{"id":74391,"date":"2014-06-12T11:30:42","date_gmt":"2014-06-12T16:30:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/?p=74391"},"modified":"2014-06-12T10:00:52","modified_gmt":"2014-06-12T15:00:52","slug":"the-transformative-powers-of-library-school","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/?p=74391","title":{"rendered":"The Transformative Powers of Library School"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jennifer Reisch,\u00a0Head Editor,\u00a0INALJ NYC<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

The Transformative Powers of Library School<\/span><\/span><\/h3>\n

\"2013-11-30<\/a>On the day that my son turned 8 I turned into an idiot. I spent years lost in the abyss\u00a0of stupid ideas, ridiculous requests, inability to comprehend even the simplest\u00a0ideas. Really, it was a mystery, even to the know-it-all himself, how two dolts like\u00a0my husband and me could have possibly spawned such a brilliant boy. Unlike Mark\u00a0Twain\u2019s father, however, I did not have to wait until my son turned 21 to astonish\u00a0him with how much I had learned. His opinion of my mental capacity began to\u00a0change just a few years later when I began library school.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The change in his evaluation of my mental capacity started with a population graph.\u00a0He needed local population statistics from the 1850s through the present day for\u00a0a school project and he couldn\u2019t find the information anywhere. It took me about\u00a0five minutes to come up with an actual graph made by a teacher in a nearby school\u00a0district showing the exact information he needed. Then came the dilemma: Was I his\u00a0mom doing his homework for him or a librarian helping him find the information\u00a0he needed? I went with librarian and showed him the graph. He used it on his\u00a0poster, correctly attributing the source, of course! For a while I spent a lot of time\u00a0contemplating my dual role as parent and librarian but now I know that helping\u00a0anyone find needed information (or helping sort out proper citation styles) is not\u00a0doing that person\u2019s homework.<\/p>\n

Since my early days in library school, my son\u2019s faith in my speedy ability to find\u00a0useful information\u2014and its apparently positive effect on my mental capabilities\u2014\u00a0has only grown<\/strong>. But his faith in himself has grown as well as he has learned his own\u00a0strong search strategies. He has even started helping some of his classmates find\u00a0the information they need as well. He has always been an avid reader and very\u00a0interested in learning a lot about things that interest him. I do believe his love of\u00a0learning will last his lifetime and that his improving skills in accessing and assessing\u00a0information can only help take him deeper on that journey. And while he loves (and\u00a0utilizes) Wikipedia as much as anyone else does, he recognizes it as a starting point,\u00a0not the source of all knowledge.<\/p>\n

Last week he spent three days at a nearby university working on a big research\u00a0project for one of his high school classes. At the end of the first day he came home\u00a0and asked me to show him how to limit his search results in the school\u2019s databases\u00a0to articles on quantum physics he could actually understand. He didn\u2019t ask if I could\u00a0limit his results in a useful way\u2014he assumed I could, and that once I showed him\u00a0how he could as well<\/strong>. He may think that library school made me smarter\u2014and for\u00a0that I am grateful\u2014but the truth of the matter is that it has made him a lot smarter,\u00a0too. He finds better information faster for his school work, and he doesn\u2019t hesitate to\u00a0go looking for information he wants to explore for himself.<\/p>\n

I think my son would make a great librarian. But I am definitely smart enough not to\u00a0tell him that!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jennifer Reisch,\u00a0Head Editor,\u00a0INALJ NYC The Transformative Powers of Library School On the day that my son turned 8 I turned into an idiot. I spent years lost in the abyss\u00a0of stupid ideas, ridiculous requests, inability to comprehend even the simplest\u00a0ideas. Really, it was a mystery, even to the know-it-all himself, how two dolts like\u00a0my husband…<\/p>\n

Read more \u2192<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":73026,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[145],"tags":[69,3592,6300,3655,6299,3953,3911,5813],"class_list":["post-74391","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles","tag-article","tag-blog","tag-children","tag-inalj-nyc","tag-jennifer-reisch","tag-learning","tag-library-school","tag-teens"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/2013-11-30-15.31.58.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1WoMK-jlR","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74391","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=74391"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74391\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/73026"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=74391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=74391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=74391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}