students can and will learn to understand a research problem, find relevant content, and transform the information. Finding the solutions to developing these skills for all young people is a piece of the future ready puzzle.

Betty Story has been a school librarian, school library consultant and trainer for 25 years. She has worked with several private international schools and colleges, but knows that our public school librarians are unsung heroes.
Also an independent information professional, she is also a member of AIIP  on their board as Membership Development Chair.

by Joe Grobelny

We must wrestle with truth because:

Even if we admit that not all information-seeking behavior is directed at determining the truth, we have to admit that a large percentage of it is. And, if librarians are to develop policies about how to organize information, develop procedures for handling morally difficult reference requests, instruct others in appropriate evaluative techniques, or any other of our duties, then we need to understand this thing called ‘information’ and how it relates to ‘knowledge’. Given that truth is integral to knowledge (and perhaps to information, too) it follows that truth is a professional concern.

-Lane Wilkinson, Sense and Reference

We are engaging in information literacy and have to be clear about what truth, to us, actually is, because:

Baudrillard’s pataphysical projections of his own fantastic universe of runaway signs encourage academics to embrace ludic forms of postmodernism for the radical posture it affords them as a cover for their role as passive supplicants of history and to avoid the concrete politics that Freire speaks about.

-Peter McLaren and Tomaz Tadeu da Silva, Decentering Pedagogy: Critical Literacy, resistance, and the politics of memory,p.85 in Paulo Freire: A Critical Encounter (1993)

Making truth an integral part of our instruction is a first-order priority. If we say we are teaching patrons and students to be “information literate,” which is to be able to navigate the multitude of voices around them and use information and knowledge to create their own voice, then we cannot shy away from truth, and especially not the social, political, and economic problems that surround the systems of information management and the creation of knowledge. We need to refine our voices, and understand how we play into those problems as well. I’m looking at you, librarians.

Joe Grobelny is a reference librarian at the Jerry Crail Johnson Earth Sciences and Map Library at the University of Colorado, Boulder. He blogs regularly at http://birdswithteeth.wordpress.com/

by Kyle Naff, Wisconsin Chapter, Business & Finance Division

I’ve never been one to put much thought into themes. I understand the point of them, uniting presumably unrelated concepts into one cohesive statement or catchphrase. Yet, sometimes they just seem to stretch a little bit too much. The same could be said about our association’s themes. As an academic librarian, I have often thought that all of the corporate jargon employed in the Alignment Project didn’t apply to my situation, and I know that I wasn’t alone.

However, this year has been different, as President Romaine has directly challenged all of us to take our profession into the next stage of its evolutionary process. As I listened to her remarks on ‘Future Ready’ at the Leadership Summit, she described the past role of the information professional, as curator, guarding the materials in the physical space. This has obviously given way to the information explosion that has occurred, like a fire hydrant being emptied into the street for the masses. The role of the information professional, regardless of setting, is to stand in front of the fire hydrant to ‘save’ the rest from the brunt of the information overload.

That’s when I had the light bulb moment – our role as ‘future ready’ academics is something that we’ve been doing for quite a while: information literacy. Our job of arming students, the future leaders of our society, with the searching and evaluation tools, allows them take on the fire hydrants of information that they’ll encounter in their own careers. [Of course, one would hope that they will know about the information professionals in their organization should they need that safety net.]

Being ‘future ready’ to me means isn’t actually about me. It’s ensuring that I instill the value of credibility, reliability and critical thinking in my students. I would hope that other academic librarians would agree.

Kyle Naff is the Business Reference & Instruction Librarian at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. He has been involved with SLA since Day 4 of library school and is currently President of the Wisconsin Chapter and Webmaster of the Business & Finance Division. He can be reached at kyle.sla@gmail.com.