Communities of Being Awesome

I came home from ACRL with a huge reading list. I have a huge reading list in my twitter favs. I engage in discussions about all kinds of things knowing I don't have the appropriate technical or theoretical background to have really solid positions. I worry about what to do to address all of this reading. If I just try to tackle it on my own, I know I don't get the fullest measure of learning out of my reading -- I have no one to challenge me. If I try to tackle it on my own, it stacks up in the upper left hand corner of my desks -- at home and at work.

What we go on and on about here at the Unified Library Scene is that (1) everything is about relationships and (2) we're not alone. So the solution to taking knowledge and integrating it into my work life and personal life is... people. together.

Anthropologists who like to study that kind of thing are already on it. The idea of a community of practice introduced by Lave & Wegner in 1991 and has spread broadly because it is such a helpful framework. You know it's our jam because Erin's list of exciting sessions at ALA Annual is a good set of examples of communities of practice. So is your technical services happy hour or your weekly lunch with instruction colleagues. These groups share expertise and provide social and professional support to new professionals. Another type of community of practice that I'm a part of is a recently formed reading group formed by some folks who attended the session Sustainable organizational change: It's about the people at ACRL15, and based on the presenters' reading list provided. We'll read together and apply together within our organization.

A related idea is a Learning Community, which focuses on a more academic setting, setting up a course-like structure but operating in a similar way to a community of practice, with an express goal of praxis. I'm into the idea of reflective practice in all kinds of learning environments, so these ideas really resonate with me.

What happened was that the very excellent and wonderful Derrick mentioned learning about queer theory, race, and identity as it relates to librarianship. You and me both! With that reading list I brought home, with all of the times I feel like I should already know about some theorist a #critlib poster is talking about, with all of that, we need a team to get ourselves up on it! Then the very excellent and wonderful Emily Drabinski mentioned the Gender and Sexuality in Information Studies Colloquium in April 2016, and I thought this is amazing. See, especially with a focus, we can learn together, drive some real ideas for application, and then party together with our awesome ideas. IN VANCOUVER! After the Colloquium, we'll have an opportunity to pick a new focus and new target.

So, I put a little form together to see if folks are interested and I named the group the Librarianship and Critical Theory Learning Community. Fill out the form if you're interested in joining us. There's already a lot of interest and I've got a million thoughts on how to make LCTLC a space that is safe and welcoming and just exactly what each person in it needs at that moment.

We'll build a reading list together, choose focus together, and generally be a Community of Awesome Librarians. A Community of Awesome Librarians is interested in Becoming More Awesome, and Building the Unified Library Scene.

Keep Rockin!
Rachel

Every Mentee their Mentor, Every Mentor their Mentee

When Erin wrote last about the Spectrum Scholar Mentor Program, I thought to myself, "why, I might be a good candidate for that, I enjoy mentoring people, this is something I care about." So I clicked on over and started to look at the form. As I examined the form, I also examined myself, and before I clicked submit, I realized that this isn't something that I can do. It isn't the best use of me, my time, and my emotional energy.

There are people (possibly you!) who are well suited for certain tasks, like being involved in a formal mentoring program. For me, I just knew that a formal program wouldn't be the best fit for me professionally OR emotionally. It's just not a situation where I am able to feel the comfort necessary to develop a good and open relationship that is an integral part of a great mentor/mentee relationship.

But it isn't that I don't value those programs. I think it is essential that we create space for them and value the work that people put in as mentors and as mentees because developing excellent professionals is a good idea for our profession.

It also isn't that I don't value mentoring. Mentoring is very important to me and I feel a strong obligation to develop mentor relationships with early career professionals and with peers (heya erin.) I especially value the role that twitter has played in helping me connect with early career professionals who have similar interests to mine. The #critlib chat, for instance, has been a way to find not only others interested in critical pedagogy, but also queer librarians with whom I can organically establish mentoring relationships (this goes both ways, of course.)

Talking baseball with some librarian (or anyone) is part of being my authentic self on twitter and it leads to the kind of relationships that I can't develop in a formal setting. (Maybe others can, I cannot.) Twitter is a place where the relationship can start with library talk or start somewhere else, but it feels very real to me and much safer than a formal structured mentoring program. So when I talk with early career professionals, first generation professionals, or others without the kind of privilege I have I can be honest with them and up front. I can find people with whom I feel safe talking about the privilege I don't have as well. I feel much more comfortable being a queer librarian on twitter than I do in most other professional setting, and twitter starts relationships that end up being in gchat or email or real life, all of which can be even safer places to have deep and honest conversations.


Informal mentoring is probably the most important thing that I do as professional. Not in that I take every individual action after grave deliberation, but that I know how much these relationships have done for me and how much it must do for others. I take that very seriously and I want to be my best for those who think they've got something to learn for me as well as those who have something to teach me. I hope we can continue learning and teaching together for a long time. That's the Unified Library Scene.

Keep Rockin'
Rachel

All you do to me is talk talk

I joined Twitter in 2008. I was going to Bonnaroo and I wanted a way to document and share my experiences with other people. Over the course of the past seven years, Twitter has connected me to a network of my peers, many of whom have become mentors and friends. While it's true that Twitter can be a vapid wasteland of memes and selfies, it also has a valuable place in Libraryland.

Twitter democratizes conversations in librarianship, which is why I think it's become so beloved by those who use it. It allows people from various places in the organizational chart at libraries of varying sizes to converse with each other in a way that doesn't really happen organically in real life. But even as Twitter has become a widely adopted tool, I think there is still pushback from administrators against active participation on Twitter.

A couple of jobs ago, I taught a class on using Twitter as a professional development tool. In preparing for this class, I wanted to understand the theory behind the phenomenon I was seeing play out in front of me and as a result, I learned a little bit about educational theory.

There are two concepts in education upon which I think Library Twitter rests: personal learning networks and personal learning environments. Personal learning environments help you take control or what (and how) you learn by allowing you set the goals and control the process. Personal learning networks are the networks of people you interact with in your personal learning environment. These people may be people you actually know, but they might not. You learn new things through relationships in your learning network and, as a result, come closer to achieving your learning goals.

Personal learning networks are built on the the educational theory of connectivism, which emphasizes the role of a social and cultural context to learning. In a 2005 article, George Siemens writes:

Connectivism is the integration of principles explored by chaos, network, and complexity and self-organization theories. Learning is a process that occurs within nebulous environments of shifting core elements – not entirely under the control of the individual. Learning (defined as actionable knowledge) can reside outside of ourselves (within an organization or a database), is focused on connecting specialized information sets, and the connections that enable us to learn more are more important than our current state of knowing.

One of Twitter's greatest strengths is hashtag chats. It's from 2012, but this Adweek article gives you the basics on what a hashtag chat is and how to join one. Over the course of the last couple of years, a bunch of hashtag chats have popped up on Twitter. Some that you might be interested in checking out include #libchat (and #uklibchat), #critlib, and #mashcat. These chats, along with others I haven't named, have allowed librarians with similar interests from different parts of the world to come together to discuss issues and learn from each other. #critlib even held an unconference in Portland at the end of March before ACRL.

Another of Twitter's strengths is creating a "back channel" during conferences. This recent article from Profhacker talks about what a conference back channel is and how to cultivate it. ALA has done a lot to encourage the cultivation of the conference back channel. Many conference sessions have hashtags. And ALA routinely has badge ribbons for people to share their Twitter handles with other conference attendees. The conference back channel is really valuable for people whose budgets don't allow them to attend all the conferences they'd like to. But it's also valuable to stimulating conversation that doesn't happen during conference sessions.

But what Twitter might be best at is making personal connections between people with similar interests that lead to really cool things happening. I met Rachel on Twitter a couple of years ago and we decided to start a blog together when we realized that we had similar feelings about librarianship. We'd been writing the blog for about seven months before we met in March 2015 at ACRL in Portland.

On a personal note, my life is so much richer from all of the things I've gained from being part of Library Twitter. I've interacted with people I consider heroes, found mentors, and made friendships I'll cherish long after Twitter becomes obsolete. My goal is to give back to the community even a fraction of what it's given me.

Stay positive,
Erin
(@erinaleach)