IL04: “creating internet-savvy public library users”

After spending the past six weeks talking to Iowa librarians about teaching computers to the public, both the how and why, this was a very informative and reinforcing presentation. The presenters were Michael Stephens and Jamie Wilson.

Michael gave us a great history of Internet training back to 1995, focusing on what we taught back then leading up to what we’re teaching now. (From “what is it” to “how do I do particular things with it.” Many of the same things that Michael suggested public libraries should be teaching (and why they should be teaching them) were the exact same things we came up with in my IA workshops.

Jamie’s presentation took a look at the same items from the school (k-12) library perspective. This was less of interest to me but only because, unfortunately, I get very few school librarians in my workshops. (Especially since for the past year-and-a-half I’ve been doing Gates Foundation funded workshops which have been solely for public librarians.)