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Celia Rabinowitz's avatar

I have been a librarian for almost 30 years. This is the best, and most exciting, description of the process of how we want to help students practice the craft of reading, thinking, and writing that I have ever read. I think I call census reading the hunter-gatherer approach. Collect lots of stuff, read it, and hope it creates an argument. It starts with "I need information on." I ask students to start with: What do I know about this? What do I want to know? Why? Thank you for a great start to my day!

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LeAnne LB's avatar

I have an exercise with my college creative nonfiction classes where students have to find online a library book they want to use in an essay. Then during class we all go to the stacks, and they learn the next step is to browse the titles around the one they originally wanted; many end up checking out a book other than (or in addition to) the one they walked in expecting to get. I can totally see assigning this essay alongside this exercise when we're back together in person. Love love love it :)

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