Episode 4: Education: Old Normal No More

March 17, 2021 
45 Minutes 
Dave Lankes & Mike Eisenberg 

In this episode, Mike and Dave start with a brief exchange on the changing nature of work and the need to help low-wage earners find out about high demand jobs, requirements, and opportunities for getting access to quality training. 

Mike & Dave then pick up the conversation about education in the evolving new normal from episode 3’s insights from Colet Bartow, Teaching and Learning Senior Manager in the Montana Office of Public Instruction. Colet raised such issues as the increased interest in homeschooling or perhaps moving to a blended or hybrid approach to schooling, as well as the continued challenges of the digital divide. 

Mike laments that education is still stuck in a “19th Century, industrial model of mass-production education with cookie-cutter classrooms, fixed schedules, bells, and a one-size fits all curriculum. Do we really want to go back to this “old normal”? Dave sees a need to experiment, learn more about, and share best practices on how to use the emerging online technologies more effectively with libraries and librarians deeply involved.

Also highlighted (as an Awesome Library Thingy) is Barbara Fister’s essay (from Project Information Literacy) that was picked up by The Atlantic about librarians confronting the mis- and dis-information efforts of Q-Anon and other conspiracy theory promoters by expanding exposure to skills and knowledge concerning social media, inquiry, and how this whole “information thing” works.

References & Resources 

Miller, Elizabeth. (March 1, 20215:00 AM ET) "For Some Black Students, Remote Learning Has Offered A Chance To Thrive,"  National Public Radio: All Things Considered.  https://www.npr.org/2021/03/01/963282430/for-some-black-students-remote-learning-has-offered-a-chance-to-thrive 

Fister, Barbara (Feb 18, 2021) “The Librarian War Against Qanon.  As “Do the research” becomes a rallying cry for conspiracy theorists, classical information literacy is not enough. The Atlantic https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2021/02/how-librarians-can-fight-qanon/618047/ 

 Fister, Barbara (Feb 3, 2021) “Lizard People in the Library,” Project Information Literacy, Provocation Series.  https://projectinfolit.org/pubs/provocation-series/essays/lizard-people-in-the-library.html

Credits
Yoni Yemini from ACE Chicago Events

Transcript

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SPEAKER_01 0:16

Welcome to Libraries Lead in the New Normal, where Dave and Mike get together and talk about the issues of libraries and information science and how we're moving forward post-pandemic. Brought to you in part by the University of South Carolina's School of Information Science and Ace Chicago events, who make sure that we sound at least good when we're doing this. Hey Mike, how's it going?

SPEAKER_00 0:40

Hey, Dave, good. It's going well. It's going well. I want to remind everybody that the reason for this podcast is that with everything that's gone on in the year 2020 and then into 2021, I realized that things were just changing in a way that no one could have anticipated. This life-altering, sea change, groundbreaking, transformative, pivotal, radical change world, and that libraries and librarians have major roles to play as society comes to grip with this new normal, as some people are talking about. There are new roles and responsibilities and opportunities to fulfill our core roles as librarians in terms of information, access, resources, books, services, place, and the like. In this podcast, Libraries Lead in the New Normal will cover such topics as the lockdown and isolation, social justice, political unrest, mis and disinformation, education, and how it affects kids and teachers and families, what it's like to work and live in the digital world, jobs and disasters and emergency preparedness, and just digital life in general. But our focus in all of these things will be the nature and role of libraries and librarians in this. So the evolving structure of our podcast, we keep uh uh trying things out and getting it going. We're gonna try with uh about a 40-minute, 45-minute podcast, and we're gonna have uh five different aspects to it. Um we're gonna have uh intros, which we're in now, and then we're gonna talk about what's up, and then the main topic, which tonight will be talking about education, uh, following up on our excellent interview with Cole Bartow from last time, and then our awesome library thingy before we close things out. So let's get right to it. So, Dave, what's up?

SPEAKER_01 2:52

Well, I tell you, the interesting thing we I think the very first podcast you and I talked about um vaccinations and your quest to get one. Um, and actually, so I'm uh I'm technically immune compromised given uh a little you know dance with the cancer, always fun. Uh and everyone says that must mean you're at the front of the line. I said, actually it puts me at the back of the line because they don't want to give me things to mess with my immune system until they know what's going on. Well, two weeks ago I was informed that it's okay. I should in fact get vaccinated, I should get it when I can. And so suddenly I have skin in the game, and I begin to pay attention to one A's and B's and C's and figure out now I'm gonna be in the middle of this whole mess. Um and uh just got an announcement from our university, they're actually getting uh they're gonna be one of the vaccination sites. And so uh the anticipation is tomorrow we're going to move to the 1B category, which includes frontline educators and people with health conditions that would uh be part of it. So I will be sitting there hitting refresh, refresh, refresh a lot and hoping for the best tomorrow. What's up with you, sir?

SPEAKER_00 4:05

Yeah, well, just let me respond to that for just a bit. I found out that the uh state of uh New York and some other states, uh, they actually um contracted with Microsoft to develop these uh web interfaces and systems, and that uh there's not all that happiness with the way the Microsoft system has performed. For again, the biggest thing is you can't register and then have it constantly uh check for you and then get back to you. That the problem is that you, in essence, are logging on for the first time every time you get on. And that that's just ludicrous. So I thought that was interesting. I heard that on the uh the Kara Swisher podcast, and she was railing against that. So interesting story.

SPEAKER_01 5:00

A whole new take on the blue screen of death.

SPEAKER_00 5:04

That's correct. Yes, it's not IBM this time. It's my well, I guess that was Microsoft too. That was Microsoft software. Yeah, it was. It was. Well, my What's Up was an editorial in this last Sunday's Times. Uh, I think it's February 28, 2021. There was the main editorial was about desperate times and desperate measures necessary in terms of job loss and unemployment, the changing nature of work, automation, and the difficulty of low-wage earners in getting retraining and finding the time to even seek out the retraining opportunities. And duh, isn't that a great role for libraries and librarians? Shouldn't libraries jump in there now and maybe start to act as a clearinghouse for substantive major retraining in this time as we move um our energy to clean energy as we um I there's a major shortage of nurses and in healthcare and in general. There are jobs there. Um there are certainly jobs related to emergency preparedness. So there's lots of new things and opportunities in our society, and wouldn't libraries have a great role to play in that in uh in making it all possible.

SPEAKER_01 6:33

That was my workshop. Yeah, we're we'll try not to you know go too long on it. There was a great uh group of uh librarians out uh right outside of Chicago, and what they did during the last Great Recession during 2008 was they formed a really strong partnership not only with social services, but with local community colleges and universities. And so when people came into whether they came into social services or the public library or the university, and they said, you know, I'm out of a job, I'm interested, maybe now's the time to do something different. All of them fired together to say, well, here are some opportunities, and okay, do you need financial aid for that? And we can get you enrolled in these different schools. And so it was it was really that idea of making it easy for people to see what their options and possibilities are.

SPEAKER_00 7:22

Yeah, well, that again, exactly right. And so that certainly likes sounds like a topic for us to talk about in one of these upcoming podcasts, the that whole coordination. And you you know that what I'm about is is developing systems that are predictable, that people can rely on, and that are across the board so that it's not just Chicago, but the same thing happens in Newark and in uh Davenport, Iowa, and in Baton Rouge and Seattle, Washington. So, yeah. So I think that's that's where we need to go. All right. So I guess that's the end of our what's up. We're gonna take a short break, bring in some music, and then we'll be back with our main topic, which is the new normal in education and schooling, and reacting to the the points and some of the points and things that Cole Bartow shared with us. So here we go. So, Dave, is there a new normal in terms of education and kids and parents, or are we just gonna go back to business as usual? Uh, I was talking to the next-door neighbors, and uh the little girl is going back to school tomorrow, face to face, in a hybrid thing now. But is that just for the rest of this year, or is that gonna be in the future? Um, what do you think? Uh what's desirable and uh what uh might we want to change in a new normal?

SPEAKER_01 9:15

Yeah, I was uh my son just went back to four days a week from two days a week. Um and it was really interesting to see that elementary school kids are saying they're probably safer being in different groups. I uh the first reaction is the the snow day is dead. Um the idea that that you know, the idea that we can't physically make it into a building, we have no more excuses. But I'm I keep thinking about something that Collet said in our interview, and she talked about uh I believe she anticipated a rise in homeschooling that a lot of parents now have seen that you know what can happen when you had kids that may have been intimidated in in-person settings, that may have been competing. I one of the things I remember we've always talked about and the difference in STEM performance among um females and males is one of the theories was that um, you know, as as you went higher in the grades, uh boys did better because they were a little bit more competitive and they would sort of drown out voices and this whole discussion about should we create unisex classrooms and all these kinds of thinking around it. And maybe what we've discovered is what happens is we have the remote learning. We have the ability for people to operate at their own time, to take time. We've seen this in the higher education where students, particularly international students, thrive in online learning when it's asynchronous, when they have time to think about an answer, compose an answer, research an answer, and they're not sort of put on the immediate spot. So I think that that what we're gonna see is is probably more hybrid options in the K-12 setting. What about you?

SPEAKER_00 10:56

I think I I I'm I'm really in favor of it for a lot of reasons. Uh I heard on uh NPR today on the radio, again, it's uh uh early March, something about that minority students feel more comfortable sometimes in the online classes because there's uh less uh you know discrimination and racism, uh, and they're they're more comfortable. So I think there's something there. But here's my my concern. While we may say this and whatever, it doesn't seem like the powers that be are thinking in that term in those terms. That they're thinking of, okay, how quick can we reopen the schools, get everybody back so we can go back to business as usual. That's at least that's the way I am perceiving things. And I wonder if educators, people like Collet, certainly would have something to say about that. But like you said, parent groups, maybe PTAs, um and different organizations are gonna say, no, no, may maybe we should use this time to reset, to rethink.

SPEAKER_02 12:11

Yeah, it's I do.

SPEAKER_01 12:15

Um I I absolutely there's right now there's a massive push. I mean, as a parent of a senior in high school and having watched virtual um school board meetings all year and the I mean venom that comes out. You're right. Absolutely the the goal is let's get back to, and this is where the phrase the new normal even came from in this context, which is let's get back to normal. I mean, who cares if it was right or wrong or better or worse? It just it was and let's get back there. Um but one of the things that's very interesting is I've you know we've witnessed over the past decade the rise of virtual high schools. Um they weren't they didn't turn out as people thought they were, right? The idea was that people would go to high school online, and some of that happens. But what certainly has happened is that students now are completing high school early, they're getting um college courses early, they're taking courses in the summer, and they're doing it virtually. And so I think what's happened is what was a trickle, now you're going to find whole groups uh of society that really say, for whether it's for a classroom atmosphere, whether it's because some parents have more capability of keeping kids at home, or some kids just respond better in this environment. I think I think that you're gonna see once the people feel like we're getting back to the physical building, I think you will see a pressure for I'm not quite sure I want my kid to go back, and I'm not quite sure I want the whole homeschool environment. I need the curriculum to come from someplace and the technology to be smarter about this.

SPEAKER_00 13:49

And therefore, the library and the librarians can first start off by hosting forums and discussions and public awareness about this outside of school boards and those kinds of meetings, which can be intimidating and again posturing and political, uh, for librarians to raise the issues in their communities, to maybe put some things in, I was gonna say newspapers, ha ha, I should say, in community Facebook pages and things, so that people begin to think about that. And that school librarians as well can introduce among the faculty and even administration to say, you know, we've we we have been working under a 19th-century early factory model of education for the last hundred years or more. Maybe it's time now, because of this, to think about what are some of the changes and what were some of the good things that happened uh in this difficult times. I asked my daughter, who uh Laura, who is an elementary teacher, she's a literacy teacher, to have a conversation with her kids about education and things that they've been going through for the past couple of months and stuff, and whether they like it or they're looking forward to coming back to school and things. And the kid said, and again, this is second graders, uh young kids, and most of them were looking back, looking forward to coming back to school, mostly for the social part. They really miss their friends, they miss reason. And their biggest recommendation was to extend recess for even more time. That's what they want, which isn't a bad idea. You know, I really think the kids need to play and learn and whatever. But they also said that they like being able to go to school in their pajamas. You know, they like the informality of it, and that they kind of like seeing each other sometimes in their little boxes on the screen and stuff. And there were some fun activities that took place. Uh, overall, if they had to choose one or the other, they would go back to school physically. But there were some aspects of it that they found interesting. So I do think that there's a role for libraries and librarians to get us thinking about what do we really want it to be like? And it would be nice if some of this stimulus money and this other money that was coming to communities in order to get through this also could be used for experimentation or training for teachers. And again, teachers were thrown into this. They haven't had any real extensive in-service training on best practices for online learning.

SPEAKER_01 17:00

Well, and that's and I think that that's important because one of the things we also talked about with Collet was the the possible leading in the new normal. The new normal is the the uh the idea of instructional coach and instructional designer, um, that a lot of parents are unhappy with the instruction their children are receiving because they're receiving emergency online instruction, not that they're receiving good sound pedagogy and recent instruction. Um, I think that that one of the things I find really interesting, uh, so several public libraries have now implemented full-blown high school programs, not get your GED and study here, but actually the curriculum and bringing on board instructors. And this is where, for me, the part of leading in the new normal when we talk about libraries, whether the public libraries or school libraries, we have to approach it in a different frame. The new normal has to be that where we've thought in the past of libraries as access points, where we've thought of them in the past as information centers, where we thought of them in the past as search engines but with human beings, all these metaphors that really came out of uh the 80s ramp up to technology, we need to think of them now as learning organizations and in the knowledge business, in the learning business. And when you change that frame, you know, it changes from, well, if you need online education, we can help connect you to someone who does that, or we can provide the textbooks, or we can provide some of the materials. And now when you switch to the idea that we're in the learning business itself, we can say we can provide an alternative model of instruction. And an alternative model of learning. That's right. Uh a lot of times we've seen public libraries and school libraries try to collaborate, and some successfully and some not so successfully, because you have different access restrictions as an example. They're parts they're parts of the public that shouldn't be in a school by law. Um but one of the things that that clearly they should cooperate on is sharing instructions, sharing on how to do this instruction, sharing on what are the learning outcomes, really collaborating on different models of instruction. I love your point that some of the money coming to schools to help them support from COVID relief should be experimenting and researching and determining what are the durable models out of this. What have we learned besides the fact that plexiglass industry enjoys making shields for us? I think that's that's really important. But in order for libraries to lead in that environment, they they have to accept the idea that they're not an interface to stuff, they are a learning function that helps people understand stuff.

unknown 19:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:51

And and that goes right back to the very fundamentals of librarianship and libraries. The library as a learning place. I mean, that's what people did. That's where where they went. They uh and having that that's why having an academic library and the quality for academic library is infused into the accreditation of colleges and universities. It it goes way back. You would go to Alexandria in the you know ancient times because you wanted to learn and study and whatever, and that's that that's what you did. So let me just um I uh throw something else out there that is definitely not gonna happen, but wouldn't it be great if it could? I was talking to my friend Tim Jackson, who is a uh retired teacher in uh the Syracuse area, uh one of my very best friends, a great teacher. He was an earth science and science teacher, and these days he still subs. Um and uh so he's very involved with the schools, and he was talking to me about you know, New York State struggling with their uh Regent's exams, and what are they gonna do this year and how are they going to? And you know, I all of a sudden it hit me, and I said to Tim, why don't we have a do-over year? Why don't we just declare that next year everybody's gonna stay where they are? If you're in ninth grade, you're gonna repeat ninth grade. If you're in second grade, you're gonna repeat second grade. And the teachers and the administrators and everything, the pressure is off. We've done some of the basics already. So now we have a whole year to just embellish and add to and enrich and try things for the, you know, if you're in biology 101, you take it again. That's all. And the biology teacher gets to to relax for a second and say, Well, you know, we covered a certain amount, but I get to do it all over again. What I mean, what's the why? Why do we have to keep running and And to do it, do the same thing at the universities. All right, kids, last year, we're gonna just do it all over again and whatever. I mean, just think of what might happen if we took that kind of an attitude. Why are we stuck to this even calendar year? Forget about academic year, you know, we're locked into that. You have to do it. Because if you're 18 or 17, you've got to graduate from high school so that you can rush through college in three years, so you can get into the workforce where there aren't as many jobs as there used to be. And and I what's the rush? Let's slow down and learn for a year.

SPEAKER_01 22:46

Yeah, and it's take a year out of a job market that they have to get to, deal with struggling parents that already couldn't come up with the in the tuition for that one year, the idea of adding pressure for an entire year for people who have to work three jobs while they're going through, the people who barely make it to 16 before they drop out of the program and trying to keep them in. I mean, it's a great idea. Don't take this the wrong way. It's a bit of a privileged idea for those who can afford it. Now, there's a way of doing it, which is you would have to sub you would have to literally support it. I mean, in other words, the you would have to have from federal government, from local government, we'd have to, you know, one of the COVID reliefs would be the support for the due-over year, and probably an optional due-over year because then you have obnoxious kids like my son who actually can understand calculus, and that pisses me off. But anyway, um, you know, I I think that the it's a different way.

SPEAKER_00 23:40

But what we also do is we tell we tell the rich schools, you know, the the Stanfords and the Michigans and even Washington and Harvard and whatever. No, you need to dip into your endowment for this. You can't recharge them. You've got to cover it when you can. And those that can't, yeah, we're gonna find a way to cover it. I mean, Biden wants to make community colleges free anyway, right? For that, and they're talking about um even free four-year at public universities and things. I I know it's not gonna happen, but my point is if we think of things in new ways, if we try to approach the future as all things are possible, and don't say why we can't, think about what would happen if we did that. That's where I'm going with this.

SPEAKER_01 24:33

Yeah, exactly. And and I think that's actually brings that back to that idea of the library situation, which is that many libraries, if you go up the hierarchy to state libraries and such, report to regents, report to departments of education, and the idea of creating a library, accredited library educational program where you get self-driven inquiry models, where you have the ability of, you know, I I had a great colleague when I was a kid who did zoo school. He went to the zoo, worked on an internship program, was one of these sort of uh, you know, brilliant individuals who could teach himself. But the notion that once again, teaming with educators that may be working in the library, maybe working in a school, maybe working in for-profit or not-for-profit settings, but the goal is to develop these sort of authentic ways of assessing what they're doing, sort of massive testing. Um, because I, you know, one of the things that that's amazing to me is that so my son is currently in AP credits and they uh A B courses. And uh the teacher said, We don't have time to teach you the content, we're teaching you the test. I mean, they said this. This is we're going to teach you how to take this AP test um so that you'll be you'll be ready when you when you go to buy out of those credits in college. Um and and you know, this idea that we can, you know, there is the the industrial model of education and the classroom and the uniform curriculum works beautifully for a core of students. Right? It works beautifully for people who can sort of be self-educated, they tend to be in the mainstream, they tend to be of a given ethnic persuasion, and they tend to come from certain zip codes and things of that nature. Okay, fine. That's correct. Right? But what about the the the kids who are really just can't get enough of science, can't get enough of art, can't get enough of mathematics, and they want to explore that and they want to do it in a different way on their own time. Um I think this is where libraries, once again, school libraries, public libraries, and academic libraries, because this it might be all great great, but if the Harvards and Stanfords don't accept those credentials or that experience, then it's for not. And so we really need to, and libraries can be the connective tissue between those layers of education. As we we put on programs where we called, you know, your seniors are our freshmen. And it was amazing to see academic librarians sitting down with high school uh librarians and and suddenly realizing, wait, you have an information literacy requirement in college? I didn't know that, and how they began to sort of connect in really different ways. I'm rambling, sorry.

SPEAKER_00 27:13

No, it it's great. And and and again, you know, if we admit that this year there wasn't enough time, and because we were all scrambling, we got through it, but it was not a complete year of education. That's why I think saying, but it's okay because we're gonna do it over next year anyway. And and by the way, about your son, I'm I'm thrilled that he took AP courses, and I always recommend that kids take those AP or college in the schools, but don't transfer the credits. Because why do you want to cut short your college education? You know, take thousand dollars. Uh uh. Well, figure out another way. Go to a state school, you know.

SPEAKER_01 28:01

$15,000 is a state school.

SPEAKER_00 28:05

Yeah. I understand. I understand, but that's the best $15,000 you'll ever spend on your kids and whatever. So I just want to ask one more question because we really do have to move on. One other thing that Cole uh had mentioned was the spotlight on inequality and gaps. And I wonder if you had any thoughts about that and how that, I mean, you've talked about it and you have raised it by saying, you know, for the for the uh the middle class kid or above in certain zip codes, this is not as big of a problem. But it is a problem for kids that are have been traditionally sometimes left out, uh, it's it's made it even worse. What do you have any comments or experiences with that?

SPEAKER_01 28:57

I I think the the basic I I really appreciate her discussion about that, particularly with indigenous communities and in such a rural state, and and being in a rural state on a reservation makes it even more so. Um and so I was very impressed with the work they're doing. And to me, you know, there's this was a report, and I'm sorry about having my fingers, talking about achievement gaps and uh how this year has substantially put, back to your point, everyone behind, but kids who are already behind, even more so. Um but I think that yeah, when when we talk about what libraries could do in this, yes, we can talk about inquiry-based instruction, we can talk about enriching instruction, we can call talk about creating alternative paths to credentialing, but I think that one of the most fundamental things that all libraries need to be advocating around is broadband connectivity. Because even before COVID, before the pandemic, um, we had online state mandated testing in South Carolina, including the most rural places in Cherokee County, still had to take their tests online. We're increasingly being required to do homework online, and there was no internet when they got home. They were putting Wi-Fi access points on buses so that the kids could be working for the hour commute either way. And you just, this is not the way to do this. And for a long time in the in the academic library sector, we ignored it. We said, Oh, our problem is is you know, access and logins to the database. So we assume you have internet connection. In the in the public library setting, um, there was we are the place, come here, we're the building, we have it here. Uh and in school libraries, there was some advocacy, but once again, kind of like Chromebooks and we'll hope for the best. I think across the board we have to realize that unless this country and this world, but this starting with this country, has a true rural broadbandification based on you know the the the New Deal rural electrification, the Tennessee Valley Authority, yeah. Um, then we are putting our entire country at risk in its progress. Um the future workforce, if you want to look at it through that lens, um, the future participation in a democratic process, if you want to look at it through that lens, education, every lens increasingly looks at if you are not connected, you're being disenfranchised. And we can no longer, as libraries, sit back and say, we'll be the stopgap as long as you are parked in our parking lot. We have to be building on uh Wi-Fi loaner programs and hotspot loaner programs, which are amazing. We can talk about those in future things because they could be so much more. Um, but it really is sitting in the state houses and sitting in Congress and saying that we're done. If if you live in the United States, if you live on a reservation in Montana, if you live in urban New York where you can barely afford your apartment, it is a basic right that you have to have broadband connectivity.

SPEAKER_00 32:06

Yeah, and we've been talking about this for decades, and it's it's it's terrible that we're still talking about it. And if you think about the uh the environmental crises and things like uh, you know, cold snaps in Texas and storms and volcanoes and earthquakes and all that, and what's coming on that, it's even worse. And you need the libraries involved with just making sure those mobile hotspots are up in times of crisis. So well, that's the difference that was great.

SPEAKER_01 32:39

Here's the difference from decades and decades, real quickly. This past year, and it's been a year, before we started this, Yanni and I were having the oh my god, it's been a year conversation. What we discovered was it's not just the school kids in Cherokee County, and it's not just the um essential worker working five jobs and barely making if making a minimum way uh a livable wage in New York City. It was Fortune 500 VPs that suddenly had to work from home and suddenly didn't have it. And when it was a luxury to go to a disconnected area, suddenly um, and so now when we're knocking on those doors and pounding on the doors, it's not just our schools and libraries think you need this. It's our schools and libraries and IBM and Chase Manhattan Bank and all and every all every state government worker who was sent home to continue to do their job, suddenly everyone was in the same, everyone saw it.

SPEAKER_00 33:39

Yeah, you're you're right. From from the mom and pop uh market that wanted to keep going and do takeout and things like that to the biggest corporations, everybody. Um, yeah, it was it's it's been quite a year on that. Well, Dave, uh that was that was excellent. We're gonna take a very, very short break, and then we're gonna come back and conclude with our required final segment called the awesome library thingy. So I I hope you are ready for that. So we're gonna take a short musical interlude. Yanni, lead us in a we're back for our final segment, the awesome library thingy segment. What is your awesome library thingy for today?

SPEAKER_01 34:55

Today was I'm talking with, and I I at this point I won't identify it, but I'm talking with the state library down in Australia, one of the states in Australia, and they're working on uh strategic plans, strategic directions, and particularly around community health and community well-being. Um, it's what's interesting about this awesome library thingy is that they have really tried to push beyond some of the standard ways of looking at it. So they're trying to be keep all the libraries together, no matter how progressive they are, but they are pushed to pushing them ahead. For example, identifying, you know, when they talk about health, they're talking about physical health, but also talking about mental health and talking about community health, that is the social connectivity level of health. I find that absolutely fascinating. And when they look at it and they begin to talk about in what ways libraries offer it, uh, they talk about, yes, access to materials, connecting to services. Um, but one of the things that they're talking about, which I find very awesome, thingy-esque, uh, is uh that they amplify voices. And the notion is, and this is where it really quickly, when they would talk to libraries, libraries said, Oh, that's advocacy, we don't do that. You know, we don't advocate on the behavior, particularly in health issues, and you know, that's not our job, and we've got great books and any, you know, if it's if you're sick with it, we've got a book on it, and that's good enough. And what's interesting is yeah, as they were talking about, as they were working with these libraries, they said, you know, on one hand, you know, advocacy is not our thing, amplifying voices, I don't know what that means. And then on the other hand, when they were talking about the value they bring to their libraries, it was storytelling and the idea of capturing stories. And I said, So what if you captured stories of people going through health circumstances and they needed better help and you amplified those stories and to make it available? You know, and so you know, I've used for years, I've talked about, uh I've used the phrase that the community is the collection, and some people don't quite get where that came from. And I said, Well, I'll tell you exactly what happened. I'm sitting in a group of a couple of dozen librarians, and they're from cataloging and technical services as well as public services, and I'm talking about how you find experts in the community and you bring them in and they sort of do speaking and instruction and sessions within your library. And the the technical services people begin to sort of fade away. And it's like, well, you know, we don't know, we don't do that stuff, we don't do this. And I said, Well, really think about it. If I if you identify, let's say, a I don't know, information scientist who happens to be retired in your back community in the back 40 of the uh of upstate New York, and you say, Hey, let's bring him in to talk about stuff, don't you kind of want to know that he knows what he's talking about? Don't you kind of want to know that he has some quality to it? And and if he does, does he have any experience in speaking? And maybe we can talk about how we would connect that to other events. I said, gee, that sounds an awful lot like collection development. I said, the same things that you were applying to materials you were bringing into your collection is the same thing that you're bringing in, right? And so the community is your collection, and so my my awesome thingy is that somewhere in Australia, a bunch of librarians are realizing that if you're in the storytelling job, that that's the first part of advocacy. So uh we are amplifying the stories of the community in a very proactive, active with signs kind of way. How about you? What did you find this week?

SPEAKER_00 38:34

Really important. Well, mine is kind of related to that in a way, but but in a kind of weird way. So um I I became aware that uh someone I know, her name is Barbara Pfister. I don't know if you know Barbara. Barbara was uh the a librarian in rural um Minnesota at a university, and she just recently retired. And um Barbara had written a paper, an article for the Project Information Literacy, and everybody should check it out. The project, it's uh projectinfolit uh.org run by Allison Head. But Barbara apparently was a scholar in residence last year, and she wrote a piece, though, just recently called Lizard People in the Library. It was supposed to be a provocative article, and it was, and the Atlantic magazine picked up the article. They changed the title to The Librarian War Against QAnon. I'll say it again, the librarian war against QAnon, which is provocative also. And it talked about, and here's some uh quotes from it. Barbara says, those who spend their time in the library of the unreal. Isn't that a great phrase? The library of the unreal have an abundance of something that is scarce in college classrooms, what they call information agency. And that's one of the powers they feel that elites have tried to withhold from them is the ability to define what constitutes knowledge. They don't simply distrust, distrust what the experts say, they distrust the social systems that create expertise. See how it's relevant to what you were talking about. That they, the QAnon types, take pleasure in claiming expertise for themselves on their own terms. And then she goes on to say that moreover, the internet gives them opportunities to create their own versions of scholarly societies, networked and engaged in building entire circulating libraries containing the fruits of their crazy research. Their superpower is that they know how the internet works. So they can in turn successfully work the internet, nurture and amplify their own truth by exploiting this attention-seeking tools of the social platforms, strategically harnessing their online skills to penetrate real-world systems of power. I mean, I just thought that she frames the problem really, really well. And then, of course, turning to solutions, Barbara says that it's time for a thorough revamping of the purpose of inviting students to engage in inquiry as a civic practice, that educators, including librarians who teach, will need to confront and clarify their own beliefs and assumptions about how they know what is real and what isn't. It will take work, but there are some promising places to start. And she goes off and lists that. I'll mention one, which is an effort at the University of Washington, the uh calling out bullshit course and work that they're doing, and the Center for Informed Information. Um, Barbara ends by saying it may be difficult, even impossible, to overcome an epistemological rift among Americans, one that was deliberately pried apart even further during the Trump years, culminating in a democracy-shaking insurrection. But simply by changing how education approaches information, literacy, and instruction is a way that we might start. And it's clear we need to come with a better answer to the question: why isn't this something students learn in school? So that's my awesome library thingy. It really just struck home, and I think you'll agree that it's uh it's a brilliant um piece and article, and it's picked up not by the Journal of Higher Education or The Chronicle, rather, or you know, some library LQ or an American library, but it's picked up by the Atlantic, and everybody should encourage everybody to read it.

SPEAKER_01 43:07

Yeah, Barbara's fantastic.

SPEAKER_00 43:10

Yeah, she she is, and she's again a rural academic librarian who really seizes the power. So uh that's our awesome library thingies today. That's our library's lead in the new normal for this episode. And uh that concludes it. And uh thanks for listening, Dave. I'll let you take us out.

SPEAKER_01 43:34

Thanks, Yanni, from Ace Chicago Events, our producer and sound engineer in general helps us fix things. Uh Ace Chicago Events production services, including sound lighting, photo booth in the Chicago area or online virtual streaming at acechicago events.com. Also want to thank the University of South Carolina's iSchool. Uh, and I want to thank uh Mike and friends for making. This happened. You know, we're dragging Mike out of retirement. So it's it's I think it's helpful. It's helpful. It really is. Please listen to us on iTunes, on Spotify, on Stitcher, on Attic. I mean, really anywhere at this point has a uh you can find us. Contact us via Facebook group, Libraries Lead in the New Normal. And we're out of here. Thanks, Mike. Have a great couple of weeks.

SPEAKER_00 44:26

You too, Dave. Take care. Thank you again, Yanni. And take us out with the music. Bye now.