Moving & shaking & teaching librarians

Library Journal’s list of Movers and Shakers is up for this year, and as usual – I am really excited that some people whose work inspires me almost daily have been recognized in this way — yay for Caleb & Darci !

Thinking about people who push my thinking, get me excited about new ideas, get me thinking of how to collaborate and create with other librarians — like Caleb and Darci do — I started looking for the instruction librarians? Looking over the full list from the start of the M & S program – no Lisa Janicke Hinchliffe, Barbara Fister, Peter Hernon, Scott Walter, Ilene Rockman, Carol Kuhlthau… and that’s just off the top of my head in the last fifteen seconds.

I know that the M&S list isn’t comprehensive and that there are a ton of really important and influential people in our profession that never end up on it. This isn’t an “OMG [insert person here] isn’t on the list” post. I tend to think of the M&S list as a net positive in that it’s another way for a lot of really cool people to get some props.

It’s probably something like teaching/learning/instruction librarians aren’t as focused on Library Journal, aren’t nominating each other, or something else like that. But I am moved and shaken to recognize a few anyway —

Here are some (but not all) moving and shaking librarians involved in teaching, learning and assessment who have had a big impact on me over the last few years. Some of these people I’ve met before in person, most I haven’t —

Sarah McDaniel – I first became aware of Sarah like most people probably did – she moderated the ILI-L list for a number of years. But then I kept coming across her name again and again as I would find yet another cool thing going on at the UC Berkeley Libraries. She’s at Wisconsin now, and again, I find myself peeking over there to see what kinds of cool things she’s been up to — lately, it’s been assessment.

Rachel Applegate — I saw Dr. Applegate speak at ACRL last year – reporting on an ambitious assessment project trying to measure the impact of a learning space on learning — something not many people have managed to do. I’m still working through the ideas I took away from this project. (You have to pay for the ACRL proceedings, but here’s a link to a report back to the funding agency for this project for quick overview).

Lynn Lampert — I think that the first professional presentation I saw at an information literacy conference was a talk on preventing plagiarism that Lynn Lampert gave at LOEX of the West in Boise in 2004. It might not have been the very first talk, but it was the first really memorable one. I think it’s safe to say that her ability to mix big-picture context in with practical “how I do it” information has influenced the way I’ve put together presentations ever since. And also, about a year after that at another conference she was the only one at my table to get as annoyed as I did at the keynote speaker who kept mixing Laurel Thatcher Ulrich up with Laurell K. Hamilton.

Jerilyn Veldof — Basically, I love the University of Minnesota’s undergraduate virtual library — but as much for the process that went into its creation as the final product. And Jerilyn Veldof was not only a driving force in this process, but she’s been extremely generous sharing what she learned. And her book’s pretty good too.