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I like sushi and libraries

January 11, 2010 By

Hi, this is getting to know Betha Gutsche through 20 questions. Although I have to follow Peter and Maurice, I’m glad I’m not at the end of the ALAlearning lineup. This is a high-powered crew we have here.

1. Your One Sentence Bio

From my virtual perch at WebJunction, I am immersed in online community and online learning for the library field.

2. Do you blog?

I participate in two group blogs—this ALAlearning blog and WebJunction’s BlogJunction.

3. What is your professional background?

I received my MLIS from the University of Washington iSchool in 2004. I have been with WebJunction since then, moving from Community Associate to Curriculum Developer to Program Manager. I am currently the project coordinator for Project Compass, an IMLS grant-funded effort to build library capacity to support workforce development.

4. What training do you do? staff? patrons? types of classes?

I do very little direct training. I’m more in the position of facilitating learning for the library field through compiling competencies and exploring the value and tools of online learning. I give presentations in webinars and at conferences.

5. What training do you think is most important to libraries right now?

The most crucial competency for people working in libraries today is the ability to adapt, to be flexible, innovative, and ready to learn. The HR department would probably label this change management. That sounds so much like an imposition, the application of an external force. Change is the essential nature of the human organism. Our cells change constantly; new neuron pathways form in our brains all the time. When we all learn to embrace change for the vitality and health it brings, we and the library field will be the richer for it. (Do you detect a hint of evangelism here?)

6. Where do you get your training?

Anywhere. From tutoring reading, teaching basis computer skills to ESL patrons, moving up the learning curve of delivering webinars, to more formal training in instructional design and synchronous facilitation.

7. How do you keep up?

Learning is ubiquitous. I read blogs, Twitter feeds, lists, articles in print and online, and books. I attend webinars, conferences (online and in-person), and T is for Training podcast sessions. I talk to colleagues. I listen.

8. What do you think are the biggest challenges libraries are facing right now?

In these tough economic times, library usage has increased everywhere. The public knows what it values about libraries. Libraries need to articulate that value and convince the funding agencies that they are a necessity for the community, not just an amenity.

9. What exciting things are you doing training wise?

Exploring the potential for social learning.

10. What do you wish were you doing?

More training about visual literacy.

11. What’s your favorite food?

My current food obsession is seaweed salad, particularly from Sam’s Sushi in Ballard.

12. If you were stranded on an island, what one thing would you want to have with you?

A library. (Is that cheating? I don’t care.)

13. Talk about one training moment you’d like to forget?

It was a webinar in which I lost my Internet connection two minutes into the program. Fortunately, I was on phone audio, but I had to fly blind on the visuals, asking my co-presenter to advance the slides and relay the audience responses. It was in a virtual fog.

14. How did you get into this line of work?

A midlife crisis that prompted me to scan the horizon of possibilities. When my attention fell on the library option, something inside said, “that’s it!”

15. What is the best part of your job?

Being in the fellowship of the amazing and energizing people who work in libraries.

16. Why should someone else follow in your shoes?

Because my job is stimulating and full of opportunities to learn and stretch.

17. Sushi or hamburger?

Sushi—without hesitation.

18. Windows or Mac?

Started on Mac. Converted to Windows. Hope to be platform ambidextrous eventually.

19. What one person in the world do you want to have lunch with and why?

John Perkins (author of Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, among other titles). I would like to explore with him how libraries fit into his visions for global change.

20. What cell phone do you have and why?

I love the form factor of my 5-year-old Motorola A630, but it is a feeble toy for a hyper-connected society. I’m in the market for a smartphone.

Betha Gutsche

Betha Gutsche has been a virtual librarian ever since receiving her MLIS from the University of Washington Information School. Immersed in the online community of WebJunction, she has cultivated community connections through forums, live online events, and writing stories about the library community. She has delved into e-learning design, curriculum development, needs assessment, and all things connected to social learning in the online world. Betha is the editor-in-chief of the Competency Index for the Library Field. She is now the manager of Project Compass, a program working with public libraries to augment their service to communities impacted by tough times. Underneath it all, Betha is an artist and loves to raise awareness of visual literacy and introduce people to the power of image.

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Tufte the Magnificent

April 30, 2009 By

I finally seized the opportunity to see Edward Tufte deliver his one-day workshop Presenting Data and Information. Due to his rockstar reputation, I had some overblown expectations—something more theatrical, with flashy graphics, head stands, perhaps a light show? I spent the first two hours feeling a bit let down until I realized how antipodal his message is to the marketing flash of someone like Seth Godin. Tufte’s presentation is all about delivering substantive content that is cognitively engaging—an approach that he modeled expertly, sans bells and whistles. While I had overestimated Tufte’s histrionics, he did not underestimate my (his audience’s) intelligence.

The workshop is directed more toward those in the business world who need to present data and information to address engineering problems, inform budget decisions, and the like. However, I found a couple of take-aways for trainer-facilitators.

1. The Super Graphic (or Return of the Handout)

There is a tendency (especially in online learning) to reduce data and information to a minimal amount per screen, or to stretch data sets out over a series of screens. This is driven necessarily by the compact pixel real estate of the computer monitor, but the outcome is to shrink information toward meaninglessness or to confound the viewer’s cognitive ability to make comparisons and draw conclusions by scattering the inputs and forcing super-human acts of memorizing.

Enter the SUPER GRAPHIC! This is a printed, efficiently annotated graphic, dense with data, legal size or larger, that allows the learner to scan the entirety of an information set, make comparisons from proximal visual, numerical and textual information, and derive informed, self-propelled conclusions. This kind of information presentation could/should accompany most online training. Many courses include downloadable handouts of resources as more of an addendum than an integral part of the learning. Why not design a course around a super graphic, using the online portion to direct the learner’s attention, inject probing questions, and allow interactions to demonstrate the successful intake of knowledge?

2. Give the learner time to think

Several times during the workshop, Tufte asked the audience to study a data set or super graphic in one of his books, which we all had stacked in front of us. And then he stopped talking. Attention was not focused on the stage but on the pages of our books. There were some low murmurs of people sharing observations but the room of 400+ was otherwise quiet. This went on for five minutes—an eternity of “dead air” in broadcast parlance.

This was an aha! moment for me. Not only is it okay to give learners some studying-thinking time during instruction, it empowers them to absorb, reflect, and contribute to the formation of knowledge. It allows real learning to take place. Isn’t that more important than filling up every second of audio space?

Do I recommend going to see Tufte’s presentation next time he’s in your neighborhood? Sure! Yes, you can buy all the books for approximately half the price of the workshop, but you would miss the directed tour through the material and you would miss Tufte’s modeling of effective delivery.

Betha Gutsche

Betha Gutsche has been a virtual librarian ever since receiving her MLIS from the University of Washington Information School. Immersed in the online community of WebJunction, she has cultivated community connections through forums, live online events, and writing stories about the library community. She has delved into e-learning design, curriculum development, needs assessment, and all things connected to social learning in the online world. Betha is the editor-in-chief of the Competency Index for the Library Field. She is now the manager of Project Compass, a program working with public libraries to augment their service to communities impacted by tough times. Underneath it all, Betha is an artist and loves to raise awareness of visual literacy and introduce people to the power of image.

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