Web literacy, libraries, & the room to fail.
Hello! I’m Joanna and I’m thrilled to announce that I’m participating in Mozilla’s Web Literacy Leaders program!
I am an Information Services paraprofessional at Multnomah County Library (MCL) in Portland, Oregon. My official job description is to be responsible for connecting library patrons (internal and external) with the information they seek, in person and over email, chat, text and telephone. I also teach and develop curricula for library staff trainings; assist with MCL’s social media presence; and serve on the advisory committee of Answerland, Oregon’s online reference service. My passion has always been empowering library staff and patrons to find and evaluate the best resources for their informational and entertainment needs. I was very excited to discover Mozilla’s Web Literacy goals and learning opportunities.
My fabulous colleague Liza Dyer wrote an excellent summary of our previous work with Mozilla last year, bringing web literacy concepts to 30 of our co-workers using Mozilla’s Web Literacy curricula. As to our plan for the next several months of participating in the Web Literacy Leaders program, Liza says it best:
- Create a cohort of around 10 MCL staff, selected from the initial group of 30 from the first phase.
- Lead the group through a Design Thinking process where they will each create and implement one or more resources to share with other staff, volunteers, and/or patrons.
- Along the way, we’ll present training and resources, facilitate discussion and brainstorm new, productive, and continuous ways to share information with colleagues and patrons.
To rise to the challenge of serving our patrons, library staff need to be analytical, flexible, curious and collaborative, and to adapt to rapid changes in technology and informational needs. We also need to be comfortable with trying and failing and trying again, openly and in front of our colleagues and patrons. Web literacy is all about active participation and experimentation, so why not model that in web literacy training? Liza and I will support the MCL cohort in evaluating and remixing existing training, but we also expect them to design new materials and/or experiment with new methods for knowledge sharing. Not everything we try will be successful; this undeniable fact is perhaps what I am most excited about. By allowing frontline staff to come up with new ways of sharing knowledge and documenting what works (and what doesn’t), we hope to empower staff to have a stronger stake in their own literacy and the literacy of our patrons.
Liza and I will continue to blog about our experiences over the coming months, so watch these spaces!
