ALA Competency 7: Continuing Education & Lifelong Learning
INFO 5000: Term Paper - Completed December 3, 2019
The purpose of this assignment was to research an area of the information profession and write a review of the literature on that topic. The topic I chose to research was the future of the brick and mortar public library.
This project gave me the opportunity to learn more about the function of public libraries and how they might adapt to the ever changing needs of the future. I learned a lot about the various futures that may lay in store for physical public libraries. The primary take away being that they will most likely continue to exist, but in an obviously different form than they are now. Physical collections are likely to stagnate in size, while digital collections and technology resources will grow increasingly important. Libraries will turn even more into community centers, and they will be places increasingly focused on independent and lifelong learning. A greater focus will likely be placed on programing and helping patrons get access to learning resources. University libraries are already leading the way in many of these areas. They are increasingly becoming big computer and technology labs, as well as just meeting places where people go to study and hang out. This assignment fits into this core competency because it taught me about the role of the library in the lifelong learning of patrons, including the use of lifelong learning in the promotion of library services.
INFO 5600: Group Project - Completed December 4, 2019
The goal of this project was to develop a library instructional service with a team of other students. For the project, we had to create the instructional materials as well as publicity materials for our instructional service.
This assignment was good learning experience because it gave me some insight into what it takes to develop an instructional program for patrons. It was a collaborative effort and it was great being able to bounce ideas off of other people. As part of the project, we had to create a needs assessment to evaluate the potential usefulness of the proposed program, and we also had to create a mechanism through which we could evaluate the actual effect of the program. The evaluation mechanism we used was a post-workshop survey that the students would be asked to take. The meat of the program was a power point that would be shown to the students during the workshop. I believe this project fits into this core competency because it taught me about instructional methods and the principles related to teaching the skills and processes used in seeking, evaluating, and using recorded knowledge and information.