#librarianposting

[loki-zen]

If you're not too busy, would you mind blinding me with library science? Infosynth sounds like a useful skill and I'm far too dumb and lazy to go around reinventing the wheel all the time.

it is! unfortunately it’s not really something there is a lazy approach to - the lazy/time-strapped approach here is really to get someone else who has spent the time developing these skills to do infosynth for you: - this is why health librarians are an increasingly important part of healthcare provision, for instance, and it’s what I do as a freelancer for people whose time is at a premium.

it’s also something i have less experience teaching than a lot of other infolit skills; I do think you can really only get good/quick at it with a lot of practice.

but, if you’re interested in learning the good news is there are a lot of free librarian-compiled resources on this and other infolit skills available on the library websites of universities, which are usually accessible without an institutional log in.

Here is a decent one with links to some more in depth sources.

These are going to be aimed at an audience of people who are using these skills in an academic context, but the core skills are pretty cross-applicable.

What comes with practice is being able to very quickly evaluate things like

whether this source is worth using (relevant, reputable)

how much of it you need to read,

and how much information you need to save from each source in order to be able to do the synthesis part later without revisiting the source.

(There’s also finding good sources to begin with, but that’s a different skill.)

What is key imo is to start with a well-defined research question, or more informally a good sense of what you’re trying to find out and for what purpose, and who the audience of your synthesis is.

I like to use something like OneTab or Zotero that lets me easily save a bunch of pages that i can go back to later. I also like to do a decent amount of just reading around before i even try to do anything else. It’s important to sorta just get oriented with stuff so that i have the relevant context for making decisions about how i go about it when it comes to doing anything more rigorous.

But ultimately with infosynth you need to be at peace with the fact that you are the one doing the legwork. Yours is the long boring task of somewhat-rigorously locating and reading lots and lots of stuff in order that you might tease out the seeds of a good synthesis.

I hope this helps somewhat; this is one of the domain skills i turned out to be Just Good At and i do think that often makes me worse at teaching things!

if you have any sort of a connection with a university (or work in healthcare) it’s worth checking if tuition in this sort of thing is available to you through your library. Many of the people who have the option to take this up aren’t aware of it. you can sometimes get infolit tuition at public libraries too

[lemonstealinglibrarian]

just remembered the dream i had about someone trying to bring their service alligator into the library and we couldn't get close enough to the alligator to tell them that animals aren't allowed in the building and the only service animals recognized in our state are dogs and miniature horses

[pussyluvr2000]

Shut up I'll cry

[charlott2n]

I geniunely don't think you could stop funnyposting if you earnestly tried. this is a compliment btw.

(Hi I like your blog and the music and book recs I get from it! the librarianposting is great, have a good dayy i love you bye)

HEARTTTTTTTTT 💜 KISSIE YOU

[lesbiangendoikari]

trying to step up my librarianposting game

[skapunkpee]

got bullied by a literal baby at work today

we were playing orchestra and she kept pointing at the door and yelling no when asked where i should sit 🥲✌🏼

[lemonstealinglibrarian]

just introduced myself as the librarian in charge to deal with an issue and noticed the person i was talking to looking at my Very Serious Clipboard upon which was. a bunch of drawings of unicorns. please take me seriously

[lemonstealinglibrarian]

actually i love it when (probably but not necessarily) neurodivergent people infodump at me while im at work. like yes please tell me the entire plot of Babe. tell me about every single Goosebumps book. tell me about sea sponges. explain One Piece to me. remind me what it feels like to be so passionate and happy about something!

[lemonstealinglibrarian]

another tgcf book comes out soon so it's once again time to send in a suggestion to the collection development department, who work in my building and know me, like hiiiii time for you to order gay chinese smut for me again thanks :)

[lemonstealinglibrarian]

kid i just met: can you come build a lego robot with me? my Nana is busy working.

me: sorry dude I gotta hang out at this desk, cause im at work too. I have to answer questions and find books and I can't play legos at work.

kid: that's not fair!!!!

me: yeah tell me about it

[pussyluvr2000]

Archivist swag

[loki-zen]

anyway the most important subject to teach is one that nobody has heard of

it’s on balance maybe ‘a humanity’ in some ways (certainly most people schooled in it and able to teach it today have a Humanities bg but this may be a historical artefact)

but really (like the broader subsector that it comes from) it sits in no category and both/all categories, being a sort of multidisciplinary meta-subject

I speak, of course, of Information Literacy

[skapunkpee]

just got called ma'am twice while wearing a funny jojo shirt and kitty cat choker