Special Collections librarians, indeed all librarians, are not merely lovers of rare books and Dewey; we are not merely wearers of glasses and tweed. Just as the ring was precious to Gollum, so too is the process of acquiring skills and using them precious for librarians. We are expert at knowing how to learn new skills and adapting said skills for our needs. We embody the student when we learn new subject matter and skills. This paper discusses how librarians are adept at acquiring knowledge and skills and then investigates how we take that learning experience and use it to form a learning process for the user. In addition this paper describes how the user can then adapt this process for subsequent learning experiences. This paper is based on my personal experiential learning journey in the health sciences following a Twitter exchange.

1. Gollum and the Librarians:
What is Really Precious
A&SL Annual Conference | 11 February 2016
Elaine Harrington | Special Collections Librarian
University College Cork

2. Weird Mathematical Notation?
For more see: http://www.libfocus.com/2015/06/hslg-2015-conference-athlone-1415-may.html

3. Gollum & the Ring
Slide Credit: Palo. ‘The Promise 11 May 1909.’ Flickr. https://flic.kr/p/941EQj

4. Learning A Skill

5. Learning to Learn
The extent to which an individual can recognise and
acknowledge the limitations of his/her current
knowledge, skill and competence and plan to
transcend these limitations through further learning.
Learning to learn is the ability to observe and
participate in new experiences and to extract and
retain meaning from these experiences.
Slide Credit: Kennedy, Declan, Aine Hyland & Norma Ryan. “Learning outcomes and competences (B 2.3-3).” Learning
Outcomes, Skills and Competences. Bologna Archive. Journal of the European Higher Education Area. (2009): 4.

6. Uncharted Territories
Slide Credit: William Beauford. Map of Cork City, 1801. UCC Library.

7. Barriers to Learning
Slide Credit: http://www.newstalk.com/Page-Not-Found:-the-internets-best-error-pages

8. Opportunities

9. Expectations
Slide Credit: http://approachanxiety.com/2011/11/what-success-looks-like/

10. Feel the Fear & Do It Anyway
Title of Slide Credit: Niamh Walker-Headon

11. Community of Learners

12. What Did I Value Most
Which learning outcome is the one thing that
students would retain from this course after
leaving?
Could I honestly say that I spent the most amount
of time in the course teaching to the goal I valued
most?
Slide Credit: Bass, Randy. “The Scholarship of Teaching: What’s the Problem?” Creative Thinking About
Learning & Teaching February 1999 1.1
For more see: http://www.slideshare.net/conulacil/venn-diagrams-when-special-collections-meet-information-
literacy-elaine-harrington-ucc

13. Changing a Learner’s World

14. Be Future Ready
Slide Credit: Darwin, Charles. “Tree of Life.” On the Origin of Species…

15. Where We’re Going…
I will go on adventuring, changing, opening my
mind my eyes, refusing to be stamped and
stereotyped.
Virginia Woolf, “Sunday October 29th
1933.”

16. Credits
Slide 4
Palo. ‘The Promise 11 May 1909.’ Flickr. Accessed 5 Feb 2016. https://flic.kr/p/941EQj
Slide 5
Kennedy, Declan, Aine Hyland & Norma Ryan. “Learning outcomes and competences (B 2.3-3).” Learning Outcomes,
Skills and Competences. Bologna Archive. Journal of the European Higher Education Area. (2009): 4.
Slide 6
William Beauford’s 1801 map of Cork City.
Slide 7
“Page Not Found: The Internet’s Best Error Pages.” Newstalk 106-108FM 13 Aug 2013. Accessed 2 Feb 2015.
http://www.newstalk.com/Page-Not-Found:-the-internets-best-error-pages
Slide 9
Disco, Eric. “What Success Looks Like.” Approach Anxiety.com. 7 Nov 2011. Accessed 2 Feb 2016.
http://approachanxiety.com/2011/11/what-success-looks-like/
Slide 10
Title taken from Niamh Walker-Headon’s presentation “Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway!” LIR Annual Seminar 2014.
Slide 12
Bass, Randy. “The Scholarship of Teaching: What’s the Problem?” Creative Thinking About Learning & Teaching
February 1999 1.1
Slide 14
Darwin, Charles. On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or, the Preservation of Favoured Races
in the Struggle for Life. London: John Murray, 1859.
Slide 15
Woolf, Virginia. A Writer’s Diary: Being Extracts From the Diary of Virginia Woolf. London: Hogarth, 1975, p. 206.