CCV's Embedded Librarian Program
The Hartness Library of the Community College of Vermont (CCV) provides a demo video describing their "Embedded Librarian Program" in which librarians create a visible online presence within classes using Blackboard. It's a simple enough idea but having had quite a bit of experience as a student in Blackboard settings, I think it could be quite powerful.
Greg Dimitriadis: Performing Identity/Performing Culture [Revised Edition]
In case you haven't noticed yet, I'm kind of an idea guy with way too many ideas. But I am getting better at maintaining core projects while keeping a small array of secondary projects in the long term mix.
CR: Library Innovation Blog is intended to be a core project but I haven't dug as deeply as I had hoped to by now. Still, I'm enjoying what I'm doing and it's off to a good start. A related project that's been moved to the secondary back burner for the moment is Hip Hop Research: Towards an Annotated Bibliography, a blog with a special focus on academic monographs featuring hip hop as a central theme.
Marc Lamont Hill - Beats, Rhymes, and Classroom Life
I launched Hip Hop Research as the first step towards an annotated bibliography to be developed as a reference work for academic libraries. I recently made contact with a library publisher via a woman who requested that folks send initial ideas prior to a book proposal. We'll see where that goes but, no matter the validity of the topic, hip hop content often seems to throw a wrench in people's perceptions, especially if their knowledge is limited to what they see in mass media.
To be honest, now that I'm reviving my search for a library position (at the worst possible time, of course!), I launched the project as much to validate my own work in hip hop media as to help validate the work of hip hop researchers in academic settings. I really do worry about what people think when they find out I've been a web publisher focused on hip hop for the last ten years, full time for the last five.
Given the response I've gotten from folks I've known who are from similar demographics as those doing the hiring in most of the situations for which I apply, I really have to wonder what potential employers think when they see the words, "hip hop."
Yvonne Bynoe - Encyclopedia of Rap and Hip-Hop Culture
It's funny, I've learned so much doing hip hop related projects that I would never take any of that back, but I do wonder how it looks to people I don't know, inundated with too many applications and looking for easy ways to pare down the list.
But, hey, as a 50 year old white man with a long history of activism and interest in African American culture, I feel like I'm so much more connected to the living reality of black people now than I ever was when I was trying to connect as a left/lib activist and artist. I have real friends now who are black and who I know through shared interests rather than African American connections who I've cultivated as part of a larger agenda, though I say that meaning no disrespect to folks finding other ways to connect.
To be perfectly frank, if getting a job meant giving up the one thing that has helped me more than any other to understand black culture in contemporary America, then I'll keep forging an independent path. But I'd love to bring what I know into an academic setting as a reference librarian since that may well be the best venue for my wide ranging interests and love of knowledge. Wish me luck!
In today's social landscape, it behooves librarians to find ways to draw in an audience without becoming outright entertainers. I have to admit, I'm still torn on the library coffee house concept, especially for academic settings, but I understand how it fits a "library as community gathering place" approach.
That said, two of my core interests, reference and marketing, will probably move me more in such directions as I dig deeper into how libraries must change given the many new players in information services and the emergence of information as entertainment facilitated by the Web.
For example, I was just checking out an email from The Smoking Gun, an extremely popular site that uses public legal records to create entertaining content. Though I hope librarians will recognize that there's a downside to laughing at people who've been arrested*, TSG is an excellent example of how the Web has connected everyday folks to seemingly esoteric pursuits such as searching public records.
I'm guessing most folks don't think of TSG in those terms but it struck me that TSG could be used as bait for a very solid public records workshop .
I know some librarians may wince at the thought but I feel the Web offers us an opportunity to reinsert ourselves as core resources in people's daily lives if we're willing to make such moves rather than thinking of the Web as competition.
I'll be dropping more ideas along these lines in the Marketing category as I go. Please feel free to add your ideas by commenting, sending me email suggestions or writing a guest post!
Contact Clyde Smith: culres(at)gmail(dot)com
*Note: Sounds like a good lead-in to a discussion of relevant ethical issues!
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