I can’t believe it was just a few months ago that I was busy putting the finishing touches on my capstone project to graduate from library school.  Back in its nascience, I posted the abstract for this project right here on Librarian in a Banana Suit.  But I wanted to share the final product with you, too, and so now I present: Content Creators: Rethinking the Information Paradigm.

Layout and design work are by Colin Smalter.  (Tip: to zoom in, just click on the image to open it in a new window, and then click again to enlarge.)  Hope you enjoy!

Update: 11/15/2010 — I thought this post could use a little extra explanation.  So here you go!  This piece served as the abstract for my capstone project before earning my Master’s degree from the University of Iowa School of Library and Information Science.  I wanted to focus on a common thread I saw through most of my work in Library School, which is that Librarians and Patrons are always creating things, instead of just getting access.  (The final project is also now available here):

Librarians often conceive of themselves as information providers:  they select and provide the resources that they consider most authoritative in given contexts.  But this approach can exclude multiple valid perspectives.  In my research, I’ve sought to understand how librarians might implement a more inclusive yet critical approach to information.  How can librarians encourage patrons to consider where information comes from, and to seek the “missing voices”?  Continue reading →

Lev Vygotsky located the Zone of Proximal Development between a child’s “current development level and the level of development the child could achieve ‘through adult guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers’” (Vygotsky, as quoted in Woolfolk, 44).  He wrote that children are always on the verge of being able to solve certain problems, and that they just need some structure, clues and reminders to help them.  This Zone of Proximal Development is the area “where instruction can succeed, because real learning is possible” (ibid).  Carol Kuhlthau built on Vygotsky’s claims when she described her theory of “zones of intervention.”  She studied the information gathering process of high school students, and noticed that doubt, confusion and anxiety often prevent students from knowing how to move forward in their work.  When uncertainty prevails, mediators can intervene in the search process.   “Mediators” can be friends, family, librarians, teachers—in other words, any capable peer or adult who can provide the student with some clues or structure to help her find her way.

Continue reading →

“The necrophilous person loves all that does not grow, all that is mechanical.  The necrophilous person is driven by the desire to transform the organic into the inorganic, to approach life mechanically, as if all living persons were things.” (Fromm, as quoted in Freire, 72)

The inherent danger in reification is that when we attempt to explain or describe a concept, we could transform what is fluid or living into a static thing.  When we theorize about education, for example, which is a very fluid and complex concept, it is tempting to try to make the reality of education—i.e. education-in-practice—fit into our static theories and definitions about education, rather than the other way around.  This is what Freire called “oppression—overwhelming control. . . nourished by love of death, not life.”  And Fromm: “he loves control, and in the act of controlling he kills life” (ibid).

Anne Wysocki and Johndan Johnson-Eilola problematize book-love.  Quoting several writers, they argue that books objectify cultures and worlds by encouraging people to imagine linear, concrete selves.  Continue reading →

Update: 10/26/2010 — An updated version of this article is now available in Public Library Quarterly: Vol. 29, Issue 2, p. 162

This paper was a labor of love; it was written for my Literacy and Learning course with James Elmborg this semester.  In trying to understand why public libraries haven’t paid as much attention to “information literacy” as school and college libraries, I ended up writing about how public libraries can devote themselves to the “continuous process of forming whole human beings—their knowledge and aptitudes, as well as the critical faculty and the ability to act” (IFLA ), and about why I think it’s important for them to do just that.  I also talk about Paolo Freire; John Dewey; Web 2.0; New Literacy Studies; and information literacy programs at public libraries in the province of Mpumalanga, South Africa.

Continue reading below to see the full text of the paper, or click here to download the pdf.

Continue reading →