Blog Post #5
While culinary topics can be studied online and read about in books, without hands-on experience an individual is simply an armchair gourmand, not a passionate home cook, or PHC. Cooking is the core activity of the hobby and must be learned by doing. Cox et al. explain Lloyd’s 2009 study of emergency service workers by stating “learning occurs when ideas from books are tested out in practice through bodily action (2017, p.391)”. I assert that this also applies to the embodied knowledge, corporeal learning, and education by observation that is essential to the leisure career of a PHC. This presents an interesting problem when we compare the need for experiential learning to the book-centered environment of a conventional library. Traditionally, PHCs have not been frequent users of the culinary sections of libraries. They have relied on personal cookbook libraries and online sources for recipes, have taken cooking classes at cooking schools, and have attended cookbook signings at bookstores. The public library system’s efforts to increase visitation from the information community of PHCs has been a catalyst for innovative programming, and diversified services.
I found it valuable to examine Booth’s factors of learning (2011, p.43) in order to analyze the types of learning environments and teaching practices that are most effective for the unique needs of PHCs, and to synthesize these ideas with real-life examples of culinary library programming.
Memory comes to play when a PHC remembers a lesson learned from a previous attempt at a similar dish, or tries to recreate the taste of a treasured food from their past. Experienced cooks bring their culinary memory with them every time they enter the kitchen, it an invaluable tool of sensory and physical experience. Libraries have effectively utilized the allure of memory by holding cooking contests that are nostalgic and/or culturally relevant to their particular communities. The Pima County Library held a gingerbread house contest (2019), the Napa County Library held a pozole contest (Sestito, 2016), and the Farmington Public Library held a Navajo fry-bread contest (Landry, 2015).
Prior knowledge is essential to the PHC; recipes are inherently incomplete, requiring fluency in culinary vernacular, and the understanding that additional steps are often necessary but omitted from the text. As Tomlinson states in his study of recipes, “A recipe in a cookbook is embedded in a nest of assumptions, prior cultural and technical knowledge, connections between types of instructions, and the ability to bridge all of these so that the recipe can be followed (1986, p.205)”. Most PHCs learn how to navigate these peculiarities by observing others cook their way through recipes; for example, I learned how to fold in the cheese from my mother as a child. Libraries have addressed gaps in prior knowledge by providing live and recorded cooking demonstrations, as well on-site and virtual hands-on cooking classes (Peterson, 2020).
PHCs are defined by their high level of intrinsic motivation; they are willing to go to great lengths to learn something new (Knopp, 2011, p.42). This is advantageous for libraries, programming that sparks the interest of PHCs is likely to be well-attended. Libraries that host celebrity chefs for demonstrations (Morgan Hill Times Staff, 2017), and lectures by food historians (Friends of the Knoxville Public Library, 2020) have been successful. However, a little extrinsic motivation can also be helpful to get patrons into the library. The Winter Park Public Library held Iron Chef style cooking battles, challenging contestants to harvest vegetables and herbs from the Library’s garden boxes as ingredients for the contest (2016). The Johnson County library created a well-attended program, Books and Butchers (Urban Libraries Council, 2013), that gave patrons a chance to observe an entire pig carcass being broken down, a highly unusual display for a public library (to put it mildly). The “wow factor” of this program demonstrates that thinking far outside of the box can draw a crowd. The chance for a good meal and conviviality has driven the success of programs such as Stephenson Memorial Library’s cookbook challenge; patrons made recipes out of a chosen cookbook, and brought the completed dishes to the library for a potluck (Steenson, 2015).
The teaching environment is the factor of learning that is most easily controlled by libraries; holistic site management can lead to improvements in the learner’s zone of proximal development (Booth, p.40). When libraries add commercial kitchens to their facilities, opportunities increase exponentially for culinary instruction (Peterson, 2016). The expansion of seed library sections (Runyon, 2013), library community garden plots (Lenstra, 2020), and culinary tool lending (Grillo, 2019) helps to re-frame the public library as a space for food and cooking.
I am inspired by the public library’s ability to pivot in order to fill an emerging information need, I can’t wait to see what kinds of new culinary programs appear in 2021.
References
Booth, C. (2011). Reflective teaching, effective learning: instructional literacy for library educators. American Library Association.
Cox, Andrew M, Griffin, Brian, & Hartel, Jenna. (2017). What everybody knows: embodied information in serious leisure. Journal of Documentation, 73(3), 386–406. https://doi.org/10.1108/jd-06-2016-0073
Friends of the Knoxville County Library (2020). Michael W. Twitty. http://www.knoxfriends.org/news-events/michael-w-twitty/
Grillo, E. (2019, September 16). Baking isn’t hard when you’ve got a library card. Eater. https://www.eater.com/2019/9/16/20861011/public-library-cake-pans-on-loan-baking
Knopp, M. (2011). Information needs, preferences, and behaviors of home cooks. Library and Information Research, 35(109), 40–54. https://doi.org/10.29173/lirg465
Landry, A. (2015, October 29). Farmington public library holds first frybread cook-off. Navajo Times. https://navajotimes.com/ae/community/looking-for-the-very-best/
Lenstra, N. (2020, August 13). Community gardens are cropping up at public libraries everywhere. Shareable.https://www.shareable.net/community-gardens-are-cropping-up-at-public-libraries-everywhere/
Morgan Hill Times Staff (2017, January 26). Chef Yan to host free cooking demo at MH library. Morgan Hill Times. https://morganhilltimes.com/chef-yan-to-host-free-cooking-demo-at-mh-library/
Peterson, J. (2016, March 3). Library kitchens and cooking programs. WebJunction. https://www.webjunction.org/news/webjunction/library-kitchens-and-cooking-programs.html
Peterson, J. (2020, May 19). Social library, cooking edition. WebJunction. https://www.webjunction.org/news/webjunction/social-library-156.html
Pima County Library (2019, December). Gingerbread house contest. https://pima.bibliocommons.com/events/5dd80f107af2762400871106
Runyon, L. (2013, February 2). How to save a public library: Make it a seed bank. NPR.
Sestito, M. (2016, January 30). Pozole contest draws diverse crowd. The Napa Valley Register. https://napavalleyregister.com/news/local/pozole-contest-draws-a-diverse-crowd/article_6234be02-0c3d-5ab3-9747-77e691c549ae.html
Steenson, J. (2015, November 19). Program model: Cookbook Challenge. Programming Librarian. https://programminglibrarian.org/programs/cookbook-challenge
Tomlinson, G. (1986). Thought for Food: A Study of Written Instructions. Symbolic Interaction, 9(2), 201–216. https://doi.org/10.1525/si.1986.9.2.201
Urban Libraries Council (2013). Books and butchers. https://www.urbanlibraries.org/innovations/books-and-butchers
Winter Park Public Library (2016, April). Iron Chef: Garden grown. https://www.wppl.org/iron-chef-garden-grown