Many years ago, our library had the idea to celebrate National Polkadot Day…but as a secret among the adults on campus. We dressed up and decorated the library doors…and waited to see who noticed.
The first year we had a number of employees opt-in.As an oh-so-subtle nudge, we also decorated the doors.
(Fun fact: Jole — our Director of Library Services — just reminded me that this was the first time we realized we could decorate our doors, a permanent tradition now, that changes with the feels we want to deliver….)
Through informal channels it became clear that people loved polkadot day — they asked us if we could do it again. We decided it should not be the same, so secretly celebrated National Stripes Day, instead. We witness the joy it brought our colleagues, because that next year, more people dressed up:
We had an even better turnout the next year!
Over the years (all this was back in maybe 2015-16-ish), we have periodically had another employee National Polkadot Day secret celebration. It is always fun when, partway thorough the day, students start asking questions.
In 2024, our colleagues really wanted to experience some joint, community-building fun, and our numbers grew even more!
This year, Jole proposed the idea of having an employee spirit week. Our colleagues were IN. We sent out a list of themes and selected which ones to use by vote. Because our Edible Book Festival was on Monday, and Tuesday was April 1st, we launched spirit week on Tuesday with monochrome:
Usually we just take a picture of whoever can be at the library at one time. This year, colleagues were so passionate that we ended up taking three pictures — and still did not get everyone!Of course, we also needed a librarian team photo.
Today, we are enjoying denim-on-denim, and will be taking another group photograph, as we will tomorrow with Funky Socks and Sandals Day and on Friday with, of course, Polkadot Day.
Denim on Denim (on Denim?)
Students are starting to give us side-eye, and apparently decided yesterday that it could be nothing intentional (how could All. That. Yellow. not be intentional??) because if we did dress intentionally in monochrome, then wouldn’t we have done Monochrome Monday? Why would we dress in monochrome on a Tuesday? This morning, when a bunch of colleagues in denim were talking, at least one student seemed to have a dawning realization.
Overall, though, it is good for our adult community. It helps us find joy and a united sense of purpose. Enough people are not opting in (or don’t own enough denim, for example) that there is no shame in not doing it.
You can find a lot of ideas by searching for [staff underground spirit week]. It has been a great thing for us, and I think we can all use a little joy!
Good morning! This is just a brief update to introduce you to what I hope to have great news to write about later.
Last spring, I was lucky enough to attend a Bay Area Independent School Librarians meeting at which Brian Thomas, of Saint Mary’s College High School, introduced us to using roll-playing games, specifically murder mystery parties, to let students experience history.
His school schedule (they have a week-long, all-day elective that allowed travel and more) was different from mine, but the idea lit my imagination. I immediately proposed to our new seventh grade History teacher that we try it out, and she was willing.
So began my journey to find a medieval world history topic with enough primary sources to create a unit assessment for seventh graders.
I look forward to sharing this journey, but today happens to be the launch of the project. So.
Cross your fingers and wish me the best.
We will see how this goes, and next time I will share the challenges and triumphs of this endeavor.
Tomorrow we all have a compelling opportunity to hear from Jim Duncan of the Colorado Library Consortium, Lindsey Kimery of the Tennessee Association of School Librarians, Emily Knox of the UIUC School of Information Sciences, and Sarah Lamdan of the ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom will join Michelle Reed, Director of Programs at Library Futures, about what is up with digital censorship. The webinar is hosted by Library Futures, who are actually coming out with a report on this topic, as well. It is meaningful to see another group take on this important topic. You can register here.
Please see comments for a stream-of-consciousness update on how the lesson went and my faculty and students’ responses to Solutions Journalism. TBM 01/10/2025
Happy new year!
Fortunately, I am getting to start my new calendar year at school with Global Week, our ever-inspiring intersession. This year, our theme is “Bridging Divides: The Art of Listening, The Journey of Learning.” Overall, this topic means we are learning how to fight polarization.
To my great delight, I was asked to run a class on Solutions Journalism ahead of our final speaker, who works in that field. I’ve long been interested in this style of reporting, and was delighted to have a reason to learn more about the concept. As the child of an old-school journalist, it is exciting to see a movement trying to shift away from “if it bleeds, it leads” (the historical version of clickbait, one might argue) and instead look at news focused on positivity and hope.
It is fascinating to dig into what that premise looks like in practice. A far cry from human interest and hero-worship, I am finding Solutions Journalism to be an approach that allows room and provides methods for difficult discussions, while drawing on the evidence-based standards that I value from growing up discussing my father’s work.
As articulated by the Solutions Journalism Network, the four principles of the approach are: “1 Response: Focuses on a response to a social problem — and on how that response has worked, or why it hasn’t; “2 Insight: Shows what can be learned from a response and why it matters to a newsroom’s audience; “3 Evidence: Provides data or qualitative results that indicate effectiveness (or a lack thereof); and “4 Limitations: Places responses in context; doesn’t shy away from revealing shortcomings.”
What I like about this framing is that it leaves room for hope. Even when programs go wrong (which the method encourages journalists to write about), the goal is not to assess and place blame, but to analyze what we have learned so we can do better next time.
Even more consistently, the method gets away from all the messiness of the (broadly misunderstood) notion of “objectivity” of media, which carries not only a history of enabling limited perspectives in storytelling that glossed over social ills (like racism) but which also somehow got us to this idea that we have to pick two sides (no more, no fewer) and give them equal weight. It does not call for pro-and-con retellings, but asks journalists to look at a tried solution to a problem and see strengths, admit weaknesses, and embrace nuance.
The mindset is, in and of itself, about bridging divides. The foundational attention to complicating narratives rests, in part, on the notion that accepting common pro/con narratives on a topic are standing in the way of our gaining real understanding of what is going right or wrong. There is a sense of transcending political boundaries to ask larger — perhaps even more real? — questions and get at what can actually be done to improve a situation.
As a research skills educator, I find the ways evidence is defined and used in this type of reporting to be deeply meaningful. The standard is whether evidence helps the reader understand why something happened the way it did, rather than simply, “here is someone saying something angry/happy/tearful about our topic.”
As an educator of growing humans, I am profoundly grateful that there is a way my students can engage with societal problems that focuses hard on the potential for a better world.
OK, so, um. The whole idea of this form of journalism is to write about tried solutions, not ideas. I have read about the method, but am only using it with students for the first time today. If you have worked with Solutions Journalism in your school, would you let me know in the comments or by email?
May this new year bring many positive solutions into your world.
Well, we are deep in History Final Projects season once again! I have an in-box full of research assistance requests, so I am going to share the joyous discovery I made through a new collaboration this year.
One of our History teachers moved to 9th grade, taking lead on curriculum — basically a completely new one — for that class. About half of this term has focused on ethnic studies, mostly using historical thinking skills to weigh multiple perspectives, and doing close reading of primary source material. The teacher came to me with the idea of having students make a museum exhibits, feeling there was something about the storytelling — the human experience — that she wanted students to strive to capture with their final project. Their topic is a social movement from an ethnic group living in California in the 20th Century or earlier.
Of course, that gave me a perfect rabbit-hole to go down! The available materials on exhibition design are wonderful, and I quickly discovered that it offered a fantastic framework that allows the development and demonstration of many historical thinking skills. Not only does it allow students to chose a voice for their writing, but the strictures and low word counts push back against writing in curlycues to try to “sound smart” that so often plague our 9th graders.
Some of the excellent sources I drew upon for lesson planning purposes included guides from the Smithsonian and the BC Museums Association. (NOTE: Debbie Abilock just pointed me to the classic work that almost every guide I read talked about, but the Internet Archive was down when I was designing the project.) Students will be making a digital exhibit with Thinglink. (Here is my veryin-process example.) I’ll be vulnerable and tell you that I am due in class now, even though I have citations missing from pretty much everything at this point. The links here should point you to most of what I used to build the curriculum, if not the exhibit.
In any event, here is our first draft of class materials. I’m very, very open, as always, to ideas and feedback. (Please NOTE: We decided we absolutely want to keep this project in the curriculum, and we would definitely take more days to do it next year.)
I’m off to support storytelling about the Chicano Tattoo Movement, gospel music in Los Angeles, and more!
I was fully looking for something cheerful to post about today, and it turns out that “cheerful” in this instance means finding a use for something about which I have historically felt little enthusiasm: the new-ish top “result” in Google search.
When I worked at Google, one of the realizations I had revolved around questions that we librarians had a tendency to (among ourselves) view as “stupid.” First among those was asking for a book by the color of its cover. Essentially, we felt it was an unreasonable question, because it was one we could not answer. (Also because people remember green books as red and yellow books as blue, but I don’t yet have a solution for that problem.) Sometimes, technology allows us to solve a problem, as I discovered when I went to try to understand of what use color filtering in image searching could really be:
Well, this morning I was grappling with a question and I decided to try using Google AI to answer it, and look what happened:
Asking Google’s AI to tell me in which databases to find The Atlantic and JAMA in full-text
Are these responses complete? Completely correct? Did I burst into flame from typing a long-form question into a search box? The answer to each of these questions may well be “no.”
Nonetheless, I think about all the times that I wished I knew which databases to search to find x source, and I was pleasantly surprised to have this tool to try and help me.
So – hope this brings some joy or at least ease to your week. Take care, and search on!
With gratitude for the collaboration of Amy Pelman (Harker), Robin Gluck (Jewish Community High School of the Bay), Margi Putnam (Burr and Burton Academy), Hillel Gray (Ohio University), Sam Borbas, Cal Phillips, and a special librarian whose name we will not share due to their work.
Thank you so much to Alex for posting to our listserv about an article they read entitled “The Editors Protecting Wikipedia from AI Hoaxes.” Since our Wikipedia editing group meets Wednesday nights on Zoom, we decided to take a look and see if we could come up with a lesson plan for teaching students to understand when they see AI-generated content in Wikipedia.
We read, experimented, and chatted for a few hours, trying to figure out what would be most helpful. Ultimately, we did not construct a lesson plan, but we have a set of burgeoning ideas and thoughts about approach. We look forward to collaborating with other members of this community to move forward, as needed.
Overall, while we see that some fallacious AI-generated content is making its way into Wikipedia, like it is in so many sources, we do not yet feel there is evidence that it is currently causing particular danger to information quality within Wikipedia.
A very quick, vastly informal review of literature investigating the quality of Wikipedia content discovers other themes entirely. Overall content quality checking was common in the late 2000s/early 2010s. At that time, most researchers found that Wikipedia tended to be fairly high quality, often higher than the perception of quality by potential users. Over time, the understanding of “quality” and the research on Wikipedia has moved more into questioning the same issues we question in more traditional research sources: identity-related gatekeeping – who is included, who is excluded, how the identities of editors and the creators of source materials cited impacts the completeness of coverage on a given topic. As from early days, articles that get more traffic tend to measure up well if quality checked (e.g, anatomy), meaning that more obscure articles (and, I would argue, less used by students for schoolwork) have a greater chance of maintaining misinformation and errors. One study that looked closely at hoaxes reminded readers that, as of 2016, Wikipedia editors running “new article patrols” meant that 80% of new articles were checked within an hour of posting, and 95% within 24 hours.
Thus, a significantly larger issue facing Wikipedia today is the substantial fall-off in the number of editors in recent years, which means that page patrolling and other quality-supporting behaviors are also suffering. This is a very real issue.
On the bright site, there are many more tools that help editors doing quality-sustaining work to figure out where problems lie. I get notified whenever a page I (or my students) have worked on is edited, and when the changes are malicious the vandalism has usually been corrected in the few minutes it takes me to get to the page to check it. While one of the first lines of defense – the “recent changes” page and its sophisticated, bot-driven advanced search – does not yet have a set of choices for suspected AI-created content, I am guessing that we will see that option before too long. Here is how editors can currently filter the list of recent changes, and from the vandalism training I did I observed that the bigger problems tend to be dealt with extremely quickly:
Ultimately, given that genAI content is showing up in so many places, there is no reason to suspect Wikipedia any more than, say, content in many of our databases. In fact, depending on the type of database, articles may have fewer eyes on the lookout for problematic content than does Wikipedia. Certainly, the high-profile Elsivere case and the growing use of AI in our “trusted” news outlets suggested to our editing group that we do not so much need to warn students off of Wikipedia as we need to teach them about the overall changing information landscape and how to work within it.
Here is our brainstorm of potential topics that we might integrate into our teaching that address the increased use of genAI in all sources and in Wikipedia:
Teach about:
– Critical reading of all potential source materials, including – but not limited to – Wikipedia
-Recognizing AI-reated content
– Identifying what on Wikipedia is “good information,” or learning when to use and not use Wikipedia
– Understanding that AI may be one of several factor that may add level of inaccuracy to Wikipedia, and is one of many factors editors watch out for with regularity
– Teaching about ethics of academic honesty
– Teaching about ethics of AI
– Teaching about AI and academic honesty
AI more generally:
– How do we recognize AI content?
– Google search has AI generate responses queries; does that make Wikipedia less relevant in our students’ information lives?
Wikipedia:
– Are there patterns on Wikipedia that are repeated with AI-generated content?
-There have been instances where text has appeared on Wikipedia pages that even our group members who have almost no knowledge of generative AI recognized immediately, such as the (long-ago fixed) page on IChing:
that even gives itself away quite explicitly:
– What are positive uses of AI on Wikipedia? (examples: helping with grammar, helping with sources, flagging possible vandalism)
– What are Wikipedia’s rules regarding AI-generated content?
– Does AI-created content violate the “No original research” rule? (based on Village Pump article)
So, we apologize that this is kind of a quick-and-dirty set of thoughts without many clear answers. Once more, however, we were all in agreement: Wikipedia appears no more riddled with AI-generated disinformation that other types of information, so learning to assess the quality of whatever you are reading is key.
Of course one can track stats on various elements of library life…but what kind of audience and attention do they actually receive?
In July, I wrote about embracing joy — tracking everyday joyful experiences with a simple quilting, paint, or paper craft project — as imagined and shared by Kitty (@nightquilter), the founder of the Quilt Your Life Crew aspirational data visualization project. In addition to tracking joy, members of the group pick something to track for a period of time (usually a year) and we support each other in designing an effective visualization. They can be simple patterns, or more complicated tangible or abstract designs, as well. A favorite of mine tracked what kinds of tacos a quilter ate over the course of a year.
I tend to track something from my work life. For the 2023-2024 school year, I chose to track the library’s instructional collaborations:
A brief legend of what each square represents. This pattern, “Renew” by @jitterywings, was perfect to convey a very complex data set. To see a lengthier legend, click here.
I worked hard to complete and compile the sixty-nine blocks of the quilt face and also the legend before returning for our new school year. (I have been told to communicate that construction lasted through 10 audiobooks + 7 seasons of the Great British Baking Show + a weekend-long quilting retreat + a live SF Giants game + the summer Olympics.)
In our opening days, before students officially returned to campus, I displayed the front and back of the quilt outside the library.
The work paid off! Many of my colleagues stopped to look it over, to try to identify their block(s), and — in at least two cases — note: “Oh, I did not have you in my class very much, did I?”
And now? I am in their classes on a regular basis this year. I believe that the collaborations here (across all departments and all grades) normalized the idea of having research skills instruction for some colleagues.
Another fun outcome is that the colleague from maintenance who helped me hang the quilt commented that it might be helpful for him to make a visualization of the work orders he undertakes for the school. I offered to help him (though not to make a quilt), and am looking forward to the rather unique collaboration that will spring from that conversation.
Of course, being a librarian, I felt it important to cite my sources, and I think I will try to do this for any quilt using new fabrics in the future! (Most fabrics have an edge, called a “selvedge,” that gives the title, creator, and manufacturer of the fabric.)
The bibliography for the quilt, showing what fabrics and pattern were used in its construction.
Not everyone can — or wants to — spend a gazillion hours making a quilt, but as the Quilt Your Life Summer Joyfest has proven, there are many ways to undertake such a visualization. Pick a medium that works for you! It is, however, helpful to find a nontraditional form of visualization that will engage your colleagues and make them want to stop, look, and engage.
What might you want to track for public consumption? How might you like to construct a data visualization?
Last summer I learned that the act of mindfully seeking and embracing joy had a transformative effect on my state of mind. Now, I am passionate about sharing the approach that helped me with you, my professional colleagues, and also with my students.
I am part of a personal, aspirational data visualization quilting group (@nightquilter’s #QuiltYourLifeCrew on Instagram). In a later post I am going to share the strategic quilts I am making for work under its auspices. Last summer, however, the group experienced its first #SummerLovingSeaglassSAL (Sew-a-long), based on @Nightquilter’s tracking system and @ExhaustedOctopus’ method of sea glass quilting. One participant renamed the summer exercise “JoyFest2023” and the authenticity of the moniker caught on for all of us.
Example of a sea glass quilt, courtesy of @sewladybug. Quilting method by @ExhaustedOctopus.
And a #JoyFest it was! The goal was to decide on categories of activities that provided personal joy, assign a color to each category, and “earn” a color-coordinated scrap of fabric — a “piece of sea glass” — for each time you engaged with that activity. (This summer, the sew-a-long has expended into paper craft, painting, and other methods that move each particular participant.)
Courtesey of @Nightquilter and @Exhaustedoctopus
At first, I laid out activities that make me happy, such as pleasure reading and playing boardgames, but when I attended the launch party and heard that someone was tracking sounds they hear because their windows were open in summer (sprinklers, birds, dogs barking….) and another person mentioned a category for drinking coffee outside, I realized that my great joy comes from something else entirely: napping. So, I started tracking where I napped (couch, hammock, bed, during a car ride, outdoors/not hammock). I also decided that, since my spouse and I planned to spend our first empty-nester summer traveling to see friends and family we had not seen in a long time, I would do a “Re/Connecting” quilt that tracked from what parts of my life the people I was spending time with came.
Tasha’s Re/Connecting quilt with category key
Another participant came up with the idea of having a “joy jar,” as a place to add sea glass pieces as they were earned. As a result, we could actually see our jars filling with joy.
Tasha’s “joy jars” from Summer, 2023.
It turns out that the process of considering the acts that bring me joy, and the subcategories contained, brought about a huge change in my state of wellness. It made joy accessible, and helped me realize all the small areas in my day that brought happiness. But then, the tracking: Noticing I was earning substantially less of one color than others and asking myself if that activity really brought me joy, if I wanted to make a concerted effort to partake, or if I wanted to drop it? So very healthy! Paying attention to how much happiness I was earning each day and getting the visceral feedback of dropping bits of fabric into my joy jars? Priceless!
Tasha’s “Overall joy” pieces earned by the end of the summer.
I wanted to share this method with you now. It is the perfect time to give it a try for a month. What joy do you aspire to have and record in July? Below, I am including a public post by another participant, @quilting_julia, to give you a concrete example and get you started. (Please note: I am only redacting one username, as I do not know the individual and have not gotten permission to share.)
Again, I really am advocating for introducing this method through advisory to each grade level at school. The administration is also excited by what this method has to offer. I think that individual definitions of, and attention to, daily joys could be a wonderful thing for the whole community.
Wishing you awareness of your small experiences of joy, and a rejuvenating summer.
Courtesy of @quilting_julia. Full post used with permission
A recent conversation with a colleague about that perpetual, one-time-a-year “collaboration” request for “just a quick introduction to databases” made me reflect carefully on why I don’t really get that particular gem of an assignment anymore.
This colleague had just received that same ask and felt saddened – as it did not resonate with what she thought students actually needed.
So, we began discussing what skills her particular students do need to move forward in the word, and then we began plotting a “database lesson” that would deliver one of those skills, instead. The process reminded me of a closely-held principle I’ve had since before entering school librarianship: what we teach is mostly thinking skills; any technical skills will need to be about flexibly adapting to change over time and across tools, in any event.
This is where I began to reflect on strategies I used in the early years at my school when this was a frequent instructional request. Now, I do teach the basic intro in ninth grade (and my colleague in sixth). Otherwise, whenever I was asked to teach databases, I instead taught a skill that was useful in a broad range of research situations. Of course, we used the databases to practice, so I was delivering on my colleague’s desires. These lessons include, but are not limited to: *How search tools work (I’ve pivoted to using Stephanie Gamble’s lego method, far superior to my prior attempts); *Mind mapping pre-existing knowledge to expose potential search terms; *Using stepping stone sources (reading for useful search terms); *Imagining sources (for example: most newspaper articles on sports do not mention the name of the sport, but tend to mention team names; articles on psychology do not tend to use the word “psychology” – unless it is in the journal title – but instead refer to specific conditions and possibly the subject group tested); *Close reading of non-fiction to determine POV; *Accessing multiple perspectives; and so forth.
I have recently realized that this approach not only delivers more skills to my students that are more flexible across their needs, but it also demonstrated to my colleagues the greater range of what I have to offer and has led to many fewer requests for “just the databases,” and colleagues coming in the door looking for more meaningful and applicable (and less repetitive) engagements.
