I'm late to this, but I wanted to say that I shared a couple of the components of your definition of research with my librarian colleagues, and one of them said we should make a big poster and post it on the front of the building. Questions, evidence, disciplinarity, community--all so vitally important. But I especially like your champio…
I'm late to this, but I wanted to say that I shared a couple of the components of your definition of research with my librarian colleagues, and one of them said we should make a big poster and post it on the front of the building. Questions, evidence, disciplinarity, community--all so vitally important. But I especially like your championing of research as activity that "lay" people can/do/should engage in, because I think at the core of librarianship, and at the basis of "the liberal arts" (broadly conceived, and for lack of a better term), is the goal of fostering and facilitating the kind of curiosity that's at the center of a pleasurable individual existence and a robust civic sphere. You've hit on a key aspect of the pedagogy involved in this too; I have the probably naive dream of helping every patron find that tiny thing they're fascinated enough and facilitating their autodidactic deep-dives, because I think those can be the threads that lead to the sociopolitical bedrock underlying, you know, everything. Never going to happen, but it's at least a way of keeping my eye on the ball and a little bit of hope while trying to exist in the deeply distressing information ecosystem we find ourselves in. All of which is to say, this is much appreciated.
I'm now late to replying to your comment, but thank you!!! I really feel strongly about research and intellectual work, broadly speaking, as a kind of practice that everyone should feel capable of accessing…whether they're professionally/vocationally identified as researchers or not.
I really loved how you described the goal of librarianship: "fostering and facilitating the kind of curiosity that's at the center of a pleasurable individual existence and a robust civic sphere." I do really think that access to information—but also access to mentorship, community, and other resources to work with that information—makes our individual lives more meaningful. And it also has so many benefits to our social and civic lives.
This is a lovely comment and I'll be thinking about it for some time—thank you so much.
I'm late to this, but I wanted to say that I shared a couple of the components of your definition of research with my librarian colleagues, and one of them said we should make a big poster and post it on the front of the building. Questions, evidence, disciplinarity, community--all so vitally important. But I especially like your championing of research as activity that "lay" people can/do/should engage in, because I think at the core of librarianship, and at the basis of "the liberal arts" (broadly conceived, and for lack of a better term), is the goal of fostering and facilitating the kind of curiosity that's at the center of a pleasurable individual existence and a robust civic sphere. You've hit on a key aspect of the pedagogy involved in this too; I have the probably naive dream of helping every patron find that tiny thing they're fascinated enough and facilitating their autodidactic deep-dives, because I think those can be the threads that lead to the sociopolitical bedrock underlying, you know, everything. Never going to happen, but it's at least a way of keeping my eye on the ball and a little bit of hope while trying to exist in the deeply distressing information ecosystem we find ourselves in. All of which is to say, this is much appreciated.
I'm now late to replying to your comment, but thank you!!! I really feel strongly about research and intellectual work, broadly speaking, as a kind of practice that everyone should feel capable of accessing…whether they're professionally/vocationally identified as researchers or not.
I really loved how you described the goal of librarianship: "fostering and facilitating the kind of curiosity that's at the center of a pleasurable individual existence and a robust civic sphere." I do really think that access to information—but also access to mentorship, community, and other resources to work with that information—makes our individual lives more meaningful. And it also has so many benefits to our social and civic lives.
This is a lovely comment and I'll be thinking about it for some time—thank you so much.