Hi! My name is Lane Wilkinson, though my friends call me “Wilk”. We’re friends, right? I mean, if you cared enough to click on the ‘About’ link you must be at least somewhat interested in being friends. After all, friendship begins with caring. You know what? Let’s just cut to the chase and be friends already, we’ll seal the deal with a bro-grab.
Oh. That’s right. How can we awkwardly hug if you don’t know where I live? Well, I’m a Reference and Instruction Librarian at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. I moved to the ‘Noog in 2009 after spending my formative years in Hamtramck, Michigan with my beautiful wife Khristy, where we attended the graduate Philosophy program at Wayne State University.
I won’t bore you with the details (rhymes with “mob jarket”), but I switched to Library and Information Science when I got my Master’s in Philosophy. The choice just made sense. As an adjunct philosophy instructor at Wayne State, Michigan-Dearborn, and other colleges, I really loved teaching Freshman-level classes, but I was increasingly frustrated by the terrible research skills I was encountering. I wanted to help these kids out. As a philosopher, I was keenly interested in the philosophy of information. Being a librarian seemed to allow me to address all of this and more. So, I suckered the school into giving me an MLIS in 2008.
Anyway, now I’m living the dream in Chattanooga, Tennessee and I’ve got a beautiful and wicked-smart lady by my side as we attempt to deal with these two tiny dudes who eat all our food and don’t pay rent. I love my job and I work with the most innovative and dedicated group of librarians this side of the Mississippi. This blog is just a place for the idle musings of a philosophically inclined reference librarian. I can’t guarantee that you’ll agree with everything I write on this blog, but that’s not the point of blogging anyway, now is it?
liam & eliot
khristy & cecilia
Hi Lane, I don’t know if this is a good place to connect, but I attended your program at the Texas Library Association Annual Conference in Houston last month. I didn’t take great notes, because I was hoping you would post your power point. I didn’t see it on the handouts list, Might you be able to send it to me? You can take out the photos…I’m mostly interested in your definition, and the pillars (I’ve forgotten some of them). email me at sbickley(at)delmar.edu. Many thanks. This is a way for the library to use the buzzword to get a little respect. Sally
Hi Sally! Here’s a link to the presentation on Slideshare: http://www.slideshare.net/lanewilkinson/tx-la-conference-2012-final
Thanks for attending! Houston was great!
[...] Lane Wilkinson muses on ethical library service, or as I like to call it, “Why we can’t just give you the answer”: Basically, we teach at the reference desk because we have a librarian’s commitment to provide access to information conflicting with a professional commitment to honor our student’s external relationships. Teaching a student to look-up an article is, quite simply, just our way of circumscribing what we can’t do. [...]