Previous topic: "Instructional Development in Academic Libraries"
Karen M. Drabenstott
Associate Professor
School of Information
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1092 USA
Voice: (734) 763-3581
Fax: (734) 764-2475
karen.drabenstott@umich.edu
Thanks to Michelle Swain for leading our discussion on "Instructional Development in Academic Libraries." Michelle monitored your reactions every step of the way and made frequent responses. Thanks to CRISTAL-ED members for keeping this discussion active throughout the two-week discussion period.
For some time now, we've had exceptionally low levels of conversation on CRISTAL-ED. And this comes despite the best efforts of our guest editors. It has gotten terribly difficult for me to find new guest editors and discussion topics. I literally shout for joy when people volunteer to guest edit a topic.
Since Steve Wooldridge's untimely death last spring, I've been searching for a permanent replacement for him. Maggi Rohde Seymour, our interim technical editor will be graduating in May. I have interviewed few interested technical editor candidates. The candidates I have interviewed bail out as soon as they find out that the listserv requires daily, round-the-calendar care.
The CRISTAL-ED listserv has had a solid, productive program. Almost 70 people have volunteered to lead CRISTAL-ED discussions. Several guest editors have returned twice (Paul Gherman, Ling-Hwey Jeng, Ray McGinnis, Ray Metz, Judith Segal, James Shedlock, and Paul Wiener), three times (Paul Doty and Bob Holley), and even four times (Anne Abate). We've held 87 one- to two-week discussions over a 4 1/4-year period! In fact, we reached volume 100 in January of this year with Paul Doty's discussion on "Repacking Libraries for the Web." We've run our course. It is time to assess what we've learned and go our separate ways.
Here is how we will proceed. For the next month, we'll discuss the high points and low points of CRISTAL-ED discussions. Then we'll end (April 11 to 24) with a two-week discussion of the "Future of the Book" hosted by Paul Wiener and LeGrande Fletcher. I certainly can't think of a more appropriate note on which to end our discussion. Paul Wiener is a seasoned CRISTAL-ED guest editor and LeGrande, a first-time guest editor, will be joining Paul.
Over the next four weeks I'd like to hear what the CRISTAL-ED membership has learned from the discussion. Let's revisit questions that Steve Bonario put to us almost two years ago when he summarized CRISTAL-ED discussions to date. How valuable has this discussion been to you? How has the list met your needs and expectations? Has it changed the way you work, or the way you think about your profession?
In discussing this topic, it may be helpful to think of the axiom: if we are efficient, we are doing things right; if we are effective, we are doing the right things. Is the CRISTAL-ED list doing the right things to meet the needs and expectations of its subscribers, and is it "doing them right?"
Other questions to consider:
I realize that the demise of CRISTAL-ED may be coming as a surprise to some members. We might need some time to talk about CRISTAL-ED's passing and that's alright too. Well, let's get started. I'm anxious to hear from the membership.
Augusto Mellado, Eng, M.Sc.
amellsil@amauta.rcp.net.pe
Education will be a very important matter in the next 10 or 100 years to come. I would like to suggest a discussion on new concept, as far as I know, on Education Engineering. Do we require to develop a new educational system to cope with the speed of knowledge production? Do this new system will include people of all ages, permanently? Do engineering approach would helpt to develope this new system?
Paul B. Wiener
Special Services Librarian
SUNY at Stony Brook
516/632-7253
pwiener@ms.cc.sunysb.edu
While I can appreciate what motivates Mr. Mellado's thinking, I wouldn't back any new programs as yet. First of all, no one can predict what learning technologies will be like in even 10 years, nor in how to plan or budget for them. Nor can anyone predict what anyone will need to (or be able to) know. What do people know these days? Not much. Secondly, the rate of change in the technology of education and communication is now and forever faster than our means to implement it. We will have to stop the world to let students and teachers catch up to it. Thirdly, what makes you think that what we need to know - the basics - will be any different in 10, 50 or 100 years - from what it is now or was in 1950? Will anyone teach parenting or driving skills, responsible sex, tolerance, nutrition, sportsmanship, how to plan a family's monthly food intake? Fourthly, other than in content, is there any proof that ed. technology has been effective in changing how or what we learn? Lots of studies say it hasn't. Should we believe them? Fifthly, is there any proof that libraries are any more effective in the education process than they were 10 or 40 years ago? Could any librarian live with neutral findings, much less negative ones?
Lisa Janicke Hinchliffe
Library Instruction Coordinator
Milner Library
Illinois State University
Campus Box 8900
Normal, Illinois 61790-8900
309-438-7045 (voice)
309-438-3676 (fax)
Lisa@exchange1.mlb.ilstu.edu
Not certain what I myself believe about the idea of re-engineering education; however, Eliot Masie of the Masie Center (www.masie.com) has many interesting things to say about the future of learning and training. He sends out an electronic newsletter called "TechLearn Trends" that included:
"6. Ken Dychtwald - Learning Throughout Age Curve: There is all too much focus on the younger generation of workers as forces of change. Let's not forget that we have an enormous population of learners that are in the forties, fifties and sixties. What about their needs and changing learning profiles. Here is a provocative quote from Ken Dychtwald, the leading thinker in the new conversation on the "Age Wave" (Ken will be a featured Keynote Speaker at TechLearn '99):
"By 2020, the traditional 'linear life' paradigm in which people migrate through education, then work, then leisure/retirement, will be replaced by a new 'cyclic life' paradigm in which education, work and leisure are interspersed repeatedly throughout the life span. It will become 'normal' for 50-year-olds to go back to school and for 70-year-olds to start new careers.
"Phased retirements, part-time and flex-time work and 'rehirements' will become common options for mature men and women who either need or want to keep working.
"In the years and decades to come, tens of millions of outspoken, long-lived men and women will force a redefinition of the purpose and arrangement of work in our lives. You can already see the tip of this iceberg with the growing popularity of sabbaticals, phased retirement programs, flextime, job banks, and career-transition retraining programs geared to older workers."
in the March 16, 1999 TechLearn Trends which points to a need to re-examine the idea that learning (education) is a phase early in life and potentially replace it with the notion that learning (education) is one component of a iterative cycle. So, more food for thought.
Paul B. Wiener
Special Services Librarian
SUNY at Stony Brook
516/632-7253
pwiener@ms.cc.sunysb.edu
At last: someone who can confidently predict the future! Where has he been all our lives! All this re-education and the new careers at 70: will this happen just when Medicare and Social Security are running out? Sabbaticals are MORE popular? Maybe so, but getting tenure is much harder and LESS popular. And what about developments in cloning, euthanasia, assisted suicide? Why get a new career when you can clone and store yourself at 25 and start one in better shape? I can't stand prognosticators like this who assume the world of politics, religion, economics, international conflict, disease, techno-disasters and the familiar curve of human ignorance, greed and fear will have no effect whatsoever on the forward march of longer-living American middle-class managers. I can't wait to get served at a MacDonald's by an 80-year-old!
Paul M. Gherman
University Librarian
611B General Library
419 21st Avenue South
Vanderbilt University
Nashville, TN 37240
Office: (615) 322-7120
Fax: (615) 343-8279
gherman@library.vanderbilt.edu
Karen,
Thank you very much for beginning Cristal-ed that has had a long and productive life. ( Life on the web seems faster and therefore shorter than in the analog world.) Discussion groups were one of the first elements to emerge in the Internet's infancy where individuals could find one another of like mind and spirit for intellectual or emotional exchange and support. But discussion groups seem to have a halflife of about 2 years and for whatever reason seem to wither. ( This might make a good research topic.) I think Cristal-ed has followed this natural course, and it is time we move on.
Thanks again Karen and everyone else who have made Cristal-ed a stimulating place to visit for so long. I am sure we will meeting again in some future virtual meeting.
D. Heenan
CTO
PIX, LLC
DanH6000@aol.com
I think its a fine art to look forward into the future, but Paul is right too, it may not be so rosey. I suggest those in this field do what Alan Kay (from the computing field) one said, "The best way to predict the future is to invent it".
Lisa Janicke Hinchliffe
Library Instruction Coordinator
Milner Library
Illinois State University
Campus Box 8900
Normal, Illinois 61790-8900
309-438-7045 (voice)
309-438-3676 (fax)
Lisa@exchange1.mlb.ilstu.edu
Just a note -- I think the "sabbaticals" reference is with respect to the corporate realm, not academia.
Karen M. Drabenstott
Associate Professor
School of Information
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1092 USA
Voice: (734) 763-3581
Fax: (734) 764-2475
karen.drabenstott@umich.edu
I have good news for the CRISTAL-ED membership. Hardly one day after I posted my message regarding the demise of CRISTAL-ED, a long-time CRISTAL-ED member volunteered to assume both editorial and technical leadership of the CRISTAL-ED listserv. At the present time, we are investigating the technical details required to move CRISTAL-ED to a new home. I hope to introduce you to CRISTAL-ED's new home later this or next week. Right now, we still have major technical details to work out.
In the meantime, we CRISTAL-ED members have work to do. Although our new editor-in-chief will have in mind new ideas for CRISTAL-ED discussions, let's get started on ideas for future discussions. Now that CRISTAL-ED is continuing, the questions I listed in the first issue of this volume are even more relevant than before. Here they are along with some new ones to help our new editors plan for the near future:
Let's address these questions and others that you want to pose to make the transition from old to new editorial staff as smooth as possible. I'll break the news about CRISTAL-ED's new home as soon as possible. Right now, let's get started on answers to these questions.
Dan Lester
dan@micron.net
Karen Drabenstott wrote: "At the present time, we are investigating the technical details required to move CRISTAL-ED to a new home."
Sounds good. And, if you run into problems with the hosting site, I can offer a home at listserv.boisestate.edu. No, I don't want to run the list. But there is no problem with a remote listowner as long as I'm the "sponsor". I can help on training or backup if necessary. We expect to have full web interface soon.
"1.What things do you like about the discussion list? What is it doing well?"
Good topics, good people, generally good discussions. I'd guess that some just aren't "grabbers" that get many of us to respond. Others may just have hit at the wrong season when people were starting a new term, getting ready for finals, on vacation, etc.
"2.What would you like to see done differently, or perhaps not done at all?"
I personally wonder whether moderation in the sense that has been done in the past is really necessary. Personally, I find a more interactive mode preferable, but I do understand the other view.
"3.Which topics have been most useful to you and why?"
None come to mind as far as utility, but just about every one was interesting and informative.
"4. Is there a new direction that you'd like to see the CRISTAL-ED listserv explore?"
Only as cited below in 5.
"5. How could CRISTAL-ED increase its membership? From what fields and disciplines should new members be recruited?"
I'll be really heretical and suggest that you consider a new name for the list. The current name isn't intuitively obvious to anyone, and I'll bet that half or more of the members now couldn't tell you what the name means. If you want to recruit by other means than word of mouth, you'll do much better with a more descriptive name.
Other ways to reach people? Post info about the list on other relevant lists. Do NOT blanket all of the library related list, though.
You may join the discussion and look over the list of past and future topics.
