Tuesday, August 05, 2008

WPA-Denver: Working with Librarians

The first session I attended at Denver included a presentation by Sara Jameson, the current acting WPA at Oregon State University.  I have a special place in my heart for OSU because I grew up on that university (my pops taught there for 30+ years).  Anyway, I was excited to see Sara’s presentation not just because she works at OSU, but also because she’s worked extensively with Michael Faris, a queer comp colleague of mine.  This was a great way to start off the conference.

While Sara had a bunch of great material and ideas, the one that resonated most deeply with me was her ongoing collaboration with Anne-Marie Deitering.  This is one example of their work: a piece about embedding information literacy in FYC.  As I see it, this kind of collaboration across disciplines and departments is exactly what we, as compositionists, should be doing.

Given the current pace for tech development, the flurry of new online tools, and the overwhelming tides of information, there is no way we can be experts at everything.  Therefore, it behooves us to not just work with people to get things done; collaboration, in and of itself, seems like one of the best and most efficient ways to harness …

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