Kay Cunningham's List: Libraries and Librarianship

• But today’s great library is being destroyed even as it is being built. Until you lose something big on the Internet, something truly valuable, this paradox can be difficult to understand.
• What happened to the people of Greeley, Colorado, on December 14, 1961, was twice lost to time. To tell the story of “The Crossing” in the first place, Vaughan excavated a meaningful event—only to have the story he told require its own excavation. Before “The Crossing” was lost, before Vaughan could even tell it, he had to outline the filigree of events that traced back to a terrible and distant winter morning. The accident had been largely forgotten.
• If a sprawling Pulitzer Prize-nominated feature in one of the nation’s oldest newspapers can disappear from the web, anything can. “There are now no passive means of preserving digital information,” said Abby Rumsey, a writer and digital historian. In other words if you want to save something online, you have to decide to save it. Ephemerality is built into the very architecture of the web, which was intended to be a messaging system, not a library.
• The destruction of much of Aristotle’s work deprived humanity of a style of writing that the philosopher Cicero described as like “a flowing river of gold.” What survived of Aristotle’s writing wasn’t prose, but more akin to lecture notes.
• In 1997, the average lifespan of a web page was 44 days; in 2003, it was 100 days. Links go bad even faster. A 2008 analysis of links in 2,700 digital resources—the majority of which had no print counterpart—found that about 8 percent of links stopped working after one year. By 2011, when three years had passed, 30 percent of links in the collection were dead.
• The Denver Public Library acquired all of the print archives from The Rocky Mountain News when it folded. But only Vaughan had the source code that would be necessary to replicate “The Crossing.”

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• The challenge is to move the use of technology beyond automation to engagement. Administrative and academic systems generate data that can feed analytics tools, which in turn can help optimize campus services, improve data-led decision making, personalize learning, and inform how best to support at-risk students.
• Engagement implies a dynamic relationship between the individual and the institution; the individual participates in and is more involved with the institution. Engagement is a powerful predictor of success. For example, increased student engagement leads to higher levels of achievement, greater likelihood of graduation, and deeper satisfaction.
• Future-oriented institutions are combining the strengths of the campus with their computing capabilities—whether analytics, visualization, social media, or interaction—to more deeply engage their stakeholders and solve the world's most challenging problems. The campus and computing are coevolving. One does not replace the other.
• One-size-fits-all is rarely engaging, especially with multiple student segments. If the institution is addressing the student's needs, the student will be more engaged and more successful.
• critical skills of the 21st century is the ability to solve complex problems that are often ill-defined and require knowledge of multiple disciplines. Solutions to these problems require learners to use both analytical and creative skills, often integrating mathematical, scientific, social, and cultural elements. Digital learning experiences can be important tools for this type of complex problem solving. However, Kurt Squire warns: "Publishing content online is not synonymous with improving learning or performance."⁷ A better option is the use of simulations, scenarios, and serious games as experiential learning spaces
• Higher education institutions have varying capabilities. Likewise, students have varying needs
• Engagement requires close alignment between students' needs and program design
• They may engage through research experiences and close student-faculty contact.
• They can be engaged through broad academic experiences
• price-sensitive, and they value placement services
• They are likely to be interested in receiving credit for prior learning, and they value online delivery.
• institutional linkages to employers and through preparation for a transition in careers
• They tend to be unemployed, and form the most "at risk" segment
• College and university missions extend beyond the campus to local, state, national, and international communities. The goal is to leverage the education, research, and cultural heritage entrusted to higher education to serve the broader community. To be effective, institutions must do more than provide information—they must engage society more broadly. Information technology provides the mechanism for higher education institutions to be known and engaged, worldwide, thanks to the Internet, websites, and other applications
• Clouds represent the ubiquitous large-scale technological infrastructure of contemporary society

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• designing libraries to become a home from home for our students, a place they can (and should!) feel comfortable in, so we shouldn’t be surprised that they’ll begin to treat our spaces like their own bedroom.
• behaviour and use will continue, and be copied by others.
• Don’t change the rules of a space without making changes to the furnishings and layout, and even then, don’t assume use and behaviour will change overnight. And if you want to change the rules for the space without changing the design, think about why you want to do that. Is it for the benefit of all library visitors, or is it to make it easier to manage?

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• At a Tipping Point looks at the views of online learners—their concerns about the cost of higher education, their experiences with online learning, and their expectations for more convenient, life-based education models in the future.

• Related courses are impacting public library customers in the form of Maker spaces, self-publishing, and library-led lifelong learning options both formal and self-directed. As a result, those guiding technology and training programs in the public sector would also benefit from a deep dive into this document.
• The graphic included in the report depicts the model. Radiating out from a center focused on innovative pedagogical practices are eight interconnected key areas, including curriculum, learning practices, leadership, and infrastructure.

• At the same time, younger library visitors are more likely than older patrons to access the library’s internet or computers or use the library’s research resources, such as databases.
• a majority of Americans of all age groups say libraries should have more comfortable spaces for reading, working, and relaxing.
• Moreover, younger Americans have a broad understanding of what a library is and can be—a place for accessing printed books as well as digital resources, that remains at its core a physical space.
• Additionally, younger patrons are significantly more likely than older library visitors to use the library as a space to sit and ready, study, or consume media—some 60% of younger library patrons have done that in the past 12 months, compared with 45% of those ages 30 and older.
• not as likely to see it as a valuable asset in their lives.

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• In all, the Pew Internet Project survey finds that 39% of Americans ages 16 and older have gone to a library website at one time or another and, of them, 64% visited a library site in the previous 12 months. That translates into 25% of all Americans ages 16+ who visited a library website in the past year.