Thing 18: Reflective Practice

I’m not sure that “critical thinker” is the best title for this unit. Given the variety of issues and resources addressed, perhaps “critical communicator” would be a better description.

Personal information management, the topic of Thing 14, is in a sense how we keep in touch with our past and future selves. Of the resources featured, Feedly was the most useful, but I wouldn't place it in the same category as most of the tools listed. It does, however, serve as a means of monitoring communications transmitted in the form of authors' blog posts.

Thing 15, evaluating information, focused on how we could contribute to the global resource of Wikipedia—an effort to communicate with others from points separated widely in space and time—by locating and citing authoritative sources. Some popular culture trivia buffs are frequent users of my library's reference service, and Wikipedia is our go-to resource for meeting their information needs.

Our digital footprint, addressed in Thing 16, is essentially how we leave signs about ourselves (whether knowingly and deliberately, or not) for others to read. This type of communication is potentially fraught with serious consequences. In an era when hackers routinely get their hands on corporate customer data and the evolution of computer security mimics the evolution of a prey species trying to keep a step ahead of predators, even following every recommended precaution in Brian Hickey's post is at best a strategy of harm reduction.

And of course, sharing our professional output, Thing 17, is a process of intentionally describing, explaining, and disseminating our intellectual and creative work. This is a weakness of mine, although not due to lack of output! My book reviews for Library Journal are regarded as non-scholarly work (it's a trade journal, and they are edited, not peer reviewed). A well-known Library Thinker disparaged the entirety of my oeuvre (last year, to my face) as "only" book reviews. But the few I have posted to my institutional repository are downloaded occasionally. I need to make the time to edit and post more.

I found this unit particularly thought-provoking and challenging. We all vary our professional messages, depending on our immediate circumstances. But I notice a disparity between my intentional communications at work and those I deliver in the context of other professional activities.

When I volunteer for a professional association, I’m expected to take initiative in communicating. Part of why I’ve been asked to serve in various capacities is because my colleagues from other institutions can count on me to alert them to potential problems, to propose solutions, and to provide historical context for current issues. As for continuing education, in this and in other online programs, both instructors and fellow participants state that I offer something new or useful to the learning community. My experience at work, however, is very different. It’s important to avoid creating surprises there and to move cautiously, slowly, and discreetly. Taking the lead in communication is risky.

Perhaps this difference between my two professional selves contributes to my delay in crafting and organizing professional communications. I’m tempted to use administrative speak and sum up the applications of this unit by saying “I could do better.” The question is: how?

Thing 17: Sharing Your Work

Fortunately, I had a presentation on hand for this Thing, a workshop on ORCID I’d led earlier this year. But I hadn’t planned on posting it anywhere. (Me? The “old” librarian who doesn’t have the fresh-from-library-school training so valued in my department? Someone would be interested in my work?) Consequently, it needed some touch-ups for accessibility.

I find Adobe annoying, since PDF document elements (blocks of text, images, links) often don’t mark up in proper reading order and fixing that requires much clicking and dragging. The ordering process in PowerPoint offers an easier approach. Of course there’s more to making a slide show accessible, including entering alternative text for images, verifying working links, and adding both descriptive and explanatory metadata to the file properties. Most of this is quick and simple, and so is uploading to SlideShare (a task for this Thing).

It’s trendy to create presentations displaying only images, intended to evoke emotion, and save the content for oral presentation. (In theory, text files are available afterwards via links or by contacting the lead author.) Does alternative text, however, succeed at evoking the desired emotional response from someone using a screen reader?

There’s debate in the library community about which Creative Commons license is best. Some people argue that CC0 is the ideal, a license we should apply whenever possible (although there are some questions as to whether a CC0 license is interpreted as public domain in all countries). Others insist that they don’t want their work exploited for commercial means, and so they apply Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) licenses. Another contingent opts for the more controlling Share Alike (SA) license, which dictates which license subsequent users may apply to modified works. I like the argument that a simple Attribution (CC BY) makes your work as available and hence accessible as possible. So here’s my presentation on SlideShare: reuse, revise, and improve it. Don’t forget to give me credit, and let me know what you’ve done – I’m interested in seeing your work.

Thing 16: Your Digital Footprint

Drat, I would have to postpone this Thing until now, when every day there’s more news about the misdeeds of Cambridge Analytica and Facebook. It would be easy to say, “I’m doing fine. I don’t have a Facebook account.” Except of course, absence of an account is no guarantee of privacy. With plenty of acquaintances who have Facebook accounts, I wouldn’t be surprised if the company (or some third party doing business with them) has constructed a profile of me.

Indeed, the very topic of privacy tune-ups raises the question of what to post about them on a public blog. Keeping my reflection short, simple, and on the safer side: I believe I could do more to protect my privacy online. But I’m not about to enumerate any perceived weaknesses or deficiencies for all to read!

Thing 15: Evaluating Information

For this Thing, I started by using the Citation Hunt tool. In short order I realized it could take a long time to find a comfortable combination of topic area and needed citation.

And then, as luck would have it, after a few more clicks, I finally encountered an item I could handle. The Wikipedia article Testosterone lists a “normal” plasma level for the hormone in men and women, but lacked a citation for the data. This falls comfortably in my wheelhouse as a nursing librarian. My mind raced through the possibilities. There are all sorts of handbooks on laboratory and diagnostic tests that present reference values for hormones, but those are not readily available outside of clinical settings, large public libraries with strong medical collections, or academic libraries supporting clinical programs. There are numerous websites presenting this information, but their source(s) of data would need verification in turn. What if my library didn’t own or have access to a particular source or sources listed? Of course, either of those paths could lead ultimately to a source inaccessible to many other users of Wikipedia as well, contrary to recommended guidelines.

I started with a simple Google search: standard lab values testosterone. Ta-da! Early in the list of results was a press release from the Endocrine Society about recently published research: Landmark Study Defines Normal Ranges for Testosterone Levels. Having worked as a medical librarian, I recognized the Endocrine Society as a reputable organization—meeting the authority criterion in the CRAAP test. As for the other criteria, the publication date of the featured article was 2017, it was a peer reviewed and (presumably) accurate work, and it was written specifically for a clinical audience, describing normal ranges for testosterone levels in men’s serum (article terminology) or plasma (terminology used in that section of the Wikipedia article).

(An aside: the article is important clinically because testosterone levels are measured when diagnosing hypogonadism. Setting the low end of “normal” at too high a level means many men could risk side effects from hormone supplementation, and also means somebody—patient or insurer—would waste money paying for unneeded treatment. Presenting reference values for men ranging in age from 18 to 99 and varying in health status, the table from this article is more broadly applicable than a single range derived from men belonging to the young and healthy segment of a study population. Of course, as the authors themselves note, it’s far from ideal. Reflecting long-standing biases in medical research, the populations used for the paper consisted primarily of white men residing in developed North American and European countries. Without further research, it’s not known if the observed values hold true for men from other ethnic populations.)

I realized that instead of simply adding a reference, I would also need to make an edit in the Wikipedia entry itself. There was nothing in the section text indicating that testosterone levels might vary with age or other factors. And to my chagrin, the section still needs a reference, because the article I relied upon didn’t provide data on female serum testosterone levels.

On reflection, I didn’t really put myself in the shoes of people I assist at the reference desk. Students generally don’t have the same opportunity to try one topic after another in a short time span. Also, disciplinary newcomers don’t know the reputable individuals or entities in a given field. Locally, many instructors handle this reality by directing students to a limited selection of sources (e.g., JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association, Nature, New England Journal of Medicine, and Science). Veering off-list in a reference encounter creates student distress. Thus I don’t intend to change my current approach, which is to recommend that students consult with their instructors when they find sources that meet CRAAP (or similar) criteria, but aren’t on the recommended list.

Thing 14: Personal Information Management

Personal information management is an ongoing challenge for me.

I’m a survivor of a brain tumor and a subsequent stroke that’s left me with encephalomalacia—softened, inactive, even dead nervous tissue—in both frontal lobes of my brain. (For those of you somewhat familiar with functional brain anatomy, my best guess is that most of the damage is in my dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. Thus I can’t regale you with tales of binge drinking or compulsive sexual behavior. You’d have to settle for far more boring accounts of finding myself unable to mentally calculate tips for cab drivers, or forgetting the proverbial milk when buying groceries.) 

Having brain surgery in one city, recuperating in a place five hours away, and returning to a home a full day’s travel from there, I fell through the cracks in the healthcare system. I wasn't referred for a neuropsychological assessment after my operation, nor was I sent off to a rehabilitation specialist to address the “executive function” issues that emerged—a less than optimal experience. Consequently I had to figure out my own approach to organizing my life, and I’m always interested in hearing about alternative tools and approaches.

Rehabilitation neuropsychologist Pamela S. Klonoff described paper datebooks as “the foundational compensatory tool after acquired brain injury” (Psychotherapy After Brain Injury; Principles and Techniques, Guilford Press, 2010, p. 126). Michelle Ranae Wild has published books on “making cognitive connections” using iOS and Android devices. In the abled world, “bujos” or self-designed “bullet journals” are in fashion. Clearly, there’s no single universal or optimal solution for personal information management problems.

What do I use (for now)? Mostly a combination of a bullet journal, the suite of Google apps I need to use for work, and two apps that came with my iPhone—Reminders and Notes. For shopping lists, I use the sophisticated technique of grabbing a piece of scrap paper and pen, then quickly surveying every room in my residence to see what needs to be restocked.

I tried a couple of the apps recommended for this Thing, and quickly eliminated Remember The Milk. The free version requires access to a data plan or Wi-Fi. This was an unwelcome contrast to the Google apps that permit offline work. Inexpensive data access is not a reasonable assumption for life here in the boondocks. There are literally times I have to stand at one particular window in my home and wave my phone around to connect to my data service. And with only two transformers for the entire town, all it takes is one squirrel or raccoon jumping onto the wrong part of the equipment to produce an hours-long power failure and no free wireless hotspots for a couple of miles in every direction.

I’ve been using Feedly (recommended at the start of this MOOC!) for a few months—albeit on my workstation rather than my phone—and find it a useful addition to my routine, although I do have to fight the urge to subscribe to feeds in packrat fashion. Pocket and Evernote look interesting, but the start of the semester means it will be best to revisit them after the pace at work slows down a bit.