Focus on andragogy when teaching adult students. Pedagogy centers on how children learn, while andragogy is about how adults learn. Activating our adult students’ prior knowledge allows them to reflect on what they may already know about a topic and build on that with new information. Allow adult students to choose different paths and skills … Continue reading Busting Brain Myths
As manager of knowledge services for a special library that is also open to the public, Zoe Magierek found herself in “a really in-between place.” Forefront, an association for Illinois grant makers and nonprofits, has a library that provides services to nonprofit professionals and volunteers. Magierek has found herself helping patrons learn skills from saving … Continue reading Information in the In-Between Spaces
“As medical professionals and librarians, we tell people what to do, but we don’t often explain why,” she says. “A lot of times people are like, ‘I don’t want people telling me what to do.’ But if they understand the science behind it, I think it really helps.” In response to the unfolding crisis, Daly, … Continue reading Fighting the Spread
The US has the highest incarceration rate in the world. About 698 per 100,000 of the national population are in some form of detention. According to a March 2020 report from the Prison Policy Initiative, the US criminal justice system detains almost 2.3 million people in various facilities in the US and its territories. Chief … Continue reading Defending the Fifth Freedom
Originally published at Programming Librarian, March 19, 2020. The coronavirus pandemic is rife with misinformation. Use your library’s digital reach to help people sniff out fake news. Misinformation runs rampant during times of unrest, and the COVID-19 pandemic is no exception. Your library may be closed to the public, but you can still help thwart … Continue reading Fighting Fake News in the Pandemic
“Census data is the mother of all open data sets,” says Jeffrey Lambert, assistant director of digital inclusion and workforce readiness at Queens (N.Y.) Public Library (QPL). “It’s a huge resource about people who live in the United States, and it’s accessible to anyone.” Libraries have an important part to play in accessing that data, … Continue reading After the Census
The Albuquerque Journal’s coverage of the event was headlined “Drag Queens Dazzle at Library Storytime,” while enthusiastic parents voiced support on the library’s Facebook page. Other Facebook commenters voiced opposition, sharing links to conservative websites and articles with headlines like “Parents Beware—Registered Sex Offenders Are Performing for Small Children at Drag Queen Story Hours in Public Libraries” … Continue reading Check Your Facts
“California wildfires are being magnified and made so much worse by the bad environmental laws which aren’t allowing massive amounts of readily available water to be properly utilized. It is being diverted into the Pacific Ocean. Must also tree clear to stop fire from spreading!” This tweet was a statement by a US president about … Continue reading Battling Information Illiteracy
ALS—or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s disease—is a motor neuron disorder characterized by progressive weakening of muscles, often beginning in the legs or arms. More than 5,000 people in the US are diagnosed with ALS each year, and about 20,000 have it at any given time. After diagnosis, most patients die within … Continue reading Librarians Defeating ALS
“First we wanted to find out how journalists find and use information,” said Chimene E. Tucker, communications, journalism, and LGBT studies librarian at University of Southern California. “A simple survey would not work in this case,” she said, “because we needed to ask probing questions about methodology.” So the team conducted 50 semistructured, in-depth interviews … Continue reading Reporting in the “Post-Truth” Era
Surely, I thought, students will want to pour into the library, begging for the latest bestsellers. Imagine my surprise when one of the first students to enter the library asked, “Does anyone ever check books out?” After examining the stats, I found that students did not check out very many books. During my first nine … Continue reading Transform the High School Library
In the last two years, Penn State University Libraries has seen rapid adoption of its information literacy microcredentials among students. Microcredentials—transferable forms of metadata-encoded, performance-based educational credits—are not new; they started gaining traction in academic libraries around 2012. What is different at Penn State is that to help manage the sudden volume of badge submissions, … Continue reading The Making of a Microcredential
