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What do I do in the summer?

I’m frequently asked by people across all sectors of my life what I do between spring and fall semesters. Contrary to baffling myth: I don’t read books all day. Note: all of this might not be typical for anyone else who works in an academic library.

But if you do know of someone who makes a living by reading books all day, have them contact me…

Firstly! There are classes in the summer. My library is a shared service with another college, which means there at least two pools of students, staff, and faculty, who occasionally need me for small or big things. Small might be: “I can’t log into my library account, can you tell me what I’m doing wrong?” Big might be: “I’m looking to revamp a whole curriculum, can you help me find etexts  to replace years’ worth of print materials (and save students money)?”

Community members have needs in summer, too. Last year I helped people locate grants for community projects and reunited a mechanic with a book he had used and adored in the 1970s.

As a solo librarian, (with one staff member)  I am responsible for all administrative things in addition to my teaching and learning/research. So preparing and sharing budgets and statistics, serving on consortia and committees, and making decisions around database subscriptions and collection development still  occur in summer.

As do requests that look ahead. Summer is when many faculty ask for help preparing for the next term. This could be: “I’m working on a book and can’t find where I originally downloaded this article from ten years ago.” Or, “Can you create a lecture that I can show to my asynchronous online students two weeks from now?” And there are big and small tasks there, too.

There’s also good ol’ maintenance. Summer is when we want to get the space spruced up for a new batch of inhabitants. Updating signage, décor, and weeding projects tend to happen in the summer. Other things that get maintained in summers: all my LibGuides, recorded lectures, little pockets of my own sanity.

Summers are when I try to schedule in webinars, workshops, and other professional development curiosities that I don’t always have time for when semesters are in full swing.  Campus event planning, interdepartmental collaborations, and circulation don’t stop because foot traffic does. Plus, by June, other people are starting to slink back to campus. Ready or not, the next semester is always twisting on the horizon.

Pre-fall life starts to seed itself. Orientations and tours happen! Recruiting future student workers, writing letters of recommendation,  withering from the oppressive heat, are all reliable summer activities for me. New this year? Blogging.

Thanks for asking.

AI is faster than we are, so slow down.

Among other things, I teach information literacy on my campus. However, no amount of theory or formal pedagogy matches the realities of implementation. 

This is true for innumerable reasons, but two stand out. One: Students come to higher education with varying levels of confidence and competence, not just in information literacy, but in academic preparedness, generally. Two: The ways students (and we, societally) seek and consume information are always slightly ahead of instruction. By the time think-pieces are written, something observable has already occurred.

Many hands no longer go up if I ask, “does anyone start their process with Google?” The answers are varied. YouTube. TikTok. Pinterest. Reddit. Based on the apocalyptic buzz it’s received, I anticipate an influx of ChatGPT or similar. (Interestingly, students widely shun Wikipedia, a sign that their earlier education came down hard on it.)

Yet this shows me that we’re struggling with the same monster. The problem isn’t Google, or Wikipedia, or even ChatGPT and its siblings. Nor is it the oft-repeated grumble that, “people don’t read books anymore” — as if print is inherently infallible.

The problem is that we blame tools without addressing functional issues. We focus on keeping current while sacrificing core knowledge competencies that make technological leaps possible. After all, many of these tools aren’t new but twists on existing ones. 

When we downplay critical thinking foundations, students leap from tool to tool. Those tools are, in turn, labeled as simply “good” or “bad.”  No wonder they struggle and panic so much, and no wonder our teaching can’t quite keep up with them!

How do I address this with students? I try to shift focus to the contents of information, not its container. For example: rather than telling students how to start, I ask them to tell me what their process is. This method can be a luxury of time and class size, I realize, and will not work for everyone. But every time I do it the responses are valuable. There are always slightly different inroads, and I prefer to ask students because my assumptions are rarely accurate. (There is always one student each term who says, “I use the library!” without further explaining what that means.)

If a student uses Google, I ask them to demonstrate a sample search. If they refer to TikTok, we talk about how to verify content creators’ expertise–or lack thereof.  Regardless of how, or by what avenue students come to content, the processes of vetting it are the same: I teach them to use lateral reading. We talk about how to identify an ad from genuine content. We identify outdated materials and avoid those without an easily located publisher. We talk about persuasive language, their own implicit biases, and even mistakes. Students need to know that even reliable sources still, sometimes, need updates or to correct errors.

In a sense, we humanize what has become a cold process, where talk of algorithms and AI make students feel they’re being hurtled toward a future where machines control everything. Where they are insignificant and powerless, and everything should be regarded with so much skepticism that nothing is safe. This is psychologically taxing for everyone, and also a waste of time. What has been set in motion cannot be stopped, and  running to predict and outpace the next technological/social platform is impossible. The current panic around students’ (potential) overreliance on AI is only a symptom of the disease: students struggle with information literacy, and we can simplify how we guide them through it.

To do that requires slow focus, something our society does not prioritize even in academia. A student asked, “but what if I need to know the right answer right now?” This hits hardest in situations where students are asked to focus on current events or touchy subjects.  It is almost impossible to navigate in our endlessly scrolling, constantly update-driven society. My answer was surprisingly old school, even to myself. “Sometimes, we can’t know everything. Sometimes we just have to wait for more information, come back later, do it again, and see where it goes.”