It’s the day before I leave for NECC. My flight takes off from Raleigh/Durham at 7:45 in the morning, and I land mid-day in San Diego. Still can’t wrap my mind around that. I’m excited to be getting there so early, because I’ll get to attend the International Attendees Reception at 4:00.
Several folks have been posting their schedules, and I’m happy to see that at least three people will be in the audience for my Telling the New Story address at 2:00 on Wednesday in SDCC 6F. I look forward to seeing you guys.
NECC, this year, follows three very interesting events that I have spoken at in the last week. It started with the American Library Association conference in New Orleans, which was followed by a conference of independent school educators in Connecticut. Then it was a staff development conference in North Carolina. In all three events, I had the opportunity to discuss the evolving nature of information with a number of very smart people who were especially grounded in traditional notions of information.
I continued to hear terms like scholarly, juried, and authoritative sources, and I eventually came to realize that it all comes back to the container thing. We insist on thinking about information as something that should fit in a container. It’s the source of the information that we want to be able to depend on.
“This container is reliable.”
“That container is not.”
There’s not an easy solution to this problem, because I’d love to be able to make things stand still so that we could relax with the confidence of our containers. However, in a time of rapid change, the answers to brand new questions will not wait for scholarly review and carefully considered publishing. The answers will come from the growing conversation out there.
I believe that the source of the information will remain important. But I also believe that we have to learn and we have to teach students to consider the value of the information. Does this information adequately, appropriately, and ethically help me solve my problem or accomplish my goal.
Evaluate the information based on its source?
Evaluate the information based on its value?
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