The Journal of Creative Library Practice (a journal of which I am an editor) has just published a thought piece by Mark Lenker, “Information Literacy vs. the Demagogue.” If you’ve ever wondered what Senator McCarthy, master of disinformation, would think about information literacy, here’s your chance to find out.
Greg McKeown was recently on NPR talking about the importance of prioritizing in leadership. He’s been obsessed with the question of why capable people plateau in their fields, and he’s decided that the answer is: success. Success leads to increased opportunity. Increased opportunities lead to diluted focus. Ultimately, he says, “Success can become a catalyst for failure because it leads to the undisciplined pursuit of more.”
After spending a couple of months helping to draft our strategic plan, spending a summer helping to update our mission, vision, and values, and having ongoing conversations about sustainability within my department, McKeown’s ideas seem at once brilliant and impossible.
The fact is, we have been successful, and this has lead to increased opportunities. And personally, my work has broadened in focus from direct reference and instruction about library resources to a myriad of activities aimed at improving teaching and learning on campus as it relates to information literacy. What’s more, I think this broader focus is far healthier and more realistic if my goal is to play a role in graduating information literate seniors (I only ever get to teach a tiny percentage of students, so more systemic information literacy infusions are necessary to my goal). But depending on how I look at it, perhaps I do have a pretty singular goal (graduating information literate seniors), or perhaps I have a plethora of great opportunities that dilute my focus. Where up the hierarchy from the very granular to the very high-level should these focused goals exist?
Comments closedOver the Christmas break, someone in my Facebook feed shared a YouTube video of artist Seikou Yamaoka recreating “The Girl With A Pearl Earring” using an iPad. Before I go on, you should watch it too, just for the sheer beauty of it.
Amazing, isn’t it?
So I went to the App Store and searched for ArtStudio and was astounded to find essentially a $5 version of Photoshop. Seriously, layers, dodge, burn, color picker, export in .psd format, all the “Adjust” menus you can think of, filters… everything I ever used back when I had Photoshop, plus a bit more.
I spent most of a day playing with different paint brushes, specifying just exactly how wet they were, or how much lead and follow opacity I wanted. My little nephew spent long stretches of time on it and even learned to change colors on his own.
I used a photo of my sister’s new family room to help choose new curtain colors for them. (The original curtains are pink, which, no.)
I used a photograph of my parents’ church to design a logo for them.
I’m certainly no Seikou Yamaoka, but it’s wonderful to have such a powerful and intuitive art app.
Now, if only GIMP could figure out how to make itself as intuitive, I’d have a desktop image making/manipulation application… Sigh.
Comments closedAnother year, another adventure. This year I’m honored, excited, and a little nervous to be trying my hand at editing a journal!
Joe Kraus recently invited me to join the editorial board of the Journal of Creative Library Practice. As soon as I saw the short list of wonderful librarians editing the journal, I knew I wanted to hang out with them and see what this young journal will become.
I know there are wonderfully creative librarians who read this blog — I’ve learned a lot from the comments and emails I get from you. So if you’ve got an article that highlights an interesting practice or solves a problem in an interesting way, drop us a line or submit a manuscript! Here are the instructions for authors.
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