memories of dissertation writing

-
Looking back to my notes on the dissertation process, I stumbled across this little gem to describe how the experience felt:

"like trying to get my arms around an elephant made of jello."

Back in 2005, that was indeed how it felt, on a daily basis.  Changing research directions and embracing new ideas doesn't feel quite the same, but a real commitment to learning probably always leads to, at some point, encountering a jello elephant.

Popular posts from this blog

What Storytelling Is (Not)

-
Image
Everybody is talking about "storytelling" lately... When you hear the word "storytelling" so much, it seems like anything and everything can be storytelling. But it's important to define it so you know what I'm talking about. As written previously, I define storytelling as a dynamic exchange between the tale, the teller, and the audience. Understanding what is not storytelling--according to the definition I am developing based on the tradition of storytelling in librarianship--may help to further illuminate what storytelling is. But perhaps I should start with a quick definition of what storytelling is. Stories are fascinating; lots of  people are deeply interested in story structure, but I focus most on storytelling. To understand the "telling" part, I see benefits to focusing on the dynamic of storytelling as a three-part interchange. We learn about listening from this model in ways that other models miss by focusing solely on the story.
Read more

ALA and the Data Storytelling Toolkit for Librarians

-
Image
So ALA sent out their email to invite members to come to ALA Annual in Chicago this year, and they selected five sessions to highlight. Ours is one of them!   As the US struggles with an onslaught of book banning like we have not seen in my lifetime, our project, the Data Storytelling Toolkit for Librarians , aims to get ahead of what we expect to come next: local battles over the existence of public and community college libraries. In fact, this battle has already begun, with some community college libraries in my state losing up to 2/3rds of their former staffing levels since the Covid-19 pandemic. We are right on time. This concern about defending libraries launched my research on understanding data storytelling in librarianship, with a pilot project in 2019 funded by the Center for Social & Behavioral Science at the University of Illinois--an article on obstacles to library data storytelling is in press with Public Library Quarterly, likely to be published in summer 2023. With
Read more

Data Storytelling for Librarians, Augusta Baker Series 2023

-
Image
  I was so honored this week to give a lecture on Data Storytelling for Librarians as part of the Augusta Baker Lecture Series, organized and led by Dr. Nicole Cooke at the University of South Carolina. It was a talk to support library advocacy with data. You can learn more about this talk and the whole series here: https://sites.google.com/view/bakerlectures/baker-diversity-series/dr-kate-mcdowell The main Augusta Baker lecture is today, don't miss it!
Read more