Bell and Shank hooking up with Hope

August 12th, 2004

Now this is great news. My “Keeping Current” cohort Steven Bell and his colleague, John Shank, have created an online community with the help of Hope Kandel (whom I worked with on a few occasions) at Learning Times. It’s called the Blended Librarian:

A Blended Librarian is “[an] academic librarian who combines the traditional skill set of librarianship with the information technologist�s hardware/software skills, and the instructional or educational designer’s ability to apply technology appropriately in the teaching-learning process.”

“From the beginning, Bell and Shank decided that Blended Librarianship needed to be more than just a concept. It had to be a working organism through which library practitioners would help each other to improve their knowledge of and ability to apply the theory and practice of instructional design and technology to improve our ability to connect with faculty for the purpose of achieving student learning outcomes. To facilitate this vision, working with Hope Kandel of the Learning Times Network, an online learning workspace was created to provide the necessary learning community. What takes place there is the exchange of information. This takes the form of online chats, webcasted events, the sharing of resources materials, discussion forums, and it facilitates librarians with shared interests and goals connecting with one another. At this time, through the support and generosity of the LearningTimes Network, librarians are being invited to join the community at no cost. In the future membership information will be provided here. Temporarily, interested librarians should contact Bell or Shank directly.”

Good luck guys. You’ve already done yourself a huge favor by working with Hope. She’s a visionary librarian with a lot to offer our profession. Just one more plug: They are running an online workshop in September entitled “Effective Collaboration for Campus-wide Information Literacy: The Blended Librarian’s Perspective on How To Make It Work”. Impressive.

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