Embedded Librarianship for Creating Enchantment

These technologies also bolster librarians’ efforts to foster enchantment, “the process of delighting people with a product, service, and organization of idea. The outcome of enchantment is voluntary and long-lasting support that is mutually beneficial.”² By building relationships with individuals or groups through embedded librarianship, we can establish the three principles of enchantment: likability, trustworthiness, and a fantastic product or service.³ The technologies featured in each of these case studies exemplify how librarians can utilize virtual tools for getting to know the community members who are being served in the partnership for learning; social media and cloud computing tools help librarians to go beyond surface relationships with patrons and allow us to better know and understand the needs, passions, and wishes of patrons and to know them as humans—what they care about, what troubles them, and what stories of learning they have to share and construct. By providing positive learning experiences through face-to-face interactions and the use of virtual tools and technologies, librarians create powerful learning experiences for patrons that form positive memories and attachment to the library as a node in one’s personal learning environment for multiple information-seeking needs.

Embedded librarianship ultimately focuses on the human element of library, and the use of technology to honor and privilege the relationships that libraries can nurture through embedded librarianship provides points of transformation for making the library more relevant and meaningful. These technologies also provide a more authentic context for dialogic practice in which the transactions with the members of a learning community served through embedded librarianship informs our practice and principles of library programming and services.

Using Virtual Tools and Practices in Embedded Librarianship to Address Digital and Participation Divides

The case studies in this report represent how virtual tools and practices enhance the embedded librarian’s efforts to address the digital divide and close the participation gap in learning communities. By modeling the use of these technologies in a relevant way that is part of a larger effort to teach others how to harness the powers of these tools for learning, librarians can more effectively teach information skills and processes as they address the “inequalities in the networked world . . . the lack of digital and media literacies; critical thinking and communication skills in order to navigate and evaluate data online; an information and knowledge gap; and collaboration and participatory inequalities”⁴ The collaborative nature of embedded librarianship, particularly when supported through the use of social media and cloud computing, reflects the findings of Danica Radovanovic’s forthcoming dissertation research that shows “collaboration possibilities using the Internet and social media services present one of the communication practices for overcoming inequalities in e-skills, twenty-first century literacies and communication, and foster better collaboration and participation.”⁵ In other words, the technologies are not enough in and of themselves to closes these gaps, but instead, collaborative human partnerships are needed to provide people context and learning spaces for harnessing the participatory power of these technologies and to grow their digital and information literacy skills.

Resources for Learning about Teaching, Learning, and Technology

As librarians, we are always looking for resources to add to our own personal learning environment to provide inspiration and ideas for ways to incorporate technology as a medium for teaching and learning in a variety of settings that can be applied to our own work as embedded librarians. Below is a listing of my favorite resources for learning how others are using emerging technologies to create meaningful learning experiences. While not every resource is specifically about embedded librarianship, they provide examples and best practices in other learning environments that can be applied to your own situation. Each resource includes the title, URL, and quotations from the official description from the site’s About page. I also invite you to follow my curated resources on embedded librarianship and learning at www.scoop.it/t/embedded-librarianship.

DMLcentral (Digital Media Central) Digital Media and Learning: The Power of Participation

http://dmlcentral.net

DMLcentral is a “collaborative blog” curating a “collection of free and open resources produced by the Digital Media and Learning Research Hub,” a group “dedicated to analyzing and interpreting the impact of the Internet and digital media on education, civic engagement, and youth.”

Mind/Shift

http://mindshift.kqed.org

MindShift explores how technology is transforming the future of learning now. Curated by journalist Tina Barseghian, the site covers “cultural and technology trends, groundbreaking research, education policy, and more.”

Digital Ethnography @Kansas State University

http://mediatedcultures.net/ksudigg

Digital Ethnography is “a Kansas State University working group led by Dr. Michael Wesch dedicated to exploring and extending the possibilities of digital ethnography.”

School Library MonthlyBlog

http://blog.schoollibrarymedia.com

“The mission of the SLM blog is to extend the magazine into the digital realm and model the thoughtful Web 2.0 engagement that we advocate for in print. With weekly updates, it is a digital column that can respond nimbly to current events, model self-reflection, and inspire our readers to take thoughtful action. . . . Our blogger is Kristin Fontichiaro, a clinical assistant professor and coordinator of the school library media program at the University of Michigan School of Information.”

ProfHacker @ The Chronicle of Higher Education

http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker

Monday through Friday, ProfHacker delivers “tips, tutorials, and commentary on pedagogy, productivity, and technology in higher education.”

Info-mational

http://infomational.wordpress.com

Info-mational is the blog of Char Booth, “Instruction Services Manager & E-Learning Librarian at the Claremont Colleges Library.” She writes about “instructional design and pedagogy, emerging technology development, collaboration and outreach, user assessment, teaching effectiveness, and learning technologies.”

Wired Campus @ The Chronicle of Higher Education

http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus

The Wired Campus provides “the latest news on tech and education” with a focus on libraries, publishing, research, student life, teaching, and software.

Powerful Learning Practice Blog

http://plpnetwork.com/blog

Powerful Learning Practice Blog is provided by a learning community dedicated to “enabling thousands of educators around the country to experience the transformative power of the social Web: Face-to-face in their own schools, exchanging ideas through a community of inquiry, and in re-envisioning their own personal learning practice.”

HASTAC

http://hastac.org

“HASTAC (‘haystack’) is a network of individuals and institutions inspired by the possibilities that new technologies offer us for shaping how we learn, teach, communicate, create, and organize our local and global communities. We are motivated by the conviction that the digital era provides rich opportunities for informal and formal learning and for collaborative, networked research that extends across traditional disciplines, across the boundaries of academe and community, across the ‘two cultures’ of humanism and technology, across the divide of thinking versus making, and across social strata and national borders.”

The New Media Consortium

http://www.nmc.org

“The NMC (New Media Consortium) is an international community of experts in educational technology—from the practitioners who work with new technologies on campuses every day; to the visionaries who are shaping the future of learning at think tanks, labs, and research centers; to its staff and board of directors; to the advisory boards and others helping the NMC conduct cutting edge research.”

PBS MediaShift

http://www.pbs.org/mediashift

“MediaShift tracks how new media—from weblogs to podcasts to citizen journalism—are changing society and culture.”

Howard Rheingold

www.rheingold.com

Rheingold.com is the home page of scholar, teacher, and info-attention evangelist Howard Rheingold. It has links to his videos, articles, syllabi, and other spaces for content creation and sharing.

The Atlas of New LibrarianshipCompanion Website

www.newlibrarianship.org/wordpress

This website is not just a companion to the book but also a classroom and participatory space for those interested in learning about new librarianship. “The site is the access; the Atlas, videos, and short courses constitute the base knowledge of new librarianship; integration with Facebook and other social media tools provide an open environment; and we’ll do our best to motivate you.”

Learning and Laptops

http://learningandlaptops.blogspot.com

Learning and Laptops is a collaborative blog from the faculty of Arapahoe High School focusing on learning and the chronicles of the integration of technology into high school classrooms and the impact on learning resulting from these shifts.

Teach Web

http://teachweb2.blogspot.com

Teach Web is Dr. Wendy Drexler’s blog about personal learning environments and learner empowerment.

Confessions of an Aca-Fan: The Official Weblog of Henry Jenkins

http://henryjenkins.org/index.html

Confessions of an Aca-Fan is the blog where, as Jenkins says, “I share my thoughts about many contemporary developments and publish my works in progress. It is also a space where I showcase the work of my students at MIT and now at USC and give you a glimpse into the world where I live and work.” Jenkins also “spotlight[s] interesting work in the field of media studies which may be relevant to a readership that includes not only academics but also journalists, educators, industry insiders, policy makers, fans and gamers.”

The Ubiquitous Librarian

http://chronicle.com/blognetwork/theubiquitouslibrarian

“The Ubiquitous Librarian is the blog of Brian Mathews, Associate Dean for Learning & Outreach at the Virginia Tech University Libraries. His goal is to develop user-sensitive libraries that foster a culture of creativity, productivity, and scholarship.”

EllenFilgo.net: My Information Sandbox

www.ellenfilgo.net

EllenFilgo.net is the thinking space of Ellen Hampton Filgo, E-Learning Librarian in the Reference and Instruction Department of Baylor University Libraries, where she contemplates “ways that new generations of students are using the Internet and how that can be connected with the online resources the library provides.”

Virtualpolitik

www.virtualpolitik.blogspot.com

Virtualpolitik, the blog of Liz Losh, is “about digital rhetoric that asks the burning questions about electronic bureaucracy and institutional subversion on the Internet.”

ACRL (Association of College and Research Libraries)

College and Research Libraries News

http://crln.acrl.org

“Established in 1966, College & Research Libraries News (C&RL News) provides articles on the latest trends and practices affecting academic and research libraries and serves as the official newsmagazine and publication of record of ACRL.”