lauren's library blog

telemachus by bloohimwho

This semester has been a really busy one for me. In addition to the typical work, I finished up a book, served on several very productive committees, and taught two sections of our information literacy class. All of this during a semester in which I lost most productive evening hours to napping, sleeping, or extra eating. Though I feel very good about the amount of work I completed this semester, I have missed reflecting on some of the larger issues in the field, staying as current as I have with technology trends, and thinking about where things are going.

Luckily, one of the very productive committees was focused on those very issues, so I had a good excuse to pay attention to what was going on in official channels, even if I wasn’t as involved in some of the more quickly paced back channels that discuss these issues. And now I’m trying to figure out what things to delve into next semester when the book is in its final stages, the committees are wrapping up, and I only have one information literacy class.

As I’ve been thinking through the things I’m most interested in, I keep coming back to how technology impacts our relationship to information and knowledge. Clearly, that’s evident in the instructional design work I do. But it pops up in other areas of interest as well. Several things that I’ve been interested in since joining the field have dealt with these issues. In addition to effectively teaching today’s students, issues about the future of publishing, digital scholarship, preservation of born digital objects, changes in information seeking behaviors all relate to this topic. The developments in the eReader field and in Google Wave are endlessly fascinating, as well.

Of these topics, the one I feel furthest behind on is digital scholarship. So, on Friday night I asked my friends on Twitter for recommendations on recommended reading/websites for digital humanities. Karin Dalziel, among others, had some great recommendations. Two particularly useful lists that came through were Foundational Material in Digital History from Digital Clio and “Foundational” Texts in the Digital Humanities from The Transducer. The most interesting thing to me about these lists was that I had already read a number of texts, either when working on my Philosophy degree of my Library and Information studies one. All of those readings where a while ago, with a different perspective, so I’m thinking that working through these lists might be a holiday/Spring semester project for me.

Does anyone here work in these areas? Any readings on these lists you’d recommend jumping on first? Any other things you’d recommend checking out?

Related posts:

1. social epistemology in LIS
2. Who we are when we’re not in the library
3. My First ALA Learning Post!
4. a blended classroom
5. Hope for ALA pt 2/3 (or: Why I love ALA Connect)