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The library profession has made big advances in advocating for information literacy. High-profile initiatives, such as ACRL's comprehensive strategies, have helped attract the attention of teachers, administrators, and policy-makers. The University of California Academic Senate recently endorsed information literacy as a vital issue. In this article, the author argues that relationship building is crucial for success in pushing the information literacy paradigm. There are compelling reasons to regard communities of practice as new zones for innovative reference and instruction, particularly as online learning matures within higher education. Just as digital technologies tend to converge, reference and teaching are converging and becoming more immersive. Furthermore, the author provides two strategies which will trigger some strategic thinking that may help immerse oneself in one's user communities--one is new and trendy, the other is old and dull. In summary, the author believes that information literacy as a movement depends just as much on relationships as it does on policy statements and resolutions.

Although it is pretty easy to find colleagues who will express fatigue or frustration about the constant need for libraries to prove their value proposition, there is also an upside to the exercise of crafting a message that justifies librarians' mission. The catch is that however good their crafted message may be, they must forget about ever finishing their dog-and-pony show once and for all. Since information professionals live on the front lines of disruptive technology, they are subject to the force of digital convergence, which is forever pushing knowledge workers closer together and challenging them to rethink what they do. The sheer cascade of new technologies throughout the workplace, the entertainment sphere, and society in general requires constant review of their top goals, how they frame them to their users, and what "deliverables" they rely upon to build an evidence-based record of their relevance. And then there is the future. They must search not only for this year's value proposition but also next year's, and for the year after that. Debating about the profession's value and place in organizations and society is an effort well spent. Indeed, the accumulated wisdom gained from conducting the search for the current value proposition provides foundational learning for a successful library career. With that in mind, the author is going to hearken back to some of his favorite value propositions and see if they retain their rhetorical power. He will conclude with an assessment of the most intriguing strategies librarians might use to craft compelling value points during this digitally accelerated era.

Building a social media profile itself is a rewarding experience for digital librarians, but there is another aspect to social media immersion, and it is a powerful tool for the profession. As librarians establish expert status in the use of popular tools such as Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and WordPress, they can add training and even product development to their rosters of services. Three local examples of successful new media endeavors at the author's organization that prove this point are presented. And importantly, they also suggest that, although bold ideas are terrific, they may face a short life span if the new work is unsustainable. As simple and fun as social media is, it does represent another layer of work that goes on top of everything else. Digital librarians have an opportunity to make that workflow manageable--and when they do so, they became organizational change agents on the front lines.

Social media now offer a fresh opportunity to enliven the learning process. But to gain traction, they will have to prove their relevance. Librarians are quite vocal in advocating for the preservation of human interaction around digital media; one might say that it is their charge to be certain that the human factors within digital libraries are not lost. The challenge librarians face is to develop social media applications that will grab the attention of advanced students, increasing the prospects for fellowship and community, instead of operating as distractions. Graduate students learn effective research techniques from their advisors, and they must use widely divergent information resources--many of which are managed by the library. Yet social media are not fully mainstreamed into research portals, even though the liveliness that these media foster could vastly improve the basic research experience. In this article, the author suggests three strategies librarians might try to extend their reach as social media advances within the academy. He follows these with a recent "from the trenches" story that illustrates what librarians have to offer--and why they may find a place at the design table.

The digital era has revolutionized society's perception of space. Even so, against this backdrop, the struggle to preserve and enhance library space is a battle for the hearts and minds of the communities. It is ongoing, and it will never end. In this article, the author explores two characteristics of successful drives to revitalize physical space and offers some strategies for keeping spirits high during the skirmishes libraries are sure to face along the way. He believes that when library physical space is overlaid with a robust digital backbone, it transcends its original purpose and creates endless opportunities for creativity.

Innovations in search and retrieval have provided librarians with some of their most exciting challenges as a profession. Yet even as new tools flood the academic library commons, direct, person-to-person information counseling is still needed, some would say more than ever. Consequently, it can be very useful to study how users conduct new research projects, because such study can help reference providers stay aware of the obstacles that users confront. With that in mind, the author shares a tale of two undergraduate researchers, both very smart and highly engaged, and the paths each took as they conducted large-scale projects in the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment (IRLE) Library. First, the author presents a few general characteristics that are shared by many of the undergraduates he encounters at the University of California-Berkeley.

Successive waves of technology change what is possible in information services, and to stay relevant, information professionals face two challenges. First, they must be willing to learn all about the new tools as they appear. Second, they must learn--or relearn--the crucial characteristics of users. In this article, the author focuses on the second challenge, which is to know how users are adapting, what makes them tick, and what can be done in the local settings to improve their information experience. In the author's opinion, it is equally important to study people as attentively as one studies technology; people are just endlessly fascinating, and the device-technology interface is one of the great stories of one's lifetime. Many people are deeply involved in ongoing survey efforts that may be very large in scale or more focused on local sites. They can draw many conclusions from this growing knowledge base. But despite how useful survey research is, it is no substitute for direct study of the people one works with every day. How can information professionals best expend their energies when it comes to understanding their users? There are many answers to that question, of course. The author has a few favorites that he has grouped into five sections.

The rapidly evolving digital world inspires much use of nautical terminology: (1) navigation; (2) discovery; (3) the voyage; and (4) the new terrain at the end of the journey. Considering how quickly new technologies are arriving on smartphones, the nautical adventure is continuing at an increased pace. Innovations in basic library services follow big successes in the marketplace, such as blogs, microblogs, and social media domains. Although they look much the same as they have for the past 10 years or so, large-scale library utilities include new functionalities and links to worlds of related services (print on demand, book paging, book buying, full text, etc.). As public librarians find themselves sailing through a digital ocean that is awash in new tools, the best rule of navigation is to serve user communities as technology evaluators--applying only the tools that are most appropriate to a given situation. Such critical evaluation helps them stay on course. In this article, the author shares his thoughts on how to use digital tools in creative (and low-cost) ways to create a digital library--or even a full-blown social community--that was built around local history.