7 1/2 Lifelong Learning Habits

As part of the Jacksonville Public Library's Learning 2.0 course requirements, I've set up this blog and this entry will deal with the 7 1/2 Habits of Highly Successful Lifelong Learners. The Habits are:

Habit 1: Begin with the end in mind
Habit 2: Accept responsibility for your own learning
Habit 3: View problems as challenges
Habit 4: Have confidence in yourself as a competent, effective learner
Habit 5: Create your own learning toolbox
Habit 6: Use technology to your advantage
Habit 7: Teach/mentor others
Habit 7 ½: Play

The most challenging for me will be the first one: Begin with the end in mind. While I know that I'm taking this course to become familiar with "what's out there", I'm not sure how I'll be using this knowledge or where that learning will take me. Blogging is one example. I think that it's much like keeping a diary or a journal. The last time I tried to discipline myself to write something every day was in junior high school. I did well for the first few months and then my discipline would break down. I've seen a number of blogs by librarians and by ILL staff. Google Alerts mines what's out there and sends me alerts with links to web pages and blogs about Interlibrary Loan. What I see is ranges from very scholarly musings to items that have me thinking that these people have way too much time on their hands.

The easiest habits are the remaining 6 1/2 habits:

• One of the attractions of being a librarian was that I was always going to be learning something new and that what I had already learned -no matter how insignificant it may seem on the surface-invariably became valuable and helped me in my work. It wasn't just a matter of accepting responsibility for my learning. It was a matter of learning to assimilate all sorts of information.
• I learned early on to view problems as challenges and as having some solution.
• I have confidence in my learning abilities; my chosen profession is tailor-made for a lifelong learner.
• I find that toolbox I use as a librarian is helpful to me as a learner.
• Using technology to my advantage is not just a good habit, it's a means to survival.
• I share what I've learned with others because that was the work culture when I first came to JPL and worked in General Services. General Services had a very collegial atmosphere; my colleagues were my instructors and I was theirs. We were open to learning from one another. A frustrating barrier to encouraging a similar culture of shared information is staff aren't fully open to new information; they cut others off with an impatient "Oh, I know all about that" so they miss gaining a deeper understanding of a subject and discourage mutual learning opportunities.
• The very easiest habit would be play. When we first started using computers, we were encouraged to play Solitaire to hone our mousing skills. When the Internet first came on the scene, we didn't have much opportunity for instruction on its use. We learned as we went along and that took the form of looking up things that interested us. I joined a mystery readers' listserv. It not only helped my in my work but I learned about Internet resources beyond those associated with mysteries because the posts often went off-topic.

I've been in this profession a while. Some of my younger colleagues would claim that I've been here since dinosaurs roamed the book stacks but it hasn't been quite that long. Saber tooth tigers and woolly mammoths, maybe; not dinosaurs. I've seen colleagues leave the profession because they felt that the advent of technology meant that the very reason they got into the profession (helping people find the resources they need) was disappearing. Had they stayed beyond that awkward learning and adjustment period, they might have discovered that technology was just another tool and that our customers' need for their help and how they went about helping them wasn't disappearing. It was just changing.