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Samples of writing from academic coursework at the School of Library & Information Science at the University of Iowa. Sample includes Master's research poster on crowdsourcing and digital research initiatives, a literature review for a potential study on the use of social media that connects parents of children with special health care needs, and two essays on issues in literacy written for an in-class midterm.
Citation preview
Melody Dworak April 13, 2012 Master’s Poster Speech
How do you design a digital research project that has substantial labor needs with few staff members to fulfill them? Related to the field of computer-‐supported cooperative work, crowdsourcing has become a way to leverage contributions from the public to create a more substantial collection of information. The promise of crowdsourcing has created larger questions for researchers and system designers: How do we design systems to facilitate contributions from the crowd? What motivations can system designers tap to engage people in crowdsourcing projects? I analyzed 26 digital research projects that were sourcing contributions from the crowd to discover what approaches designers took to build systems and motivate contributors. I coded them according to elements of machine labor and human labor in an iterative process that revealed that motivations behind contributing were at the heart of system design issues. The coding decisions were my own, not based on existing content analysis models. Some systems relied heavily on machine labor—or algorithms written by programmers—to entice contributors and maintain their engagement. Other systems relied heavily on manual labor by staff members to process contributions and maintain progress. Unsurprisingly, systems motivating contributors through gaming required the most programming, and thus formed the smallest category due to the higher need for programming skills. It is also not surprising that nearly all projects marketed themselves to potential contributors as a way their efforts could benefit the greater good. The interesting lesson here falls in the middle, where learning motivates people to continue contributing. Learning is an outcome that can be produced at all points along this labor spectrum. This is exploratory research. Future progress requires having multiple coders to determine inter-‐coder reliability. That stage of research could form more concrete crowdsourcing models to assist digital research project designers in planning and building their systems.
Melody Dworak SLIS Master’s Candidate
The Public As Collaborator:
Crowdsourcing Models for Digital Research Initiatives
Digital research projects often seek out large-‐scale data sets but have a small budget
to achieve them. In their pursuit of using technology to discover something new, some
scholars have turned to crowdsourcing strategies, where the efforts of individual volunteers
can contribute to collective, significant data outcomes. How can examples of successful
crowdsourcing projects inform future digital research initiatives? By looking at current
examples of digital research projects using crowdsourcing, this research proposes new
models for amassing data through the assistance of engaged publics. Inspired by the
problems posed by building a large-‐scale database of metadata from mid-‐20th century
small-‐press ephemera, this inquiry explores what outreach strategies work for different
kinds of projects and with which publics. This research performs a qualitative content
analysis of more than thirty digital research initiatives that rely on crowdsourcing
strategies to amass data. Through their project websites, the initiatives were coded to
determine the factors that motivated contributors and the electronic interfaces employed
for digital delivery. The models created from this research fall along a spectrum with
minimal requirements for technology and programming capacity to deploy strategies at one
end and sophisticated requirements at the other. Motivational factors discovered include
competition and reward systems inspired by games, personal contributions to discovery
and historical narratives, and the pure entertainment of interest-‐driven learning. By
identifying strategies that can inform approaches to scaling up digital research initiatives,
these models provide a guide for scholars with boundless ideas and limited budgets.
Dworak 1 Literature Review
Literature Review Use & Users Melody Dworak March 20, 2012
Finding Without Seeking, Or, I’ll Take Some Empathy with that Information, Please:
A Review of the Literature Review on Online Social Support Networks
for Parents of Children with Special Health Care Needs
Introduction
As online social networking sites reach their golden age, people turn to them
to both actively seek and passively find information to enhance their individualized
experiences. People who have experiences that are uncommon in their real world
communities can gain benefits by turning to online communities to build weak ties
and share information. Some parents of children with special health care needs may
be required to stay at home more to care for their children, and online social
networking sites and personal blogs may connect them to others who share their
experiences. Besides such physical isolation, it may not be as easy for parents of
children with disabilities to find parents with similar experiences in their real world
community, as only about six percent of the U.S. population have disabilities.
In order to study how parents of children with disabilities find information
through informal online social networks, the author conducted a review of the
relevant literature such a study must form a foundation on. The author located key
findings in three areas of research: literature on the information behavior and needs
of parents of children with disabilities; literature on the new frontier of online social
network analysis and social media; and literature on health-‐related online support
Dworak 2 Literature Review
groups, whether those groups were formed by formal organizations or blossomed
organically. At the center of these overlapping areas lies the heart of this study’s
primary concern.
Information Behavior and Needs of Parents
Parents want to learn from other parents. Adults without children may
appear as less trustworthy information sources due to their lack of personal
experience and ability to verify the accuracy of advice. Several studies confirm that
parents of children with disabilities want to hear from other parents of children
with disabilities, making such like-‐experienced individuals more trustworthy
sources of information and potentially rich sources for empathy. Mackintosh’s 2005
study on the information sources of parents of children with autism found that
parents believed that the best sources were other parents, and that individuals with
lower incomes and socio-‐economic status had fewer information resources.
Mackintosh’s study identified websites as a source of information but did not
identify social media sites explicitly. Statically published websites provide a
controlled flow of information, whereas social media sites provide a space for
Informa(on Behavior and Needs of Parents
of Children with Disabili(es
Online Social Networks
Health-‐Related Online Support
Groups
Dworak 3 Literature Review
dynamic interaction and exchange of information in a many-‐to-‐many forum.
Mackintosh’s study also found misinformation was a concern of such parent-‐to-‐
parent exchange of information, with no mediation from authoritative health
information professionals.
Pain (1999) found that personal communication is the preferred method for
information-‐gathering parents of children with disabilities, with one parent stating,
“There was no substitute for real people, written information is nice to have as a
comfort factor, but you really get your information from people, talking face to face
with them” (p. 303). Pain concluded the purposes for information, regardless of
source, were the following: “to enhance management of the child,” where certain
information improves working with the child on a day-‐to-‐day basis (1999, p. 305);
“to help parents cope emotionally,” where empathy from other parents adds
comfort to a diagnosis from an authoritative source; and “to access benefits and
services,” where information shared leads to new opportunities (1999, p. 308).
How do these preferences transform in a world where more and more
personal communication becomes computer-‐mediated? Huber et al. (2005) and
Tillisch (2007) both found the Internet cited as the most common information
source for parents of children with disabilities. Tillisch’s survey of 1,000 parents
found support groups rivaled the Internet for most-‐used sources of information,
with Huber adding that information seeking is greatest at the time of diagnosis.
Personal communication through online social networking may be the next fruitful
place to study information behavior of parents of children with special health care
needs.
Dworak 4 Literature Review
Analyzing Computer-Mediated Online Social Networks
As more parents seek information online to help them manage day-‐to-‐day
needs of their child with disabilities, cope emotionally, and find services, the scale of
computer-‐mediated communication and information is growing rapidly. No longer
does the computer-‐mediated role of information provider rest squarely on the
bandwidth of static, one-‐way communicating websites. With the birth of a new
genre, Web 2.0 and social media, online social networking sites such as Twitter
(launched 2006) and Facebook (launched 2004 and opening to the public in 2006)
have spurred computer-‐mediated communication and information sharing into a
new era. Facebook has more than 845 million user accounts (Protalinski, 2012), and
Twitter has more than 300 million user accounts (Taylor, 2011). The people behind
those accounts may not all be active users, but the data amassing on social media
servers is enough for the Library of Congress to enter into an agreement with
Twitter executives to create an archive of all public tweets (Raymond, 2010). Such is
the value of that publicly contributed data—a status update being a unit of data—to
the future of research. Researchers have already begun to conduct empirical studies
on the large-‐scale datasets these online social networking sites can provide. Dodds
et al. (2011) used more than 46 billion words comprising roughly five percent of
tweets posted between September 9, 2008, and September 18, 2011, to determine
the happiest days of the seven-‐day week were Friday through Sunday, the happiest
hour, between 5 and 6 a.m.
Researchers of social networks are also turning their attention to the data
available on social media sites. Huberman et al. (2009) cautions that counting the
Dworak 5 Literature Review
mere number of friends and followers does not give an accurate portrayal of
influence, a much-‐debated term among online social networking researchers.
Huberman et al. believes networks hidden among networks can be found by
studying who talks to whom, a metric not easily discoverable through public profiles
alone. Burgess (2009) argues that online social networks can be leveraged to
empower women in learning environments, emphasizing that networking
function—linking people together—to build social capital that facilitates access to
information and resources. Burgess warns against believing online networks escape
established privilege structures, cautioning those wanting to turn to a digital
environment to be mindful of how power reinvents itself online.
Scholars researching information behavior and cultural communication
patterns find the data embedded in online social networking sites to be rich and
informative, as well. Lerman and Ghosh’s study (2010) tracked how information
spreads through Twitter and Digg. Digg, a user-‐submitted news aggregator, became
the “denser” platform for these researchers due to the ease of tracking comments
and measuring popularity of submissions. Digg users vote on stories by clicking a
thumbs-‐up icon or thumbs-‐down icon so visitors to the website can see how each
submission ranks in popularity. Lerman and Ghosh found that network structure
affects the dynamics of how the information flows from one person to the next. Digg
makes following the popularity of posts on the Wild West of Twitter seem like
herding and wrangling cats.
But those retweets can be wrangled. boyd et al. (2010) argue retweeting—
where a post by one Twitter user is seen by another Twitter user and reposted to
Dworak 6 Literature Review
the latter user’s profile—can be studied as a conversational practice. The
researchers found that Twitter users retweet posts for specific purposes. The
retweet shows engagement in a conversation and shares information among the
listeners. A retweet in and of itself sends the message that the user is listening. boyd
et al. found the other two purposes for retweeting a post are to indicate agreement
publicly (or publicly to one’s approved list of followers if that user has a private
account) and to validate others’ thoughts. This study of retweeting as a
conversational practice demonstrates that attribution, relationship-‐building, and
community appreciation are important aspects of participating in online social
networks.
Chen (2011) came to a similar conclusion that retweeting acts to mediate
relationships on Twitter. Chen found that the more hours users spent on Twitter,
the greater the need those users had to connect with others. Chen confirmed this
need for “we-‐ness” by participants in online social networks, and that the more
active users were, the more likely they were to also feel connected. Chen’s study
focused on uses and gratification theory (U&G) to explore Twitter users’ need to
connect with others. Psychological needs direct communication goals, according to
Chen’s explanation of U&G theory, which requires purposeful decisions on
participating with communication media. Chen states (2011, p. 757),
U&G focuses on social and psychological needs, which generate
expectations that lead to different patterns of media use to gratify
these needs (Katz et al., 1974). It is important to note that Internet
communication has in some ways nullified the traditional sender-‐
Dworak 7 Literature Review
receiver model, which makes using U&G even more relevant to online
media (Ko, 2000). People online can choose what media they want to
use (Singer, 1998) with a simple click of the mouse. They can both
send and receive messages simultaneously through media such as
Twitter.
Which parents of children with disabilities are turning to strangers in online social
networks to satisfy their information, emotional, and psychological needs?
The Beating Heart of It
The third area of literature that informs a study on online social support
networks and information uses by parents of children with disabilities is literature
on health-‐related online support groups. This area does not strictly cover online
social network or the information behavior and needs of parents of children with
disabilities but overlaps them both. This area of research covers any number of
computer-‐mediated communication vehicles (email lists, chat rooms, online
discussion forums, wikis, blogs, or the online social networking sites that have
already been discussed) and different mental or physical special health needs.
Miller (2006) conducted a study on social networking sites focused on
mental health issues like RealMentalHealth.com (now HealthyPlace.com), and found
anonymity and connections with other mothers were among the sites’ benefits.
Miller also stressed that the information on such sites were not a substitute for
professional help; the need to be adept at computers was another limitation. Baum
(2004) focused on Internet Parent Support Groups (IPSGs) and found several
outcomes that affect the well-‐being of care providers of children with special health
Dworak 8 Literature Review
care needs. Those benefits included finding people with similar challenges; finding
information and guidance; experiencing anonymity; helping others; venting; and
finding hope, gratitude, and experiencing a change in perspective. Baum’s study
found parents who participated in IPSGs felt empowered, and these parents strongly
recommended the approach to other parents and care givers of children with
special health care needs. The participants in Baum’s study were mostly female and,
like Miller, Baum found that some needed to adapt to computers but such a learning
curve was not impossible to overcome. Trust was also a critical aspect in successful
IPSG experiences. Although ninety percent of Baum’s participants in the study
recommended joining an IPSG as soon as possible, Baum warns against problems
with relying on them exclusively.
Potential dangers include misinformation, expression of intense feelings that
could overwhelm those struggling with pain and fear, different needs related
to different stages of adaptation, untrained people who may offer therapy or
untested products, and occasional pressure to adopt excessive or distorted
group beliefs. (p. 388)
With these warnings taken to heart, Baum found clear support for connecting with
other parents of children with disabilities in an online environment.
Margarlit and Rashkind (2009) performed a content analysis on reactions of
mothers of children with learning disabilities and attention deficit hyperactivity
disorder as they mourned the potential closing of a website that facilitated online
community support. Their analysis also found the interactions through the site
empowered mothers through information seeking and community support. The
Dworak 9 Literature Review
analysis in this study found the mothers believed the following was facilitated
through this site: information shared was valid and reliable, information could be
adapted more easily to their needs, current information and research could be
translated into a format accessible to them, information was validated by personal
experience, and information could provide different perspectives. Their statements
expressed that they benefited from the online community through emotional
support, empathy, companionship and prevention of loneliness, immediate support
and help, privacy and safety, and through the withholding of judgment. The findings
from this area of literature support the need for more research on the use of online
social support networks for parents of children with special health care needs.
Conclusion
These studies overlap around the topic of using an online social network like
Twitter to organically create a community where parents of children with
disabilities may share their information as well as their empathy. No studies were
found to address this subject directly, suggesting a gap in the literature worthy of
study. By gleaning these key findings from the three areas—literature on the
information behavior and needs of parents of children with disabilities; literature on
the new frontier of online social network analysis and social media; and literature
on health-‐related online support groups—such a study could begin to discover how
parents of children with special health care needs find serendipitous information
and build weak ties through social media.
Dworak 10 Literature Review
Works Cited
Baum, L. S. (2004). Internet Parent Support Groups for Primary Caregivers of a Child
with Special Health Care Needs. Pediatric Nursing, 30(5), 381-‐401.
boyd, d., Golder, S. & Lotan, G. (2010). Tweet, tweet, retweet: Conversational aspects
of retweeting on Twitter.” HICSS-‐43. IEEE: Kauai, HI, January 6.
Briceño, A. C., Gospodarowicz, M., & Jadad, A. R. (2008). Fighting cancer with the
internet and social networking. The Lancet Oncology, 9(11), 1037-‐1038.
doi:10.1016/S1470-‐2045(08)70275-‐4
Burgess, K. R. (2009). Social networking technologies as vehicles of support for
women in learning communities. New Directions for Adult and Continuing
Education, 2009(122), 63-‐71. doi:10.1002/ace.335
Chen, G. M. (2011). Tweet this: A uses and gratifications perspective on how active
Twitter use gratifies a need to connect with others. Computers in Human
Behavior, 27(2), 755-‐762. doi:10.1016/j.chb.2010.10.023
Dodds, P. S., Harris, K. D., Kloumann, I. M., Bliss, C. A., & Danforth, C. M. (2011).
Temporal Patterns of Happiness and Information in a Global Social Network:
Hedonometrics and Twitter. PLoS ONE, 6(12).
doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0026752
Huberman, B. A., Romero, D. M., & Fang, W. (2009). Social networks that matter:
Twitter under the microscope. First Monday, 14(1-‐5). Retrieved from
http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/viewA
rticle/2317/2063
Dworak 11 Literature Review
Lamberg, L. (2003). Online Empathy for Mood Disorders Patients Turn to Internet
Support Groups. JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association,
289(23), 3073-‐3077. doi:10.1001/jama.289.23.3073
Lerman, K., & Ghosh, R. (2010). Information Contagion: an Empirical Study of the
Spread of News on Digg and Twitter Social Networks. arXiv:1003.2664.
Retrieved from http://arxiv.org/abs/1003.2664
Mackintosh, V. H., Myers, B. J., & Goin-‐Kochel, R. P. (2006). Sources of Information
and Support Used by Parents of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders.
Journal On Developmental Disabilities, 12(1), 41-‐52.
Margalit, M., & Raskind, M. H. (2009). Mothers of Children with LD and ADHD:
Empowerment through Online Communication. Journal of Special Education
Technology, 24(1). Retrieved from
http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/detail?accno=EJ861045
Miller, J. (2006). Finding Support Online: Parents are Finding Comfort and Support
in Virtual Hugs. Exceptional Parent, 36(10), 42-‐44.
Pain, H. (1999). Coping with a child with disabilities from the parents’ perspective:
the function of information. Child: Care, Health and Development, 25(4), 299-‐
313. doi:10.1046/j.1365-‐2214.1999.00132.x
Protalinski, E. (2012, February 1). Facebook has over 845 million users | ZDNet.
Retrieved from http://www.zdnet.com/blog/facebook/facebook-‐has-‐over-‐
845-‐million-‐users/8332
Raymond, Matt. (2010, April 14). Library to acquire ENTIRE Twitter archive -‐-‐ ALL
public tweets, ever, since March 2006! Details to follow. @librarycongress.
Dworak 12 Literature Review
microblog, . Retrieved March 19, 2012, from
https://twitter.com/#!/librarycongress/status/12169442690
Taylor, C. (2011, June 27). Social networking “utopia” isn’t coming. CNN. Retrieved
from http://articles.cnn.com/2011-‐06-‐
27/tech/limits.social.networking.taylor_1_twitter-‐users-‐facebook-‐friends-‐
connections?_s=PM:TECH
Tillisch, D. (2007). New Research Provides a Snapshot of Parents with Children Who
Have Special Needs. Exceptional Parent, 37(11), 43-‐44.
Literacy & Learning Midterm 1 Dworak
Literacy & Learning Midterm
November 3, 2011
Melody Dworak
Guiding quote for my term thus far:
The inclination to learn from life itself and to make the conditions of life such
that all will learn in the process of living is the finest product of schooling.
—John Dewey in Democracy and Education
Question 1: Among other things, literacy is about social power. Being literate allows people to exercise control and direction over their lives. From the readings this semester, provide an explanation for how that power/literacy connection works. In what ways might libraries and librarians modify their practice to address the concerns that this connection raises?
Literacy’s connection to power has firm historical foundations. Wysocki and
Johnson-‐Eilola elaborate on how the dominant group oppresses the languages and
literacy behaviors of the subordinate, using the rejection of their dominant belief
system as a blessing to slaughter. Their inclusion of the story of Atahaualpa
dropping the Bible to the ground in front of a Spanish missionary, which give the
Spanish a holy order to massacre the Incans, shows this (p. 357). Pawley explains in
the early U.S. colonial period, both boys and girls were taught to read, but only boys
were taught to write (p. 438). Street elaborates, “…it becomes apparent that literacy
can no longer be ,addressed as a neutral technology, as in the reductionist
‘autonomous’ model, but is already a social and ideological practice involving
fundamental aspects of epistemology, power, and politics: the acquisition of literacy
involves challenges to dominant discourses (Lewis), shifts in what constitutes the
agenda of proper literacy (VV einstein-‐Shr; Carmetti; Shuman) and struggles for
power and position (Rockhilt Probst). In this sense, then, literacy practices are
saturated with ideology” (p. 435).
In the present day, we see struggles of power and class play out in
standardized testing data. The No Child Left Behind Act (reauthorization of the
Literacy & Learning Midterm 2 Dworak
Elementary and Secondary Education Act under President George W. Bush)
mandated disaggregating of NAEP data, which gathers test scores to focus on the
literacy and math achievements, to specifically focus on achievements at the Fourth
and Eighth grade levels—the interims of which are believed to be critical growth
stages. Disaggregating test data was imperative so that schools could no longer hide
non-‐achieving students under an average. It was intended to “shine the light” on
racial disparities in education and in this way became a late-‐20th-‐century Civil
Rights struggle. Brown and Black children are consistently “left behind” their White
peers, and many have pointed to the lack of education as a determining factor in
who will spend time in prison. Davidson and Goldberg state, “Seventy-‐five percent
of those imprisoned tend to be illiterate, earning under $10,000 per year at the time
of arrest” (p. 21). Being convicted of a felony is directly related to one’s
disenfranchisement. What makes this relationship between literacy and power an
extremely troublesome, moral issue is the idea that descendant of slaves are at great
risk being un-‐emancipated, and that the U.S. system of education might be playing a
role in that.
How might school libraries and teacher-‐librarians re-‐imagine their own role
in this mess? The readings from this semester suggest two potential options:
promote learner agency through subverting not-‐learning and binding together with
the learner in the contact zone. According to Kohl, “Not-‐learning and unlearning are
both central techniques that support changes of consciousness and help people
develop positive ways of thinking and speaking in opposition to dominant forms of
oppression. Not-‐learning in particular requires a strong will and an ability to take
the kinds of pressure exerted by people whose power you choose to question” (p.
23). This is a kind of agency for not-‐learners, but not the kind that will allow them to
thrive in the current education system. Teacher-‐librarians cannot take the
traditional authority/subordinate strategies traditionally found in education.
Instead they must re-‐examine motives for not learning and be creative in subverting
the subverter. Kohl did this by manipulating the situation and being shaped by the
Literacy & Learning Midterm 3 Dworak
not-‐learner’s challenges to be more flexible to the not-‐learner’s needs. They grew to
become allies, bound together in the pursuit of mutual learning.
Being bound together through mutual learning is the condition of the contact
zone. The contact zone is “...social spaces where cultures meet, clash, and grapple
with each other, often in contexts of highly asymmetrical relations of power, such as
colonialism, slavery, or their aftermaths as they are lived out in many parts of the
world today” (Wolff, p. 4). But each interlocutor is affected by the experiences of the
contact zone. If individuals walk away untouched, they’re burying something deep
within themselves. Teacher-‐librarians can learn to recognize the literate arts of the
contact zone—transculturation, autoethnography, critique, collaboration,
bilingualism, mediation, vernacular expression, parody, denunciation, and
imaginary dialogue (p. 11)—to meet learners up close and in the middle, rather than
be separated by the distance that planes of power enforce.
Literacy & Learning Midterm 4 Dworak
Question 5: Research in Library and Information Science is traditionally based on a “techno-‐managerial” model. How would you describe that model in practice? The techno-‐managerial model tends to obscure many of the issues related to literacy. How have the readings illustrated this problem? In what ways might libraries and librarians modify their practice if they began to base their knowledge on alternative research paradigms?
Two scholars inform our understanding of the “techno-‐managerial” model of
library practice: Prior and Pawley. We see the techno-‐managerial model in Prior’s
description of structuralism. Structuralism develops the observational perspective,
where scholars can transcend out of the swamp and peer down from the mountain
top. Prior states the structuralist purpose is to create a hierarchy of pieces, which
Pawley describes as “decontextualization.” Prior also points to the rule-‐based
outcomes of the structuralist agenda. And we all know how traditional library
science practice loves rules. One may quickly imagine the following signs being
posted around a library, past or present: “No Talking”; “No Food”; “No Beverages.”
What’s from stopping them from posting a “No Patrons” sign?
Pawley elaborates on the techno-‐managerial model through a discussion of
the relationship between decontextualization and commodification of information.
Libraries once classified books according to their “truthiness”—providing the
preeminent position to those tomes associated with God and the dominant belief
structure. As societies evolved, information became valuable. Decontextualizing
information allowed its pieces to be allocated a certain price based on its place in
the hierarchy of knowledge. Pawley states that the commodification of information
gave libraries a purpose, and organizing those pieces by the alphabet rather than
pious prominence resulted. It was almost a natural evolution.
Stoddard and Lee speak of the librarian as a custodian, a “protector of books”
(p. 9). An authoritarian role such as this facilitates the storage of knowledge in tidy
boxes, it does nothing to facilitate literacy. Pawley links this to the Procrustean
model of having one box that each individual, no matter the culture or background,
must fit into—colloquially known as “forcing a square peg into a round hole.”
Pawley’s Procrustean model has more dire consequences than the more common
Literacy & Learning Midterm 5 Dworak
idiom, however. In Pawley’s imagery, learners lose pieces of themselves through
violent and harmful means.
Holland and Haraway inform our understanding of what cultural identities
might be cut away through this techno-‐managerial model, and how librarians might
adapt their thinking to promote a more culturally open and communally driven
practice. Holland states, “From a Bakhtinian-‐socio-‐historic perspective, persons
develop through and around the cultural forms by which they are identified, and
identify themselves, in the context of their affiliation or disaffiliation with those
associated with those forms and practices” (p. 33). Rather than forcing learners and
their needs to fit inside a box, this statement gives hope for a more collectively
driven approach. Haraway recognizes the role of situated knowledges and our
construction of knowledge through our identities, which we can apply to the
librarian-‐learner relationship. “Situated knowledge require that the object of
knowledge be pictured as an actor and agent, not a screen or a ground or a resource,
never finally as slave to the master that closes off the dialetic in his unique agency
and authorship” (p. 198). Pawley agrees with this ideal of learner as consumer and
producer, and that librarians can recognize this and strike a balance to supplement
their traditional techno-‐managerial model.
An example that displays such efforts may be seen in the efforts of the Read
Write Library, formerly called the Chicago Underground Library. This is an effort for
a library to go beyond the edgy strategy of accepting folksonomies into its
taxonomical system: It’s working to gather community-‐created and curated
collections within its own digital library (readwritelibrary.org). This initiative is still
in development, but it’s a system with much vision for a library to engage its
community in shaping the identity of its place. This solicitation of collection
materials from the community gives that community direct ownership over its
knowledge.