From ‘Design Thinking’ to ‘Design Knowing’: Reconceptualizing Librarianship as a Design Discipline

Recorded on Thursday, May 12th 2016, listen to this webcast presentation and discussion with Rachel Ivy Clarke, Ph.D. candidate at the University of Washington Information School. Although librarianship is often traditionally framed as a science, librarians have always been designers: creators of tools and services (everything from indexes to curricula to storytimes) that connect people with information. But librarians have never really explicitly conceptualized their work as design work or viewed themselves as designers. Recent years have seen an upsurge of interest in applying “design thinking” to library work, but librarianship also aligns with “design knowing”—foundations of knowledge in design that differentiate it from science. Join us as we learn from Rachel Ivy Clarke as she discusses the theoretical underpinnings that distinguish design knowledge from scientific knowledge and how it is relevant to research, teaching and practice in librarianship.

Speaker

Formerly the cataloging librarian at the Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising, Rachel Ivy Clarke is currently a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Washington Information School. She holds a BA in creative writing from California State University Long Beach and an MLIS from San Jose State University.

Listen to the recording here.

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