Tag Archives: podcasts

The importance of information literacy, continued

I knew it had been a little while since I posted here but didn’t realize until just now that it’s been since just before the Presidential election here in the U.S. A combination of being understaffed at work and having a lot of other things going on in my life have prevented me from taking time to blog. I’ll try to post more regularly!

In my last post, I talked about librarians’ role in educating people about filter bubbles, distorted perceptions and other information issues ahead of the election. Last week I launched a new semester of library instruction, and I’m using a new tab I created in our Evaluating Online Information LibGuide. I created this tab about evaluating news as a resource for students in the wake of a mass outcry about “fake” news. But I agree with Snopes.com, which ran a piece called “We Have A Bad News Problem, Not a Fake News Problem.” Misleading people with information is not a new problem, and the distortion of real news is as important as the fakery out there.

The message I gave my students this week — and that they responded to with enthusiasm — is that they already have the tools to spot misleading, poorly reported, distorted, or fake information because they know how to use the C.R.A.A.P. test (see the left hand tab in the LibGuide). What it boils down to is who created this website/post/article/tweet and why? What is the point — to persuade? Obscure? Confuse? Provoke? Inform? Who authored the information, on what authority, and with what kind of information to back them up?

The Computer Scientist pointed me to two episodes of a podcast we both listen to this week. These two episodes of On Being speak to the way people are feeling about online information these days. The first was with Maria Popova of Brain Pickings. Popova once said literature is the original Internet, because the way literature speaks to what came before it is a kind of hyperlink. Her thoughtful approach — bringing the best of a thinking life to the medium where many people are thoughtless — is an antidote to clickbait. The other episode, from last week, is with Anil Dash. He speaks to the lack of ethics education in computer science, and the ways that the tech industry acts to create and deploy cool technological innovations without thinking through the human impact.

I think these are both things I can help my student see — the Internet, I tell them, is wonderful in many ways, but we have to be deliberate in our interaction with it, we have to be intentional and critical (in the thinking sense of that word) about what we find there, and we have to use it for good, which requires the hard work of determining what that means.

The good news? The young people I work with seem to really get this and care about it. They were really amazed by some of the things I showed them this week, including a white supremacy group’s website about MLK Jr.which appears at first glance to be a site dedicated to his memory (I refuse to link to it here) and a NYT article about a person their age who created fake news stories about Hillary Clinton and profited wildly. But their amazement was tinged with indignation of the best kind, and I feel good about this part of my work. I am hopeful that one person at a time, I can arm at least some of my students to take back their own futures from those who want to distract, numb, or fool them.

 

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Recreational reading in college

I am taking on something several people have told me is hopeless at my new library: celebrating, supporting, and encouraging recreational reading at a university. I’ve had numerous people tell me students don’t read anything they don’t have to, and very little of what they do have to. Professors, I’ve been told, like to read in the summer but won’t read a thing for fun during the academic year.

Maybe I’ll find this all out the hard way, but I’m convinced that this isn’t exactly true. Maybe most students aren’t reading War and Peace for fun, but I don’t know anyone who doesn’t consume any written words, in print, online, or in audio. Yes, I’m expanding my view of what reading is. I know a lot of voracious readers who also listen to audiobooks and no one questions whether that’s really reading. So aren’t podcasts like audiobooks? I think so. I know several (and am married to one) people who read magazine and newspaper articles, essays and short stories more frequently than books.So then, aren’t blogs like other short form writing? I think so.

Yes, I’m hoping people will read books, too, and I’m working on ways to promote our book collection, too. But even more importantly, I’m hoping to affirm this: whatever you have time for, whether it’s your favorite fashion blog or a true crime podcast or last night’s Red Sox scores, you are reading, and if you don’t have time for a book right now, the library will be here for you later when you do.

Stay tuned. And if you have ideas that have worked at your academic library to promote reading, leave a comment and tell me what worked.

 

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Against best books

It’s the time of year when media outlets are publishing gift guides and “best books of the year” lists. I am contributing a suggestion to my own local newspaper’s holiday book recommendations. And it might sound contrarian, but I’m not recommending a book. Here’s what I’m submitting instead:

I spent days considering what book to recommend. Every time I settled on one, I reconsidered. My idea of the perfect gift book is not going to be yours, and might work for your sister but not for your grandfather, your niece, or your teen. So I suggest the gift of professional reading advice.

This year, wrap a library card application and a gift card to your local independent bookstore. These two places offer what no big box or online mega-seller can: good old fashioned readers’ advisory. In other words, staff who can help anyone who walks through the door choose a book after a few minutes’ conversation. Both libraries and indie bookstores have e-books as well, so this gift works for even your most techie friend. If he already has a library card but hardly ever uses it, pick up or print out the latest brochure on the library’s services and activities, which have probably changed in the past few years. If your gift recipient uses the library regularly, honor her with a donation.

I’d include a short guide to excellent readers’ websites, apps,blogs, and podcasts, like Goodreads, Books on the Nightstand, NancyPearl.com, ReadKiddoRead, or LibraryThing. Visit these sites, copy and paste information about them onto one neat page, and print it on pretty paper. Add a homemade coupon good for an outing with you to the library or bookstore and a treat after, and you’ll give a gift unique to each recipient that no one will return.

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