Librarianship and libraries, through the eyes of the public, have consistently been viewed as a house of books and documents where librarians help their patrons with readers’ advisory and directions. Though these elements of being a librarian exist, the stereotype of this is far from accurate. Today in 2020, Librarians perform a myriad of tasks in order to provide fluid functionality to academic, public and special collections libraries. These tasks create a multifaceted librarian where multi-departmental duties fall squarely on the shoulders of one librarian. This year’s LACUNY Institute will illustrate this multifaceted librarian to gain understanding and perspective of the reality of librarianship as we enter a new era of technology and digital scholarship.
The underlying question LACUNY Institute 2020 aims to address is what role do 21st-century librarians and library support staff play in our society? Although perceptions about librarians have changed over time, librarian stereotypes still persist. This is the case even in popular culture. For instance, Barbara Gordon, Batgirl’s alter-ego, is a librarian with a doctoral degree, yet it is often speculated that the character’s role as an information professional is part of the character’s effort to conceal her identity by working in a safe, slow-paced environment.
Librarianship is a multifaceted and creative profession. This year’s conference will highlight the different roles that librarians play in our society as librarians wear different hats. We are mentors, supervisors, activists, instructors, unofficial guidance counselors, gamers, artists, and so forth. In some instances, we may even be the “cool” professor on campus.
Paper and Panel Proposals
We are collecting individual papers and panel topic proposals pertinent to the personal and professional experience of information professionals and staff that address but are not limited to the following areas:
Activism within and outside the library
The roles of non-librarians or non-information professionals within the profession
Partnerships between libraries and communities
(In)Visibility of non-librarian and part-time workers
How our unique experiences and/or biases influence cataloging, collection development, the hiring process, etc.
How information professionals bring creativity into the profession including classrooms, reference consultations, etc.
Multiple identities within the workplace
The changing role of the library and what library workers are doing to adapt
Webinar: tools for collaborative research and early discovery
Librarians have been at the forefront in promoting open access publishing options and informing their researchers about the open access landscape. Open access is increasingly recognized as embedded within the larger framework of open science. Consequently, library and librarian roles are expanding into new areas such as open data, open educational resources and open infrastructure.
In this webinar, Elsevier product managers will present tools that enable more inclusive, collaborative and transparent research.
TOPICS:
•The library as publisher of OERs and OA journals with Digital Commons
•Open access content discovery in ScienceDirect and Scopus
•Open journal metrics: CiteScore, SNIP and SJR
•Publishing research outputs openly in Mendeley Data and SSRN
finding appropriate sources,
peer-reviewed versus non-vetted sources
Google vs. Google Scholar vs. SCSU online dbases vs Academia.edu and ResearchGate.com
Digg http://digg.com/, Reddit https://www.reddit.com/ , Quora https://www.quora.com/, Wikipedia
The technologies section covers: learning environments, learning objects, activities, gaming, and building community. The tools were selected to potentially enhance synchronous teaching, asynchronous teaching or blended classrooms. The focus is on open or freely available tools but whenever a cost is involved it is indicated.
The American Library Association said in a statement Monday that the planned changes to Lynda.com, which are slated to happen by the end of September 2019, “would significantly impair library users’ privacy rights.” That same day, the California State Library recommended that its users discontinue Lynda.com when it fully merges with LinkedIn Learning if it institutes the changes.
The library groups argue that by requiring users to create LinkedIn accounts to watch Lynda videos, the company is going from following best practices about privacy and identity protection to potentially asking libraries to violate a range of ethics codes they have pledged to uphold. The ALA’s Library Bill of Rights, for instance, states that: “All people, regardless of origin, age, background, or views, possess a right to privacy and confidentiality in their library use. Libraries should advocate for, educate about, and protect people’s privacy, safeguarding all library use data, including personally identifiable information.”
The change will not impact most colleges and university libraries or corporate users of Lynda.com services, who will not be required to force users to set up a LinkedIn profile. LinkedIn officials say that’s because colleges and corporations have more robust ways to identify users than public libraries do.
LinkedIn acquired Lynda.com in 2015 for $1.5 billion. The following June, Microsoft bought LinkedIn for $26.2 billion, the company’s largest-ever acquisition.
Rachel Wexelbaum, Assoc Prof, University Library, St Cloud State University email@stcloudstate.edu
Plamen Miltenoff, Professor, InforMedia Services, St Cloud State University pmiltenoff@stcloudstate.edu
Aura Lippincott, Instructional Designer, Western Connecticut State University lippincotta@wcsu.edu
We define immersive scholarship as any scholarly work developed through or implemented utilizing technologies including Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, Mixed Reality, Visualization (i.e., large format displays and visualization walls, GIS, Tableau), and any related hardware, programs or software.
We are seeking survey participants who are employed in an academic library and who currently support immersive scholarship and technologies at their institution.
how your academic library has developed tools, implemented third party hardware/software, and in what barriers you have identified at your institution in supporting immersive scholarship.
Iris Murdoch on Storytelling, Why Art Is Essential for Democracy, and the Key to Good Writing
“A good society contains many different artists doing many different things. A bad society coerces artists because it knows that they can reveal all kinds of truths.”
BY MARIA POPOVA
“Storytelling is a tool for knowing who we are and what we want.” Ursula K. Le Guin
philosopher and novelist Iris Murdoch (July 15, 1919–February 8, 1999) — one of the most lucid and luminous minds of the twentieth century — explored in a long, deep, immensely insightful 1977 conversation with the British broadcaster and philosopher Bryan McGee, which aired on McGee’s television series Men of Ideas.
There is always more bad art around than good art, and more people like bad art than like good art.
James Baldwin wielded the double-edged sword of the artist’s duty to society, Murdoch insists on this largeness: The artist’s duty is to art, to truth-telling in his own medium, the writer’s duty is to produce the best literary work of which he is capable, and he must find out how this can be done.