Human resource challenges for public libraries: survey results

ABSTRACT

This essay presents the major findings from a survey about human resource management in public libraries. The survey was conducted in October 2016 via the Internet. The participants were librarians with human resource management experience employed by public libraries in the United States. The majority of the participants responded that human resource management was challenging to some degree. While a majority were able to solve their human resource problems successfully, a majority of the respondents believed that the human resource curriculum for library science programs was inadequate.     

Librarians Flip for Students: Teaching Searching Skills to Medical Students Using a Flipped Classroom Approach

This article describes the development of a flipped classroom instructional module designed by librarians to teach first- and second-year medical students how to search the literature and find evidence-based articles. The pre-class module consists of an online component that includes reading, videos, and exercises relating to a clinical case. The in-class sessions, designed to reinforce important concepts, include various interactive activities. The specifics of designing both components are included for other health sciences librarians interested in presenting similar instruction. Challenges encountered, particularly in the live sessions, are detailed, as are the results of evaluations submitted by the students, who largely enjoyed the online component. Future plans are contingent on solving technical problems encountered during the in-class sessions.     

Empowertise me! Understanding marketplace feminism through deconstructing advertisements

ABSTRACT

Courses: Introduction to advanced classes in Media Studies, Women’s Studies, Gender Studies, Race, Communication, and Advertising.

Objectives: In this unit activity, students critically assess advertisements that co-opt female empowerment and then identify ways they can resist such strategies.     

Beyond Control: Accessioning Practices for Extensible Archival Management

Accessioning has long been one of our profession’s least visible, discussed, and critically examined activities. This article analyzes our scholarly literature on the subject, revealing an absent theoretical framework and a marked over-reliance on static assumptions about what accessioning entails, to the detriment of both archivists and our collections. The case study that follows describes the creation of an accessioning program at New York University and posits a model of accessioning situated in the context of holistic archival administration, based on both theory and practice, and informed by access-driven workflows and iterative processing strategies.     

Designing a learning curriculum and technology’s role in it

This paper presents a case study of the design and implementation of a master’s level research course. Factors that defined the curriculum design problem included the subject matter, a view of learning as a change in identity, and the role of technology in curriculum design. Both the design process and results of research on the implementation of the course are described. The paper concludes with a retrospective discussion of lessons learned, including parallels of (a) user-centered technology design with our final approach to curriculum design and (b) socially constructed views of technology with socially constructed views of learning.     

Collaborative writing practices and writing support technologies

This article explores some relationships between collaborative writing practices and writing support technologies. It attempts to illustrate the range of ways in which technologies are used. It examines the relationships of particular technologies and practices with how the writers view the process in which they are engaged. The implications of the findings for thinking about the role of computers in supporting writing, and facilitating collaborative writing in particular, are discussed.     

Limitless provocations of the ‘safe’, ‘secure’ and ‘healthy’ child

This paper arose amongst the making and showing of a film and questions whether there are possibilities for interrupting powerful discursive frames that work at producing ‘the normal child’. Traditionally there has been a lack of interest in the use and critique of visual culture in educational research. Perhaps this lack of interest provides fertile opportunities to know something of the structure of education as a discipline, the rules that structure it and its deep grammar; it may also open up opportunities for disciplinary boundary-crossings where fields that embrace visual culture, such as photography and filmmaking, can bring their playfulness across binaries, including notions of certainty/ambivalence, to qualitative research in education. By turning to art theory, our aims are to interfere with our utopian longings that steadfastly cling to educational notions of the child.     

From Curriculum to Activism: a graduate degree program in literacy to develop teachers as leaders for equity through action research

This article presents findings from a 2-year reflexive action research study of a cohort-based Master's degree program in literacy for practicing teachers. Questions revolved around whether and how the program brought about changes in candidates' conceptions about literacy, expertise in literacy, and leadership/activist skills to foster equity in their classrooms and schools. Faculty used data from action research to make cyclical changes to the program each semester. Data sources included candidate interviews, e-mail correspondence, course notes, classroom observations, questionnaires and a survey. The candidates own evolving action research projects within their schools also became data sources. A qualitative analysis suggests that the program was generally successful in meeting its goals. The elements of the program contributing to its success were: the evolving program design based on action research data; the collegiality of the cohort; broadening conceptions of literacy; learning action research; and developing leadership skills. Factors contributing to factors around which candidates failed to meet these goals are also explored.