#librarianblogging

[armor-goblin]

okay given how fucking weird and rapid-fire everything is (already, has been for ages) and to remind myself too: We Need To Learn To Fact Check.

i am talking about anything we see about trumps antics and I am talking about international news and I am talking about local news and I am talking about nearly everything in our lives. it is tiring, and takes more effort. but i think this is the only way we get thru the world right now, is by checking what we share however we can. it won't guarantee we are sharing only accurate info, but it DOES help us focus on sharing more accurate stuff and not buying into mis and disinfo.

Context/why i know this: im an academic librarian. I teach classes and do research on misinformation and media literacy among other topics, and i teach about authority of information and finding and evaluating info all the time. when I teach people to evaluate information i use Mike Caulfield's SIFT method, which is great and adaptable, and consists of these four moves:

STOP. this is the most important one. it just means: take two seconds before you click reblog or share smth. ask yourself: what is my emotional reaction to this content? what does it want me to do with this post or information?

do I know this is true - bc I've already checked into it before or I know something related to it that corroborates it - or am I far enough removed from the situation that I don't really know? for ex: I know gazans fundraise on tumblr bc i have tunblr, and that conditions in gaza are awful bc of both user posts and news coverage I've seen. I don't have tiktok or see much from it that isnt reposted, so I paused more before sharing that last post bc im less aware of the cjrcumstances.

INVESTIGATE THE SOURCE. where did this come from and do I know that source of information? can i identify the author not just the website it was shared from? what position is this person in to know what's going on? they might have expertise, education, a job, they might also just be in a place where things are happening (ukraine, gaza, los angeles, etc) or have access to a place where things are happening (tiktok, for ex).

FIND ADDITIONAL COVERAGE. if this is the only place you've heard about an event or statement, look and see if there are others reporting on it. sometimes you are looking for broad coverage (lots and lots of reporters and civilians have reported on the conditions in Gaza independently) and sometimes for very specific coverage (i wanted to see more than one screenshot of the TikTok ban msg before I believed it was real), but what you really want is to see if others are talking about and reporting on something.

this is called lateral reading btw and it's a really critical piece of fact checking.

TRACE CLAIMS TO THEIR SOURCE. who was the first to say this? where did they say it? was it misinterpreted along the way? the internet is a giant game of telephone and messages get distorted. this one is particularly important if you're not finding additional coverage AND/OR if the coverage is all weirdly samey.

highly specific example here: in 2020 there was a brief time when ppl were saying that ibuprofen was dangerous for covid and could heighten your risk. i am ibuprofens georg and I was on it 2x/day high dose at the time, so this could be a problem for me. so I started citations tracing - following citations and references and news posts and academic preprints. and finally found a brief and uncited Twitter post from a French health minister that appeared to be the original source, and along the way I found NO other corroborating info that wasn't citing that specific quote in the end. and thus. I took my ibuprofen.

this part takes time and effort more than anything else, but it's also often illuminating. I dont always go all the way to TRACE. but I have that move in my pocket for when I need to. it is very similar to a wikipedia rabbit hole where you start somewhere and end somewhere very different - but if you looked at your browser history you'd see all the pages you clicked to get there.

thats SIFT! you don't have to do each move for every post u see. if you take anything as a habit, start from the top and just STOP for a second before you share or repeat something wild. ask yourself about it a little. this is what i consider the most vital step, and it makes it easier to do the others in time.

we can't know everything. we will sometimes share misinformation by accident. we will sometimes share malicious disinformation by accident too. but I think we owe it to ourselves to try and build these habits, and it makes it a little harder for the people in power to convince us of whatever they want this week. it makes us more skeptical and more informed. these are always relevant skills and they're more and more important every day.

[yagirlyacchan]

The Dutch translation of Iron Widow did not include the author's cow onesie selfie smh... Coward publisher

[thedegenlibrarian]

Why I Love: Goodreads

If there was a P.E.D for reading besides coffee, Goodreads would be it! https://degenlibrarian.blogspot.com/2021/07/why-i-love-goodreads.html… 

[librarianjoslyn]

Update, Update!

Hey Everyone,

All 36 of you, my followers. I have not posted on this blog in quite some time: since finishing library school, since working full time, since I got distracted that one day.

Anyway, I plan to start posting more again, but you may notice my name and url has changed. I fixed a bunch of stuff so that I don't lose anyone (I hope!). I'll be trying to post more and write a little about my life and work, which is about to change pretty dramatically as we move accross the country and I start looking for a job as a professional librarian. You can also follow me on twitter, which I use more for day to day sharing of tidbits, etc.  

See y'all around the webs!

--Joslyn

[thedegenlibrarian]

Belt buckle views of the Civil War solder abound. Less common are books about Civil War Navies. Add in the over arching quality of this book and you have a read every Civil War buff needs to have on their shelf. #CivilWarNavyhttps://degenlibrarian.blogspot.com/2021/07/union-jacks-yankee-sailors-in-civil-war.html

[thedegenlibrarian]

Librarians, like everyone still working, have been pulled thin. We struggle to get our jobs done, and help keep the library thriving. As Tony Zanders mentioned in his keynote address at the 2021 Metrolina Library Association conference, it is not enough to just be a cataloger or branch manager of a library anymore. We all have to take ownership of the library and it's wellbeing. But is there an untapped resource we are missing? I think so! https://degenlibrarian.blogspot.com/2021/07/double-dipping-is-allowed_0431258649.htm

[thedegenlibrarian]

**Book Review** Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi

Time travel is the least effective vehicle for fictional works. That's my opinion. It’s messy, and hard to justify. You go back, change just one thing and the world is different. One slight adjustment in the future, and the knowledge will affect the present. You change something, you change everything. Unless you travel back in time via Funiculi Funicula Café. If you make the leap from their portal, you cannot and will not change the outcome, you cannot leave your seat, and you absolutely..have..to..be back before the coffee gets cold! These rules are hard and fast.

https://degenlibrarian.blogspot.com/2021/03/book-review-before-coffee-gets-cold-by.html

#ReadersAdvisory #DegenLibrarian #Libraries #BookReview #ToshikazuKawaguchi #librarianblog

[thedegenlibrarian]

The Devotion of Suspect X by Keigo Higashino

The 3rd (but stand alone) in Higashino's  Detective Galileo series, The Devotion of Suspect X is as subtle as a Judo match of crime, passion and intrigue.  You will not have to have read the prior books in this series, BUT...if you do not you will be missing out.

https://degenlibrarian.blogspot.com/2021/03/book-review-devotion-of-suspect-x-by.html

#DetectiveNovels #DegenLibrarian #Libraries #BookReview #KeigoHigashino #Fiction #JapaneseAuthor #librarianblog #DetectiveGalileo

[armor-goblin]

WELL HECK i just got to holler about the motivational power of games in learning for like a god damn hour at my professor who LISTENED and ENJOYED IT and RECORDED IT FOR EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES lkjoijdljkdaoaij !!!

[armor-goblin]

LIBRARIAN SIRINIAL SHOW US THE TRUE— ahem. I’m actually just curious: What exactly entails the work of a librarian that it’s such a competitive field? :0

it’s a good heckin question!! 

people think of librarians as mostly working in the public sector and doing mysterious book stuff. but degree is effectively about information architecture and how to find and archive and share information, which is why it requires a master’s in the first place! it’s versatile, and there’s a lot of skills that go into it. i was required to take an IT class as well as basic information organization classes and a management class, and then i got to supplement with things like research in LIS and copyright law and motivational theory and stuff, because that’s my areas of interest. you can take a degree in children’s librarianship and become more of an educator, or you can take a degree in archives and specialize in preserving and disseminating primary sources and historical materials, or you could specialize in data management and go into a more tech-focused position managing large datasets or making data accessible. this is the long winded way to say ‘librarians can wear a lot of hats,’ haha. we learn a lot of very useful skills, and what i think is most important is that we also are taught how to disseminate information, not just archive it; it makes librarians great liaisons and educators as well as data managers or catalogers, and means we can do a lot to make information accessible. and running a library takes a lot of these skills. 

in practice, library techs/clerks do a lot of the grunt work of shelving and customer service and checkin/checkout. full librarians’ duties also include: cataloging, adding to and maintaining the collection both digitally and physically, budgeting, event planning and hosting, book repair, website management, tech support, connecting with the community to host events or support programs...among other things, and in addition to those basic tech duties. some might work reference desks or teach classes or workshops as well, or train new employees, or work with the city on preservation, or what have you. academic librarians also often teach or help teach, as well as preparing learning resources to complement other teachers, as well as do their own research and write their own papers. they might work one on one with researchers in other departments, liaise between departments and the library, or help with and plan events, along with all those other duties like collection development/maintenance and budgeting and data management. increasingly, professors are adding information literacy components to their classes and librarians are increasingly being brought on to help with curriculum design or to embed in a laboratory or classroom setting as a permanent fixture, which is awesome. and effective! 

unfortunately, libraries are often chronically underfunded (ESPECIALLY public libraries), and we’re also facing a problem of people not retiring, as in many fields. there’s just not that many traditional librarian positions available for new grads like i will be in a few months, and we are often competing with people with years of experience in a library setting…and experience tends to win out for a lot of employers. (a lot of MLIS students seem to move into the degree after ten or twenty years in another career, and come into the game with a lot more experience -- at least from what i’ve seen talking to my peers, this is pretty common.) in contrast to public libraries, academic library positions tend to be more lucrative and full time, but they’re correspondingly harder to get, since they can require higher levels of education/experience and often require you do to a lot of stuff to maintain tenure track. (not all require you to be on tenure track, but a lot seem to.) (plus some of these positions require PhDs in LIS, which makes them even harder to get, of course.) but yeah, at least in part it’s that a good number of people are getting this degree and there just aren’t that many traditional library positions available since people aren’t retiring and libraries tend to be low on funds to hire more full-time employees. 

i do think more employers are starting to seek out people with library skillsets to manage their information systems or help educate or what have you, though. there are jobs available that aren’t strictly library jobs, but require the same skills; they’re just not always labeled as such and thus you’re competing against an entirely different set of people and also, perhaps, against perception of your skillset vs what your skillset actually is as a librarian. (anyone who manages a database is a good example of a non-library job that really overlaps with LIS, because it’s the same basic skillset of organizing and storing information. but you might be competing with a lot of different folks depending on what that database is for – lab managers or IT professionals or experienced programmers might want that job too, and might stand a better chance to get it.)or these positions are labeled as librarian jobs, but they want a specific background or skill in addition, and so they’re looking at either a tiny pool of applicants or a large pool of less qualified people. (like science librarians, especially in non-academic environments. often having a science degree is ‘just a plus’ because otherwise you just don’t have enough applicants – and frankly it’s very feasible for librarians to teach themselves enough to get on with once they’re in the position, so other factors can be more important.) 

so, yeah! the field’s competitive, but it’s partly because of factors that affect a lot of workplaces, like retirement and underfunding. and it’s partly, i think, because employers haven’t completely figured out that the skills they’re asking for overlap with LIS, which would broaden the positions we can fill a lot. i’d like to say things are changing for the better in that respect but it’s honestly pretty hard to tell. library science incorporates a lot of stuff that’s become incredibly important in a pretty short time, but it’s also female-dominated and suffers from a lot of mystery about what we can actually do, and librarians have done and are still doing a lot to try and rebrand as versatile information professionals and clear up those misconceptions. 

[armor-goblin]

lonely-spaghetti replied to your post: sloth-race replied to...

pokes head in to say that i’ve actually been researching library science after i finish my undergrad, ooooops

one of us, one of us 

[armor-goblin]

sloth-race replied to your post: sloth-race replied to your post: i love library...

I remember in library school we were fondly called “baby librarians”. It’s a great career choice with so many options; I’m glad to hear you’re doing that. … Plus, the pay is pretty solid.

there’s SO much more to it than i thought initially, too! it’s such a diverse field. (and solid pay, and being able to be employed in most places i might end up, may have been part of why i picked it as a master’s haha.) can i ask where you’ve ended up with your degree? I’m looking at, like, academic libraries and being a science librarian, but i’m still so early in the program and there’s so many interesting places to explore with LIS. :p

[armor-goblin]

sloth-race replied to your post: i love library science because i am writing a...

Wait. You’re in Library Science? (I ask because I did that after my anthro degree.)

i am!! i just started an online master’s this past august, i like it a lot so far (especially this research methods class). coming from a hard science background is very weird, though, i think? it’s very different doing research and talking about research in libsci. but also they let me ask weird research questions, and i like that, haha.

[armor-goblin]

i love library science because i am writing a research proposal and it’s about using roleplaying games in the classroom to teach research ability and increase engagement. my professor has okayed this project. i’m gonna write about d&d. I LOVE LIBRARY SCIENCE.