I’m attempting to post my notes from the many conferences I’ve gone to this year. I think I’m going to work backwards and forwards both. Last time, I posted notes from the last session I attended. Now I’m going to post notes from where I left off — John Green’s talk at ALA Midwinter Meeting
I spotted his van the next day when walking back to my hotel:
I walked in late to the talk, since I had been at a committee meeting. But here are my notes. It turns out that this works as a Librarians Help post as well. John Green is definitely a supporter of libraries and librarians.
While he was writing, he was still tweeting and using youtube and tumblr. He uses those because he likes them. After all, he likes talking about stuff that matters with people he finds interesting.
“There’s no such thing any more as a non-social-media internet.”
Social media has a lot of similarities with real life connections.
There’s so much location-based social media, that’s fantastic for librarians. “People are building real life connections in real life places.”
Librarians have been good at raising the quality of discourse for hundreds of years.
It’s difficult to build space for thoughtfulness.
Librarians should infiltrate digital communities and raise the quality of discourse.
“Reading builds strong and deep connections between people.”
They are building productive communities online. Some examples are kiva.org for Nerdfighters and dftba.com and wells in Haiti through water.org
Ultimately these are not opposite ideas: Reach out into the world and organize information to help people.
“The ultimate thing that librarians do is help people toward the answer to the overwhelming ultimate question of how to organize our lives.”
Then talking about teens: “Teens are having a lot of interesting things happen to them for the first time.”
His recommendations for reaching teens? Use Tumblr. Look for communities in your community that are active. Search the name of your community. Join the nerdfighters group in your area.
“Education exists for the benefit of the society, not the individual.”
Lead people to interesting places online.