A Personalized "Dashboard"

Though I have my own website at http://www.janaborchardt.com/ I now am creating a "dashboard" - a personalized newsboard or website which will allow me to more easily stay informed through the wonderful technology of widgets and RSS feeds. Instead of checking out several websites and blogs to find the latest news I can refer to my "dashboard."

I read about this cool Web 2.0 tool on another blog "Information Literacy Meets Web 2.0." When I complete my project I will let you see how it turned out.

Create your own "dashboard" at http://www.netvibes.com/. This way the news comes to you, and you save valuable time.

Brainstorming - facilitating a lost skill

Why can't today's students brainstorm? See "Sparking a Brainstorm: Getting Students Organized" by Theresa Westbrock from the LOEX Quarterly (Summer 2009, vol. 36 no. 2). LOEX (Library Orientation Exchange) is a great organization for academic librarians who teach students information literacy skills. Their 38th annual conference was last this month.

QUOTE - "One could argue that the Web can take the place of brainstorming . . . they were used to letting the hyperlinks lead the way."

Thoughts on Brainstorming:

• Students have difficulties brainstorming due to their online search habits
• Brainstorming teaches students to pose better questions, the type with purpose and that lead to thought organization
• Brainstorming helps students slow down the research process
• Brainstorming helps students learn to care about the whole process, including finding quality resources
• By facilitating brainstorming librarians encourage higher levels of information literacy than merely finding the resources***

***See the ACRL Information Literacy Standards) Instead of merely developing the student's ability to access needed information effectively and efficiently (Standard 2) we can look at Info Lit Standard 1.1b & 1.1e (1.1b=Develops a thesis statement and formulates questions based on the information need & 1.1e=Identifies key concepts and terms that describe the information need.

ECC Community College

I'm thrilled to be working as a reference librarian at Elgin Community College, where my librarian colleagues and I teach classes, lead library initiatives, operate efficiently, and inspire one another to focus on playing our best games as librarians.

One such possible endeavor is a proposed outreach activity I hope to implement sometime next spring with one of my colleagues. We are basing our idea for an Info Literacy blog upon an article in the LOEX Quarterly titled "No Time, No Problem: Using Blogs to Build Upon Face-To-Face Instruction" by Harold Goss.

Check out my library's evolving website, and the progress we are making toward moving into a new library building in Summer 2012!

Library Journal & "E-Access Changes Everything"

This thought provoking article has given me various ideas to keep the millenial students at my college engaged during our information sessions. Especially as we think about the often dreaded and required College 101 for the fall. I'd like to find some ways to better engage students, i.e. a library "Show and Tell" with fun library facts and a presentation on how scholarly books and journals are published. See - http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6713143.html

Benefit Birthday Bash & other projects

Oops, I see I haven't posted here in quite some time. What has happened? Well, it has been a busy time these past few months - In July I had a Birthday Benefit Bash and raised $1000 for Breakthrough Urban Ministries - a homeless ministry in East Garfield Park, Chicago, IL. Some friends and colleagues from Merit School of Music and I performed everything from the Vivaldi Concerto for Two Trumpets, to Gershwin, and Indie pop. The concert took place at the Lincoln Park Cultural center and we had an audience of around 40 people. Then in August I moved to a larger apartment in alas, the suburbs of Chicago, but only a short green line train away in Oak Park/River Forest.

Finally, over the past couple months I've been revisiting my Masters level research on the Russian composer, contemporary of Stravinsky, Arthur Lourie 1891-1966. By the end of the year I plan to have an article submitted for publication and at this point I'm planning on sending it first to "Notes" which is the Music Library Association's journal.

Alas, I've missed you Web 2.0 project, but now I see the new fad is a project called "Library 101." I don't want you to miss out, so check out the video/photo/song produced by some crazy librarians at http://www.libraryman.com/library101/