Eating Your Own Dog Food
One of the most memorable experiences I had as a library student was becoming a patron of my own library. As on online library school student* I usually worked either in my office at pre-approved times, or at home. However, depending on the assignment, sometimes I worked out at the reference area public access computers. It nearly drove me mad, for a very simple reason – this was in the day before optical mouse devices, and the trackballs on our mice were incredibly sticky and jerky, despite regular cleaning routines. It was so bad I wondered how students could stand to work on our workstations, and how it made them feel about the library in general, since there is nothing like a solid hour or so of constantly repeated, albeit small, irritations to make a person develop indelible negative feelings towards a particular environment.
I’ve heard the same thing from colleagues that have started graduate programs here at my university; they are shocked at how hard it can be to be a student in the library, even with insider knowledge, and it can be demoralizing (and galvanizing) to watch classmates and even instructors dismiss library services and resources with “too confusing” or “learning curve too steep” as they ruthlessly practice least-effort satisficing for their information needs.
In information technology circles, the concept of having to use your own platforms/services is known as “eating your own dog food” or “dogfooding.” While there are pitfalls to relying too heavily on it as an assessment tool (we all have insider knowledge about libraries, software, and resources that can smooth the process for us), it is an eye-opening exercise, especially to listen to our users be brutally frank about what we offer — or don’t.
DIY Universities and Open Education
I am suggesting something related but complementary to dogfooding — sampling the models and platforms of a burgeoning movement that has the potential to be a disruptive force in higher education. DIY U and the coming transformation of education are all the rage (pun intended) these days, as prestigious universities and professors, Edupunks, loose collaboratives, and start-ups participate in collaborative free online offerings through various platforms and with different aims: Coursera, Khan Academy, P2PU, MIT OpenCourseWare, Udacity, NYU Open Education, and many more. This is a call to action for us as librarians. Instead of endlessly debating what this might mean, or where it might be going, and this movement’s possible effect on academic libraries, I suggest actually signing up for a course and experiencing it first-hand.
For library technologists facing the brave new world of higher education in the 21st century, there are three major advantages to taking a class in one of the new experimental DIY universities. We get to experience new platforms, delivery mechanisms, and modes of teaching, some of which may be applicable to the work of the academic library. In addition, many of the courses offered are technical courses that are directly applicable to our daily work. Thirdly, it allows us as academic participants to personally assess the often intemperate and hyperbolic language on both sides of the debate: “can’t possibly be as good as institutional campus-based face-to-face EVER” versus “This changes everything, FOREVER.” How many faculty on your campuses do you think have actually taken an online class, especially in one of these open educational initiatives? This is an opportunity to become an informed voice in any local campus debates and conversations. These conversations and debates will involve our core services, whether faculty and administrators realize it or not.
It will also encourage some future-oriented thinking about where libraries could fit into this changing educational landscape. One of the more interesting possible effects in these collaborative, open-to-all ventures is the necessity of using free or open access high quality resources. Where will that put the library? What does that mean for instructional resources hidden behind a particular institution’s authentication wall? Academic libraries and services have been tied to a particular institution — what happens when those affiliations blur and change extremely rapidly? There are all sorts of implications for faculty, students, libraries, vendors, and open access/open educational resources platforms. As a thought exercise, take a look at these seven predictions for the future of technology-enabled universities from JISC’s Head of Innovation, Sarah Porter. Which ones DON’T involve libraries? As a profession, let’s get out on the bleeding edge and investigate the developing models.
I just signed up for “Model Thinking” through Coursera. Taught by Professor Scott E. Page from the Center for the Study of Complex Systems at the University of Michigan, the course will cover modeling information to make sense of trends, social movements, behaviors, because “evidence shows that people who think with models consistently outperform those who don’t. And, moreover people who think with lots of models outperform people who use only one.” That sounds applicable to making decisions about e-books, collection development, workflow redesign, and changing models of higher education, et cetera.
Some Suggestions:
- Coursera offers clusters of courses in Society, Networks, and Information (Model Thinking, Gamification, Social Networking Analysis, among others) and Computer Science (Algorithims, Compilers, Game Theory, etc.). If you have a music library or handle streaming media in your library, what about Listening to World Music? If you are curious about humanities subjects that have depended on traditional library materials in the past, try A History of the World since 1300 or Greek and Roman Mythology.
- Udacity offers Building a Search Engine, Design of Computer Programs, and Programming a Robotic Car (automate a bookmobile?).
- Set up your own peer class with P2PU, or take Become a Citizen Scientist, Curating Content, or Programming with the Twitter API.
- If you are in the New York City area and can attend an in-person workshop, General Assembly offers Storytelling Skills, Programming Fundamentals for Non-Programmers, and Dodging the Dangers of Copyright Law (taught by participants in Yale Law School’s Information Society Project) as part of a menu of tech and tech-business related workshops. These have fees ranging from $15 to $30.
- Before I take my Model Thinking class, I’m planning to brush up my algebra at Khan Academy.
- Try the archived lectures at Harvard’s “Building Mobile Applications“, hosted in their institutional repository.
- Health Sciences Librarian? What about Information Technology in the Health Care System of the Future from MIT OpenCourseWare?
* Full disclosure: I am a proud graduate of University of Illinois’ LEEP (5.0) MSLIS program, and I also have another master’s degree done the old fashioned way, and I am an enthusiastic supporter of online education done correctly.
