Community Engagement: Inspiring Insights & Stories
“The City Library is a dynamic civic resource that promotes free and open access to information, materials and services to all members of the community to advance knowledge, foster creativity, encourage the exchange of ideas, build community and enhance the quality of life.” Imagine having a client, a homeless person, quote the library’s mission to you. Inspiring? You haven’t heard anything yet! Josh Hanagarne believes in curiosity, questions, strength, and that things are never so bad that they can’t improve. At an imposing 6’ 7”, Josh is a performing strong man (he ties horseshoes in knots!), bookish nerd, devoted family man and a twitchy guy with Tourette Syndrome. Hear Josh’s entertaining stories about libraries and engagement and be ready to return to your library or information service, no matter what type it is, inspired and renewed.
Josh Hanagarne’s Closing Keynote address begins on Wednesday, October 30, 2013 at 3:30PM Pacific time and will be streamed right here.
Reading and writing are doomed. Literacy as we know it is over. Welcome to the post-literate future. From the perspective of a literate person, the idea of a post-literate world seems frightening. It isn’t. At least it needn’t be.
To understand the future of the library, we must look beyond its walls, to the tools and contexts–both physical and digital–where learning takes place. In school, where the disruptive innovations of open access and online courses are changing the architecture of education, the “embedded librarian” and the “single search box” aren’t just nice ideas: They’re mission-critical. And, in society, where citizens don’t know how to search, who to trust, or what to believe, our failure to advance information literacy threatens the very fabric of civilization.