LINQing librarians for better practice: usingslackto facilitate professional learning and development

Questions learned: Considering geocultural context within public librarian professional development

“…Case in point, one LINQ participant reflected that public librarians are so busy that they "get to the point where they don't even remember what they know" ("Yasmin," 9 HSPLS Inquiry Forum participant, 2016). Thus, the LINQ method was designed to be non-intrusive of worktime by employing synchronous online collaborative workspaces, like Slack, so that librarians can communicate with one another at their own pace, on their own time, in real-time within work time (Irvin et al, 2018;Irvin & Reile, 2020). Time was discovered to be a crucial element of the LINQ model.…”

“…To facilitate the small group ethos of the LINQ model, we distilled lingering questions from the previous LINQ groups (practitioner inquiry is often iterative) into three themes: knowledge, culture, and practice. We chose these themes because the earlier HSPLS group often mentioned these three areas when considering their librarian practices (Irvin et al, 2018).…”

“…One of the beautiful aspects of Hawaiian culture is that it centers storytelling and knowledge sharing as integral to relationship building (de Silva, 2019). Given this cultural value in Hawai'i, it was no wonder that the administrative level of the Hawaii State Public Library System is demonstrably well connected with their librarians (Irvin et al, 2018). However, to consider the geographical challenges of the Hawaiian Islands, with six islands spread across over 300 miles of ocean, an early question for this research was, do the librarians in Hawai'i work together as 'ohana?…”

“…Houtman posits that in this 21st century, LIS's ideas about literacy and learning are transforming because new technologies like social media impact how we think, read, interact, and learn. This is why in LINQ, we actively engage with new technologies to learn how online literacy practices contribute to librarian practice in the library, or not (Irvin & Reile, 2018;Irvin & Reile, 2020). The LINQ method challenges notions of marking librarian identity and practice with the library as space, place, and building.…”

“…Likewise, librarians are often taught some form of reflective activity during library school, with some librarians continuing that practice (e.g., journaling) throughout their careers. However, when reflective professional development is done collectively within a community of practice, the outcomes for a holistic development of professional identity can occur (Irvin & Reile, 2018;Stornaiuolo et al, 2019;Mehra, 2022).…”