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Digital Culture Library Issues

Information Literacy

My first official instruction duties here at UTC will be to do a talk to the incoming Faculty Fellows about Information Literacy and the library’s role in educating their students.

I’m preparing by going over tons of the online literature concerning IL, as well as doing the standard sorts of database searches for articles on the subject. I’ve only got an hour or so with them, so I can’t do any terribly in-depth exercises (although I am going to do something active). I can talk about how IL is effectively learning how to learn, and that we’re trying to prepare the student to evaluate more than just scholarly information, and all that rot. But I’m trying to decide how far to push the evaluation of information stuff, since I don’t agree at all with some of the canon on the subject. I’m thinking of doing the following:

  • Presenting the canon
  • Showing how collaborative works break down the reliance on authority (aka the wikipedia effect) and have a discussion of how new media sources and the remix culture of the current student body are challenging our presuppositions about authorship
  • Conclude with a short discussion of how these things can/will pop up in each of the participant’s fields of study, and how we at the library can help them get these concepts across to their students



Seems harmless enough, right? I’m only concerned because my central issue coming into the library, at least in my own head, is the rate of change that I can effect. How much radicalism is too much?

By griffey

Jason Griffey is the Director of Strategic Initiatives at NISO, where he works to identify new areas of the information ecosystem where standards expertise is useful and needed. Prior to joining NISO in 2019, Jason ran his own technology consulting company for libraries, has been both an Affiliate at metaLAB and a Fellow and Affiliate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, and was an academic librarian in roles ranging from reference and instruction to Head of IT at the University of TN at Chattanooga.

Jason has written extensively on technology and libraries, including multiple books and a series of full-periodical issues on technology topics, most recently AI & Machine Learning in Libraries and Library Spaces and Smart Buildings: Technology, Metrics, and Iterative Design from 2018. His newest book, co-authored with Jeffery Pomerantz, will be published by MIT Press in 2024.

He has spoken internationally on topics such as artificial intelligence & machine learning, the future of technology and libraries, decentralization and the Blockchain, privacy, copyright, and intellectual property. A full list of his publications and presentations can be found on his CV.
He is one of eight winners of the Knight Foundation News Challenge for Libraries for the Measure the Future project (http://measurethefuture.net), an open hardware project designed to provide actionable use metrics for library spaces. He is also the creator and director of The LibraryBox Project (http://librarybox.us), an open source portable digital file distribution system.

Jason can be stalked obsessively online, and spends his free time with his daughter Eliza, reading, obsessing over gadgets, and preparing for the inevitable zombie uprising.

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