I’m participating this year in AcWriMo, which is a month of focused academic writing work inspired by NaNoWriMo.

I’m doing this work with support from coach Katy Peplin at Thrive PhD and the AcWriMoments series stewarded by Margy Thomas and Helen Sword.

My current project is something I’m calling The Report: a culminating document sharing what we’ve learned over the course of the grant I’ve been working on with the Connected Learning Lab for the past couple of years.

My first draft was just a very straightforward recitation of the challenges library staff face when they try to implement connected learning and the strategies library staff experienced with connected learning have used to address those challenges.

After I shared that draft with my colleagues, we determined that the challenges and strategies should be integrated.

In trying to write the next draft, I found that all the pieces of the earlier draft were connected in ways that made it hard for me to parse out a linear way to write about them.

So I made a concept map and shared that with my colleagues, asking for their help in creating a structure for the next draft. One of my colleagues reorganized the concepts, creating a clear structure that I thought would work well for the next draft.

So I started the next draft. But as I was writing that, I found that the structure we’d determined for one section didn’t really make sense for that section. So I met with the colleague who has the strongest understanding of the work to talk through the idea of changing the structure of that one section.

After talking with her, I was able to get back to writing.

But all of this revision has been the opposite of flow. Every word felt like I was having to pull up a tree by the roots.

I tend to be a two-draft writer, one draft to get ideas out and then one to make it make sense. I love the feeling of breezily generating new text, something that usually happens after I’ve dug deep into a topic and created a solid and super-detailed outline.

I don’t like revising but if I want my work published anywhere besides my blog, I need to get okay with it.

This whole process has reminded me of the last time I had to revise like this. I banged out a draft of the discussion chapter of my dissertation over the course of one week in a dissertation bootcamp so intense that I couldn’t do much writing for the next two weeks because my brain was fried.

I sent that chapter off to my advisor and one other member of my committee and they came back with a gently worded statement that basically came to, there’s really not much here.

They weren’t wrong, and I wonder if I’d written on my own timeline if that chapter draft would have been better.

But I got through the hard work of revising and ended with a discussion chapter that makes me really proud.

I suppose the best way to get okay with something is to do it a lot, so… I should probably do a lot more revising.

Collection Management for Youth: Equity, Inclusion, and Learning

Here’s the publisher’s summary of this book:

With a renewed emphasis on facilitating learning, supporting multiple literacies, and advancing equity and inclusion, the thoroughly updated and revised second edition of this trusted text provides models and tools that will enable library staff who serve youth to create and maintain collections that provide equitable access to all youth. And as Hughes-Hassell demonstrates, the only way to do this is for collection managers to be learner-centered, confidently acting as information guides, change agents, and leaders.

I’m reading an ebook so quotes won’t have page numbers.

⭐ systemic inequalities ⭐

“Advancing equity must be our goal.”

⭐ “Equity means that everyone gets what they need to thrive no matter their identity or zip code. When we focus on equity, our ultimate goal becomes justice.” ⭐ GREAT DEFINITION OF EQUITY

demographic data = useful for trends, not getting to know individual youth & communities

opportunity gap: marginalized youth disproportionately experience it

EVEN IN HIGH-RESOURCE ENVIRONMENTS:

• special ed
• discipline
• school climate

“Libraries are not immune to perpetuating inequities.”

disconnection & exclusion

outsider in the library

behavior control → denied access

LIBRARY MAY BE ONLY SOURCE OF INTERNET ACCESS

< ½ LGBT YOUTH CAN FIND INFO @ SCHOOL

in/accessibility

chilling effect of book challenges

LIBRARY STAFF MUST FACE SYSTEMIC INEQUITIES

GORSKI equity literacy framework

“BE A THREAT TO THE EXISTENCE OF INEQUITY”

1. RECOGNIZE
2. RESPOND → immediate term
3. REDRESS → long-term
4. CREATE & SUSTAIN bias-free & equitable environments & cultures

STRUCTURAL IDEOLOGY MODEL

it challenges:

• deficit view → asset
• paradigm → abundance

DEVELOP COLLECTION POLICIES THAT DON’T REPRODUCE INEQUITIES

Focus on what you CAN DO

MOVE BEYOND MAKING SPACE → YOUTH MUST BE ACTIVE PARTICIPANTS & LEADERS

Other reading notes for this book: Introduction

Collection Management for Youth: Equity, Inclusion, and Learning by Sandra Hughes-Hassell

Here’s the publisher’s summary of this book:

With a renewed emphasis on facilitating learning, supporting multiple literacies, and advancing equity and inclusion, the thoroughly updated and revised second edition of this trusted text provides models and tools that will enable library staff who serve youth to create and maintain collections that provide equitable access to all youth. And as Hughes-Hassell demonstrates, the only way to do this is for collection managers to be learner-centered, confidently acting as information guides, change agents, and leaders.

Roles held by the manager of a learner-centered collection:

• change agent
• leader
• learner
• resource guide

Goals of the learner-centered collection manager:

1. Ground collection development decisions and practices in an equity framework.
2. Adopt a learner-centered model of collection management that guides collection decisions and demonstrates accountability in the learning process.
3. Redefine the role of collection manager to support the concert of library staff serving as a teacher and information guide who actively centers equity in their collection development practices.
4. Apply appropriate strategies and tools for working in the learner-centered, equity-based paradigm that demonstrates knowledge of the learner, recognition of equity issues, familiarity with educational theories, awareness of resources, and attentiveness to the uniqueness of the community the library serves.
5. Form a community of practice that shares responsibility for defining, developing, and evaluating the development and delivery of library resources to facilitate youth learning and advance equity.

The equity framework:

• learner-centered
• library staff as teacher
• library staff as information guide
• educational theories
• unique community
• community of practice

An equitable access environment reflects:

• learner characteristics
• best practices in pedagogy
• changes in resource knowledge base
• partnerships with the broader learning community
• commitment to equitable access

I think between reading a few Gothics (The Fall of the House of Usher, The Turn of the Screw, The Haunting of Hill House, The Hacienda) and watching Mike Flanagan shows, I’ve scratched my Gothic itch and it’s now time for me to turn to cozy reading. And because I’m me, that means cozy fantasy.

I first learned about Cozy Fantasy when I heard about Wyngraf Magazine, which I think I learned about in the Signal Boost section of Alasdair Stuart’s The Full Lid, which I learned about because it was a Hugo nominee for best fanzine. And I was looking at the Hugo nominees because those are the awards from the World Science Fiction Convention aka Worldcon, which is mentioned on Wikipedia’s page on fandom as an early and ongoing convention. (Yes, this is an example of how my web wanderings work and how much I love to live the dream of the 1990s.)

The note about Wyngraf talked about fantasy in the vein of The Hobbit and Redwall and I thought it sounded good and like exactly what I needed in a world that has been both personally and globally terrifying for years.

Cozy fantasy is exactly what it sounds like: a cozy mystery with magic instead of murder. (Some cozy fantasy is also cozy mystery.)

Here are some cozy fantasy titles I’ve read in the past few years:

• Redwall
• The Hobbit (audiobook version narrated by Andy Serkis, highly recommend)
• Howl’s Moving Castle
• Smith of Wootton Major
• Farmer Giles of Ham
• The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches
• Emily Wilde’s Encyclopedia of Faeries (this is included on a lot of cozy fantasy lists but it’s a bit high-stakes for me to think it’s super cozy)
• The House in the Cerulean Sea

I’ve read the first issue of Wyngraf and am a little ways into the second. I believe I’ve read all the flash fiction on their website. I have the other issues, as well as their book of cozy poetry and a book compiling their flash fiction. I own the ebook of Bard City Blues. I’m currently debating whether to also buy the paperback. (Leaning toward yes.)

Cozy is a vibe: good food, good friends, low stakes. Things like opening a coffee shop or hunting for the tavern cat who’s gone missing (he’s fine, just stuck somewhere). It’s the fantasy version of a Hallmark holiday movie.

Want to join me in reading some?

Photo by Pavan Trikutam on Unsplash

I’ve been obsessed with Paris as long as I can remember. Maybe it’s because I was born on Bastille Day. Maybe I read Madeline at an early age. Maybe it didn’t get into full swing until I saw a kid perform Music of the Night from The Phantom of the Opera in full costume at a school concert in fourth grade.

Whatever the origin of this obsession, I feared when I finally got to travel to Paris this past spring as I accompanied my husband on his Fulbright Award travel, I would discover that Paris wasn’t for me. After a long day of travel on the Eurostar from London, carrying full suitcases on escalators and stairs, and going the wrong way on the RER, while my 6 year old complained most of the trip, I was exhausted, sweaty, and cranky.

But when I stepped onto the street out of the RER station, all of that faded into the background. Paris immediately took my breath away. The Hausmann architecture. The lights. The Art Nouveau vibes of the Printemps department store building. I felt like I had found my heart’s true home.

We stayed in a nearby garden city, Le Vésinet, for two weeks. Every day, when we walked home from the train station after going into the city, we stopped in at a boulangerie that was on our way home and picked up fresh baguettes and pain de campagne. We went to the Jardin du Luxembourg and my son sailed a boat on their big pond. We toured the Palais Garnier, where The Phantom of the Opera is set.

The whole place exceeded my every expectation and I eagerly look forward to going back.

I’ll be leading and participating in a roundtable at the Connected Learning Summit at the end of October. Here’s the description of my session:

Over the past several years, the Institute of Museum and Library Services has funded multiple projects aimed at promoting connected learning through libraries and building staff capacity to integrate CL into library teen services. In this session, leaders from four of these projects (Transforming Teen Services for Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion; Transforming Teen Services: Train the Trainer; Future Ready with the Library: Connecting with Communities for College and Career Readiness Services; and ConnectedLib) will share insights from their work and discuss what the next steps are for sparking and sustaining connected learning through libraries. Roundtable participants will discuss the importance of relationships in and beyond the library for building connected learning-based library services, the role of library administration in creating the conditions in which connected learning services thrive, and how communities of practice can support library staff in collective knowledge-building. Roundtable participants will share their insights, discuss key questions about the future of connected learning through libraries, and have a facilitated conversation with attendees.

My fellow roundtablers include Linda Braun of The LEO Group, Mega Subramaniam of the University of Maryland College of Information Studies, Katie Davis of the University of Washington Information School, and Leah Larson of the University of Minnesota Extension. Amanda Wortman, Research and Evaluation Manager at Digital Promise, contributed to this work, too, though she has a conflict for the roundtable time.

Here are more details about the summit:

Registration is open for the 2023 Connected Learning Summit, happening virtually October 26-28! Join a gathering of innovators harnessing emerging technology to expand access to participatory, playful, and creative learning.

With a unique focus on cross-sector connections and progressive and catalytic innovation, our summit brings together leading researchers, educators, and developers. Our mission is to fuel a growing movement of innovators harnessing the power of emerging technology to expand access to participatory, playful, and creative learning. We offer a variety of sponsorship opportunities for organizations to demonstrate their commitment to connected learning while aligning with their goals and initiatives.

Our program will start on October 26 with a pre-conference day for conversation around topics of shared interest, including affinity group meetings, as well as meetups for Research Paper and Showcase contributors. The Main Conference, on October 27-28, will include keynote talks from Dr. Luci Pangrazio and Diana Nucera AKA Mother Cyborg, plenary sessions, and workshops and roundtables organized by CLA partners. The majority of the event will be programmed during work hours in North America, but will also include some programming in the morning hours of Asia and Australia.

CLS2023 will be entirely online, using the Whova platform. Don’t miss out on early access to our platform starting in early October, with showcase and research paper presentations available for viewing prior to the summit and session sign-ups starting in mid-October!

For more information, please visit our website and sign up for updates about the Connected Learning Summit.

About the Connected Learning Summit

CLS was first convened in 2018 with the mission to fuel a growing movement of innovators harnessing the power of emerging technology to expand access to participatory, playful, and creative learning. It was launched as a merger between three community events with this shared vision and values: the Digital Media and Learning Conference, the Games+Learning+Society Conference, and Sandbox Summit. With a unique focus on cross-sector connections and progressive and catalytic innovation, the event brings together leading researchers, educators, and developers. The hosting and stewardship of the event has continued to evolve in tandem with the changing conditions of the global pandemic. The UC Irvine’s Connected Learning Lab, MIT’s Scheller Teacher Education Program and Education Arcade were the founding hosts of the event. As we have moved online and have become a more international event, we are expanding our roster of partners and hosts.

Originally posted on LinkedIn:

One of the tools in my toolbox for carrying me through times between big projects is freelance writing. As I expect to ramp this piece of my work up when my current contract (which is full-time work) ends, I’ve been revisiting my resources to help me with this.

Here are 3 books I use for this:

📕 The Freelance Academic by Katie Rose Guest Pryal
📗 How to Get Started in Freelance Science Writing by Sheeva Azma
📘 Win at Freelance Writing by Gertrude Nonterah, Ph.D.

What are your favorite resources?

I’ve been experimenting with posting on LinkedIn more frequently and while some of my posts there are posted at my domain first, others are specific to LinkedIn. But in the interest of owning my data (unlike Starfleet, who does not own Data), I thought I’d repost those here at my site.

Originally posted on LinkedIn:

Hi there!

I have a lot of new followers, so I thought it’d be a good time for an introduction post.

👋🏻True things about my life that shape my work: I’m a mom of an almost-7-year-old. I live with multiple chronic illnesses. I’m the daughter of parents who have multiple chronic illnesses between them.

💗 Work that lights me up: facilitating learning, either for young people or adults who work with them, and fostering creativity (for anybody).

📆 My perpetual 5 year plan: do work that’s interesting and important. Right now, that’s research to help library staff leverage youth interests for relationship-building and creating academic, civic, and professional opportunities for youth.

◀️ Previously, on Kimberly’s work: blogging about qualitative research methods, researching how cosplayers interact with information, making university makerspaces more inclusive, training librarians and educators on racial equity, leading university outreach to K-12 educators, being librarian for middle schoolers, teaching Latin.

❓ What’s next? Hoping to be lower school librarian at my kid’s school, so I’m refreshing my knowledge on collection management and ed tech. Continuing to freelance for businesses interested in qual research, K-12 outreach, and making the Internet better.

🛝 For fun: Always reading (on a romance tear since May), playing video games, especially couch co-op with my kid & spouse. In pre-kid & pre-pandemic times, community theater and improv.

🫵🏻 Your turn! What should I know about you?

When we stayed in Le Vésinet, a suburb of Paris, there was a boulangerie on our walk home from the train station. Every time we went into the city, we would stop there and grab a baguette (and usually some other things, too) to have back at the house. I recently got homesick for Paris and found Sophie Nadeau’s blog post, Here’s How to Recreate the Paris Experience in Your Home.

This morning, in order to follow her recommendation to eat a typical French breakfast, I went to Guglhupf, which makes excellent baguettes (but is technically a German bakery) and bought 2.

I don’t know if I’ll polish one off today or not.

CW: Pet death

When we brought our kitties home last week, Wednesday had a little nasal discharge. The person at the front desk was all, “Yeah, that’s an upper respiratory infection, they’re super common in shelters, just get her to the vet and they’ll give you some antibiotics.”

I couldn’t get her into the vet until Monday. By Monday, she had lost a third of her bodyweight. She was severely dehydrated. She was constipated. The vets gave me a bunch of (not inexpensive) meds and gave her subcutaneous fluids. Later in the day, I got the discharge notes and they said I should bring her back the next day for more fluids if she didn’t improve in the night.

I took her back, they gave her fluids, and I asked if we could give her fluids at home. They said yes, told me what to do to feed her from a syringe (it’s called trickle feeding), and told me they didn’t know if she was going to make it.

Yesterday, W’s mom came over and we gave her fluids twice. I fed her with a syringe every two or three hours. I gave her all her meds.

This morning, M went in to check on the kittens and when I went in, I saw that she had died in the night.

This is, of course, very sad. But it’s also something I’ve been prepared for for a few days. I know I did everything I could for her. I also know, especially after consulting with the vet when I took her for fluids a couple day ago, that the shelter did wrong by her by not only not treating the respiratory infection but also by going ahead and giving her a bunch of vaccines and spaying her while she was sick.

I know the shelter is struggling, too, so I’m not angry.

But damn. What a set of events to conspire against a little kitten.

I only knew her a little and her personality faded as she got sicker, but she was a fierce, adventurous girl.

On the other hand, her brother Midnight, who also came home with an upper respiratory infection but much less severe, is thriving. We’ll be giving him lots of love and attention.