It’s been quiet here at Caterpickles, because it’s been a busy semester. I have a break coming up in theory, and I hope to use it to add some posts to liven up the place in the new year. But for now, here’s a summary of what I’ve been up to.

I’ve been learning things

This semester I took classes in information literacy instruction, cataloging, emerging technology, and the digital lifecycle. Some of these classes involved creating projects that live online for anyone to view. So if you’re interested, here are some links.

Digital Data Dashboard
You can do amazing work, but if your administration and the central district office never learn about it, your budget will still be cut. Advocating effectively for your library means collecting data about your programs and services and using it to create user-friendly and eye-catching communications that connects library services directly to district (and/or institution) priorities — all year long. For one of my classes I had the opportunity to create a digital dashboard for a mock middle school library. I used Google Sites to make a website to house my dashboards along with some explanatory text, but in the real world I might embed something like this on my existing library website or use it in a presentation to admin.

A screenshot of the data dashboard I created for my information literacy instruction class. The goal was to create a dashboard that would automatically update as new data on library usage came in all year round. All of the data for this dashboard is completely made up, of course. (Credit: Shala Howell)

Emerging Technology
For my emerging technology class, we were asked to blend a number of technologies to create a new service for a group of users. I picked adult children of aging parents who may no longer be capable of living independently and might need to transition to assisted living and/or memory care services. The service I dreamed up connects users to resources based on an initial assessment of their information needs, provides virtual reality tours of nursing and assisted living facilities around the country, integrates Google Meet, Zoom, or another video conferencing technology to allow patrons to make calls to nursing home residents and staff, and provides on-the-fly translation of online information. This Senior Solutions Hub information kiosk could be housed at a local public library or incorporated onto a BookMobile to be used by homebound patrons. In an ideal world, patrons could use this kiosk to research, evaluate, and access resources and services to support themselves or their aging parents.

First slide of the creative use case I created for my emerging technologies class describing the audience for, purpose, technologies needed for, and potential for creating a senior solutions hub at a public library. (Credit: Shala Howell)

Information Literacy Instruction
I also had the chance to dream up some standards-based unit plans for my information literacy instruction class, again with a focus on integrating technology into the classroom experience. I was paired with a different partner for each unit plan, and had a great time dreaming up plans for students to write their own graphic novels, film their own documentaries, and record podcasts.

My last partner and I also worked on a unit plan that called for students to choose a person from history, and conduct an historical inquiry into their society, situation, and access to both common and specialized knowledge. The students are then asked to use their insights into information flows in their chosen society to program an AI chatbot based on their historical figure. For this project students need an in depth understanding of both what their character could know as well as what they could not. They also need to consider the limitations of AI chatbots, troubleshoot the responses generated by their chatbot to identify what it gets right and what it hallucinates, and figure out how to write constraints to keep the AI historical chatbot on track in a multiple question interview. Getting this last part right also requires them to understand how our biases to accept information generated by machines can complicate the process of troubleshooting their chatbot’s responses, making it just a really interesting exercise in information literacy, even if I do say so myself. You can find these unit plans and the rest of the work I completed for my Information Literacy Instruction class here.

A final note: These units incorporate AI technologies. As a writer, I feel I need to point out that this was a course requirement. As a librarian, however, I believe that Generative AI has ethical, environmental, copyright, and disinformation implications, and that as information literacy advocates, it’s incumbent upon us to talk about AI in our information literacy lessons, just as we would bias in the media or plagiarism. In these unit plans, my partners and I use guided exploration and project-based learning to enable students to assess Generative AI’s capabilities and limitations for themselves.

The header for our Think like a College Student Film/podcast project. Designed to be taught by a team that includes high school teachers and academic librarians, this project invites high school seniors to use the resources at their local academic library to research a social issue and develop a short documentary film or podcast about it. The project is designed to begin building the information literacy skills high schoolers will need for a successful transition to college and is based on an article I read about a similar project being done at Utah State University.

Cataloging
It is hard to imagine that anyone would be interested in what I learned in cataloging class. But it was a blast, thanks largely to my daughter and brother convincing me to build an Obsidian vault to track all the things I needed to learn for it (screenshot below). I know. I’m a nut, and I got an A in cataloging, which I absolutely credit Obsidian for.

Screenshot showing just a small part of the extremely obsessive Obsidian database I created to track every single detail I could think of regarding the persnickety practice of cataloging library materials. (Credit: Shala Howell)I’ve been writing things

This semester, I had the opportunity to submit two articles for publication. One is still winding its way through peer review, but the other — a review of a book on collection management for school librarians — was published on December 21.

I’ve been researching things

I’ve also had the chance to work as a graduate research assistant for one of my professors who is working on a research project related to community college libraries. I can’t talk too much about that right now, but it’s been a tremendous learning experience, and I look forward to continuing it next semester.

Only 1 more year to go!

Anyway, that’s what I’ve been up to when I haven’t been here. Thanks, as always, for using part of your day to read Caterpickles.

If I don’t have a chance to say it later, Happy New Year, y’all!

Related Links:

Using electronic resources to extend library services into the community (Caterpickles)Library Collaboration to Improve Information Literacy (American Libraries Magazine)A better way to track your diverse reads (Caterpickles)