Connecting Librarian

Its Day 23 of 30 blog posts in 30 days challenge and this week we have another work experience student.

Year 10 students in Victoria do work experience to discover whether their career interests are what they expect they might be. I did my work experience at a public library, which put me off working in a public library, but not in libraries in general. Cue the ironic music, that later this year I will be celebrating 25 years of working in public libraries.

We take work experience students at our library to hopefully inspire future library staff. Unfortunately we get many more requests for work experience than we can handle, so it usually comes down to first in, first served. Also unfortunately we are often not the first or sometimes anywhere near first choice of the students approaching us.

So we end up with the dilemma of trying to give those students a good experience of libraries, against their desire (or lack thereof) to be there.

Being in an area with lots of kids, our students tend to do a lot of work with our Children’s Librarians, who are incredibly patient and understanding. There is, as you would expect, a lot of what I call – desk support.

We also would love to take the opportunity to utilise their presence to work on project type stuff, but it tends to be repetitive and not so exciting. So trying to get work done, using their presence, when they take us away from doing work by their presence, whilst also giving them a good impression of library work is an interesting conundrum.

Finding the balance can be a real challenge.

Would love to hear how you deal with work experience students and what you do with them once you have them?

Wow, yesterday was exhausting, and today was as interesting, if not as new.

Diana Oblinger from EDUCAUSE spoke on the trends that teens are showing us now, which will ultimately become societal changes (as they always do).

Today’s learners are connected, both individually and as groups, via both technology and personally. They are action- oriented, multi-tasking (over-committed?), always on the move. They don’t want to sit and listen, if forced to they will stop listening. They are still naive in many respects, often don’t think about their online behaviour and not necessarily IT savvy.

It is not the era of digital natives, research shows that as of 2003, the digital natives were the under 6′s (that means my kids!).

Culture becoming:
Do it yourself – eg. Wikipedia. Young learner’s are self reliant, go for online banking, learning, travel, health etc. Finding info – #1 choice is internet, only 2% libraries. 53% find search engines as trustworthy as librarians (scary!). Perfect playlist – MP3 players, make personalised song lists. Media creators – blogs, webpages and more – 57%, 33% share their content, 19% remix content, 17% posted video and 25% access video/TV online. Their personal life remote control (mobiles) are constantly with them, have become personal digital repositories (images, sound, etc) and are multifunctional.

Participate – Blogs, 8% blog, 39% read them, 50/50 male female split. 55% blog under a pseudonyn. People who read and write blogs tend to be influencers in our society. Ratings – on teachers, venues and more. Opinions – use online polls to vote on issues. Other ways to participate, many of which adults are already using:
photos, sharing content, social networking, remixed content.

Socialize – communication is #1 use for IT for kids. 23% connect across the country, 17% across the world. 44% connect with 20+ kids. Many connect through online games. Social networks – alternative channel for communication. Penn State has created their own version, PennSter. 55% use social networking, 91% for contact with friends, 82% for contact with people they don’t see often. Connecting in virtual worlds, conveys a sense of presence, combines connection and social media and is useful for role playing.

Technology rate of change is expontential, but our young people have never known anything different. Any place is now a learning place, both physically and virtually.

Suggestions: 1. Broaden our definition of learning
2. Consider the options
3. Reassess and unlearn

The goal is an organisation that is constantly making the future, not defending its past.