Four fantastic links I want everyone to read:
Proceedings of Codcon 2012
A virtual, hypothetical, parodic library conference held by the Library Society of the World on Twitter and Friendfeed on Wednesday, May 16, 2012.
No, we can’t do it all by Meredith Farkas
"So many of us struggle with determining priorities in teaching. Few of us have a workload that would allow us to do everything we would like to do. We hear stories about embedded librarian programs, librarians who were able to co-grade student papers with a disciplinary faculty member, libraries that have co-taught entire classes, etc. and we think: wow, I’d love to do that. But can we?"
A failure of imagination – the problem with format neutrality
"I often hear librarians promoting their 'modern librarian' credentials by saying 'it's about the information, not the container'. By this they tend to mean that [...] we should not be concerned about in which formats information is available, as long as it is available somehow. But what if it is about the container?" Read more to inspire your imagination.
Collective action for ebook collections
"I still agree with the notion that unless ebook publishing and distribution changes, libraries are still screwed. So let's change things. Here are three things *you* can do." Read more to improve ebook access.
Showing posts with label infolit. Show all posts
Showing posts with label infolit. Show all posts
Monday, 4 June 2012
Tuesday, 1 November 2011
Online tutorials #lianza11 #rs2
Fiona Salisbury La Trobe University
More than a quiz: a new approach for empowering first year university students to navigate scholarly information
Curriculum renewal 2009-2012 organised around undergrad curriculum design (integrating into every subject), defining assessment standards (early feedback for students), curriculum mapping, coordinating first-year services.
Created two learning objects for information literacy.
#1 inquiry/research quiz (designed to be delivered in LMS) with videos, questions - if they get it wrong the avatar explains the answer and links to more information. Each question addresses a learning outcome based on NZ standards.
8 subjects trialed the quiz - all different approaches, but all completed in first weeks and then revisited later. Sometimes voluntary; sometimes integrated as a hurdle; sometimes the mark was recorded and low marks would go on to an Academic Skills workshop. 3000 students completed it with final results of 80-90%. (Multiple tries were allowed.) Where voluntary, completion rate was 30-60%.
For many, trial and error without guidance is a frustrating and negative experience.
Very good feedback from students (eg going back to re-view videos when stuck searching) and academics (re student learning outcomes, quality of referencing). Has let library break complex skills down into manageable chunks for first-year students. No dictating to academics exactly how they do it, and no academics asking them for endless customised courses. Time student spends depends on their prior knowledge (15min - 5 hours, mostly 1 hour).
Want to continue developing learning objects to support infolit outcomes. Role would be less about customised classes for first year and more supporting staff.
Meg Cordes
Elements in common? Antipodean online tutorials and overseas’ literature
Online tutorials - usually interactive teaching tools delivered over the internet. Can be flash, video, text-based (older)... Universities moving towards screencapture and interactive and away from text-based.
Gap Hypothesis - that published literature not used by tutorial developers - specifically researching the hypothesis that there was no significant difference in features being used in tutorials developed based on literature.
Most common content: assistance ('help', where else you can go), audio, interactivity, modularity, navigation aids. Considered the principle of least effort - does modularity have an effect on how easy a tutorial is to use?
Frequency of elements in the literature - eg interactivity comes up over 70% of the time, modularity and navigability over 60%. Frequency in tutorial sample is 40%, 30% and 90% respectively. However didn't reach statistical significance of literature, and had limited search to library journals. Mostly studied uni libraries (not polytech libraries).
More than a quiz: a new approach for empowering first year university students to navigate scholarly information
Curriculum renewal 2009-2012 organised around undergrad curriculum design (integrating into every subject), defining assessment standards (early feedback for students), curriculum mapping, coordinating first-year services.
Created two learning objects for information literacy.
#1 inquiry/research quiz (designed to be delivered in LMS) with videos, questions - if they get it wrong the avatar explains the answer and links to more information. Each question addresses a learning outcome based on NZ standards.
8 subjects trialed the quiz - all different approaches, but all completed in first weeks and then revisited later. Sometimes voluntary; sometimes integrated as a hurdle; sometimes the mark was recorded and low marks would go on to an Academic Skills workshop. 3000 students completed it with final results of 80-90%. (Multiple tries were allowed.) Where voluntary, completion rate was 30-60%.
For many, trial and error without guidance is a frustrating and negative experience.
Very good feedback from students (eg going back to re-view videos when stuck searching) and academics (re student learning outcomes, quality of referencing). Has let library break complex skills down into manageable chunks for first-year students. No dictating to academics exactly how they do it, and no academics asking them for endless customised courses. Time student spends depends on their prior knowledge (15min - 5 hours, mostly 1 hour).
Want to continue developing learning objects to support infolit outcomes. Role would be less about customised classes for first year and more supporting staff.
Meg Cordes
Elements in common? Antipodean online tutorials and overseas’ literature
Online tutorials - usually interactive teaching tools delivered over the internet. Can be flash, video, text-based (older)... Universities moving towards screencapture and interactive and away from text-based.
Gap Hypothesis - that published literature not used by tutorial developers - specifically researching the hypothesis that there was no significant difference in features being used in tutorials developed based on literature.
Most common content: assistance ('help', where else you can go), audio, interactivity, modularity, navigation aids. Considered the principle of least effort - does modularity have an effect on how easy a tutorial is to use?
Frequency of elements in the literature - eg interactivity comes up over 70% of the time, modularity and navigability over 60%. Frequency in tutorial sample is 40%, 30% and 90% respectively. However didn't reach statistical significance of literature, and had limited search to library journals. Mostly studied uni libraries (not polytech libraries).
Friday, 28 October 2011
Links of Interest 19/10/2011 - infolit & student success; serials; conferences
The Swiss Army Librarian posts a regular "Reference Question of the Week". One of the latest covers using file conversion websites to help a desperate patron who needs to print out a file in a format that the library doesn't support.
Sense and Reference discusses three recent blogposts on libraries getting rid of books to create spaces.
The effect of library instruction on student success
Three C&RL papers:
Sense and Reference discusses three recent blogposts on libraries getting rid of books to create spaces.
The effect of library instruction on student success
Three C&RL papers:
- The Academic Library Impact on Student Persistence: "a change in the ratio of library professional staff to students predicts a statistically significant positive relationship with both retention and graduation rates." (Note that they show correlation, not causation; in their discussion they're inclined to suspect that the effect of more library professional staff is an indirect one.)
- Measuring Association between Library Instruction and Graduation GPA: "if more than one or two library workshops were offered to students within the course of their program, there was a higher tendency of workshop attendance having a positive impact on final GPA. The results indicate that library instruction has a direct correlation with student performance, but only if a certain minimum amount of instruction is provided."
- Why One-shot Information Literacy Sessions Are Not the Future of Instruction: A Case for Online Credit Courses: "Researchers analyzed the pre- and post-test scores of students who received different types of instruction including a traditional one-shot library session and an online course. Results show that students who participated in the online course demonstrated significant improvement in their test scores compared to the other students. This study shows freshman students' needs for more comprehensive information literacy instruction."
- Jenica Rogers names names of vendors with annoying practices. Some vendors responded well; some badly. Jenica posted another followup on Vendors that delight me.
- SCOAP3 is an initiative to set up a consortium that redirects library funds from paying for closed access High Energy Physics journal subscriptions to funding these journals to be made open access. The FAQ goes into more detail about how the model will work.
- LIANZA 2011 starts on Sunday - #lianza11 tweets from all attendees will be captured in a set of CoverItLive sessions and I'll be liveblogging as much as my wrists allow
- the worldwide online Library 2.011 conference will follow, running from November 2 - 4, with sessions held in multiple timezones.
Thursday, 22 September 2011
Thoughts on "Cheat's Guide to Project Management"
Sally Pewhairangi's workshop "Cheat's Guide to Project Management" covered the planning stages of managing a project in a way that made it clear why the planning is so vital.
We started by discussing reasons projects fail -- one of those brainstorming sessions everyone always has plenty of material for and which can get downheartening. But Sally concluded this section by saying that while we can't always make these problems disappear, we can manage them; and looking back at my notes now I can see that the vast majority of the problems we talked about would be much alleviated by the process the rest of the session modelled.
This, much abbreviated and paraphrased, was:
One of the other fascinating things came during the "silent brainstorm" section that is, everyone scribbling out all the tasks they could think of in silence. No talking meant no-one dominating or being shy, and no derailing into knocking ideas prematurely. And this really brought out the different strengths of different team members - when we categorised the tasks as a team we could see one person focusing more on communicating with stakeholders, one person on technical aspects of the project. Come to think about it, this could be a good way of deciding who should be responsible for managing what.
In short, a fantastic workshop which has given me a whole new perspective on planning and, more practically, the tools to do it systematically.
Plus, the template we worked through was so useful in breaking things down, guiding us through, and giving a real sense of accomplishment at the end, that I'm now pondering how something similar might work in an infolit class: guiding students through thinking about what information they need and where to find it. I'm thinking something like:
2. What kind of information do you need?
3. Who would have written about it? When? Where would they have published?
4. What words would they have used to talk about it?
5. What sources would hold the publications from #3? What search features are available?
and then some stuff on analysing results, facets, pearl-growing, etc. (I may abbreviate the above to try and fit the whole thing to a single A4 sheet for a one-hour class; or may leave it at two sides for the class I get two hours with.) I won't have a chance to test this out probably until next year so would be happy to hear any ideas in the meantime!
We started by discussing reasons projects fail -- one of those brainstorming sessions everyone always has plenty of material for and which can get downheartening. But Sally concluded this section by saying that while we can't always make these problems disappear, we can manage them; and looking back at my notes now I can see that the vast majority of the problems we talked about would be much alleviated by the process the rest of the session modelled.
This, much abbreviated and paraphrased, was:
- Find out/figure out how the project fits into the institution's goals. A project to merge serials into the main collection will go differently if the aim is to free up space or to aid findability. If push comes to shove, which consideration will win?
- Define the heck out the project. Make sure everyone's on the same page about exactly what is to be achieved, by when, and with what resources. What's included/excluded? Get it in writing and signed off by everyone to prevent confusion, co-option, mission creep, the sudden discovery that you have no budget, etc.
- Break the project down into tasks and subtasks so you know everything that has to be done and don't get surprised.
- Work out who's doing which subtasks by which dates.
One of the other fascinating things came during the "silent brainstorm" section that is, everyone scribbling out all the tasks they could think of in silence. No talking meant no-one dominating or being shy, and no derailing into knocking ideas prematurely. And this really brought out the different strengths of different team members - when we categorised the tasks as a team we could see one person focusing more on communicating with stakeholders, one person on technical aspects of the project. Come to think about it, this could be a good way of deciding who should be responsible for managing what.
In short, a fantastic workshop which has given me a whole new perspective on planning and, more practically, the tools to do it systematically.
Plus, the template we worked through was so useful in breaking things down, guiding us through, and giving a real sense of accomplishment at the end, that I'm now pondering how something similar might work in an infolit class: guiding students through thinking about what information they need and where to find it. I'm thinking something like:
Plan your search
1. What’s your topic?2. What kind of information do you need?
Well-tested research <-----------------------------------------------------------> Cutting-edge knowledge
Summarised information <------------------------------------------------------------> Detailed information
Layman’s level <---------------------------------------------------------------------------> Research level
Other:
3. Who would have written about it? When? Where would they have published?
Kinds of people | Date-range published | Kind of publication |
4. What words would they have used to talk about it?
Keywords | Synonyms - any other words that mean the same |
5. What sources would hold the publications from #3? What search features are available?
Database or other source | Available search features |
and then some stuff on analysing results, facets, pearl-growing, etc. (I may abbreviate the above to try and fit the whole thing to a single A4 sheet for a one-hour class; or may leave it at two sides for the class I get two hours with.) I won't have a chance to test this out probably until next year so would be happy to hear any ideas in the meantime!
Tuesday, 23 August 2011
Links of Interest 23/8/2011 - What Students Don't Know (and bonus marketing)
This has exploded onto the various networks I follow, so it seems a good time to gather some other links with it:
What students don't know gives an overview of findings from an ethnographic study of how students at various Illinois universities research, and is a vital read for anyone in the academic environment working with students.
Related links:
Unrelated links, on marketing:
What students don't know gives an overview of findings from an ethnographic study of how students at various Illinois universities research, and is a vital read for anyone in the academic environment working with students.
Related links:
- Project home
- The study will be published as a monograph.
- A similar study in 2007 Studying Students: The Undergraduate Research Project at the University of Rochester is also available (including a free online version).
- In 1993 Barbara Fister wrote the still-relevant and -mindblowing article Teaching the Rhetorical Dimensions of Research, reading which made me modify a class I was preparing for mid-way through pulling the powerpoint together.
- Ibid, 2011, Search: How Libraries Do it Wrong draws links between problems with how we teach search to students and with how we interact with academics and "the small things, the seemingly trivial things, that can drive people to find ways around libraries."
Unrelated links, on marketing:
- Gavia Libraria writes about all those times people say "So you're a librarian? So... you... shelve books?..." and suggests Representing Ourselves by telling people what we do (in elevator pitch format - she gives examples) rather than waste time attempting to argue about stereotypes.
- Mr Library Dude collects a bunch of Social Media Ideas & Prizes for Libraries from various libraries.
Thursday, 2 June 2011
Links of interest 2/6/11 - collaborating with students
Reading my RSS feeds sometimes a theme emerges from the chaos - this time it was ways in which academic libraries have collaborated with students to enhance both library services and student learning.
Research
Students Studying Students: An Assessment of using Undergraduate Student Researchers in an Ethnographic Study of Library Use "reports on the use of undergraduate students enrolled in an Applied Anthropology course as researchers for a library use study at Brigham Young University's Harold B. Lee Library".
Similarly, Brian Mathews writes about Exploring graduate student use patterns of the UCSB Library.
Experimentation in an Academic Library: A Study in Security and Individual Student Engagement
"The Special Collections and Rare Book Department at Western Michigan University collaborated with a student worker to develop a system to improve security and employee performance. The student was taking a course in psychology that required him to develop a workplace behavioral intervention with a client and modify an important behavior for employee performance."
Library instruction
Building a Participatory Culture: Collaborating with Student Organizations for 21st Century Library Instruction - literature review and summary of some events where the library hooked into student association events, or initiated their own in collaboration with the student association, to teach library skills.
Displays
Brian Mathews again: Reframing the Concept of Plagiarism, Or What I Learned From Banksy - on art projects in the library.
Communication
A Friendfeed discussion on Our library posts a newsletter called "Stall Times" in our bathrooms. A student using the pseudonyms "Mike Koch" and "Hugh Jass" recently made a parody called "Small Times." Our creative manager contacted him and invited him to collaborate. The conversation doesn't go further in depth but does include links to archived bathroom newsletters from this and other libraries.
Back to Brigham Young University - they're also famous for their parody of the Old Spice commercial, made by the Harold B. Lee Library Multimedia Production Crew, consisting of two full time employees and ten student employees - see their behind the scenes.
There's lots of scope for collaboration with journalism, media, music and film students. Language students could translate subtitles. History/literature/etc students could work with digitisation projects. Computer science students could work on components for open source library software. The sky's the limit...
Research
Students Studying Students: An Assessment of using Undergraduate Student Researchers in an Ethnographic Study of Library Use "reports on the use of undergraduate students enrolled in an Applied Anthropology course as researchers for a library use study at Brigham Young University's Harold B. Lee Library".
Similarly, Brian Mathews writes about Exploring graduate student use patterns of the UCSB Library.
Experimentation in an Academic Library: A Study in Security and Individual Student Engagement
"The Special Collections and Rare Book Department at Western Michigan University collaborated with a student worker to develop a system to improve security and employee performance. The student was taking a course in psychology that required him to develop a workplace behavioral intervention with a client and modify an important behavior for employee performance."
Library instruction
Building a Participatory Culture: Collaborating with Student Organizations for 21st Century Library Instruction - literature review and summary of some events where the library hooked into student association events, or initiated their own in collaboration with the student association, to teach library skills.
Displays
Brian Mathews again: Reframing the Concept of Plagiarism, Or What I Learned From Banksy - on art projects in the library.
Communication
A Friendfeed discussion on Our library posts a newsletter called "Stall Times" in our bathrooms. A student using the pseudonyms "Mike Koch" and "Hugh Jass" recently made a parody called "Small Times." Our creative manager contacted him and invited him to collaborate. The conversation doesn't go further in depth but does include links to archived bathroom newsletters from this and other libraries.
Back to Brigham Young University - they're also famous for their parody of the Old Spice commercial, made by the Harold B. Lee Library Multimedia Production Crew, consisting of two full time employees and ten student employees - see their behind the scenes.
There's lots of scope for collaboration with journalism, media, music and film students. Language students could translate subtitles. History/literature/etc students could work with digitisation projects. Computer science students could work on components for open source library software. The sky's the limit...
Friday, 21 January 2011
Links of interest 21/1/2011
Library instruction
I've recently been pondering the idea of database searches as an experiment - hypothesis, experiment, evaluate, modify the hypothesis and try again. This might make a useful way to introduce sci/tech students in particular to the idea that you're not going to necessarily get your best results from your first search; I'll have to see how they receive it when I've actually got a class to test it on.
Incorporating Failure Into Library Instruction (from ACRLog) discusses the pedagogy of learning by failure and talks about times when it's more or less suitable for library instruction.
Anne Pemberton's super-awesome paper From friending to research: Using Facebook as a teaching tool (January 2011, College & Research Libraries News, vol. 72 no. 1 28-30) discusses Facebook as a useful teaching metaphor for databases.
Don't Make It Easy For Them (from ACRLog) - with caveats in the comments that I think are at least as important as the main post.
Databases
Heads they win, tales we lose: Discovery tools will never deliver on their promise - and don't miss the comment thread at the bottom of the page, which segues into the dilemma of increasingly expensive journal bundles and possible (vs viable) solutions.
Research data
There's a whole D-Lib Magazine issue devoted to this topic this month.
Web services
The Web Is a Customer Service Medium discusses the idea that "the fundamental question of the web" is "Why wasn't I consulted?" - that is, each medium has its niche of what it's good at and why people use it, and webpages need to consider how to answer this question.
Library Day in the Life
Round 6 begins next week, in which librarians from all walks of librarianship share a day (or week) in the life.
I've recently been pondering the idea of database searches as an experiment - hypothesis, experiment, evaluate, modify the hypothesis and try again. This might make a useful way to introduce sci/tech students in particular to the idea that you're not going to necessarily get your best results from your first search; I'll have to see how they receive it when I've actually got a class to test it on.
Incorporating Failure Into Library Instruction (from ACRLog) discusses the pedagogy of learning by failure and talks about times when it's more or less suitable for library instruction.
Anne Pemberton's super-awesome paper From friending to research: Using Facebook as a teaching tool (January 2011, College & Research Libraries News, vol. 72 no. 1 28-30) discusses Facebook as a useful teaching metaphor for databases.
Don't Make It Easy For Them (from ACRLog) - with caveats in the comments that I think are at least as important as the main post.
Databases
Heads they win, tales we lose: Discovery tools will never deliver on their promise - and don't miss the comment thread at the bottom of the page, which segues into the dilemma of increasingly expensive journal bundles and possible (vs viable) solutions.
Research data
There's a whole D-Lib Magazine issue devoted to this topic this month.
Web services
The Web Is a Customer Service Medium discusses the idea that "the fundamental question of the web" is "Why wasn't I consulted?" - that is, each medium has its niche of what it's good at and why people use it, and webpages need to consider how to answer this question.
Library Day in the Life
Round 6 begins next week, in which librarians from all walks of librarianship share a day (or week) in the life.
Wednesday, 20 October 2010
Links of interest 20/10/2010
QR Codes
(What's a QR Code? See QR Codes: An Overview.)
Google has launched goo.gl, a URL shortening service (like tinyurl.com, bit.ly, etc) which as a bonus gives you a QR code: eg http://goo.gl/Xxyl links to this blog and http://goo.gl/Xxyl.qr gives you a pretty QR code you can paste onto a poster. Shortly thereafter, bit.ly joined in the fun.
On the downside I recall reading (somewhere on the internet; it sounded plausible at the time) that, cool as QR codes sound, since they're mostly being used by advertisers, actual real people aren't really all that keen on using them.[citation needed] On the upside, I've also heard anecdotes from people who do use them. And in any case they don't cost any money and almost zero time.
Library tutorials
(What's a QR Code? See QR Codes: An Overview.)
Google has launched goo.gl, a URL shortening service (like tinyurl.com, bit.ly, etc) which as a bonus gives you a QR code: eg http://goo.gl/Xxyl links to this blog and http://goo.gl/Xxyl.qr gives you a pretty QR code you can paste onto a poster. Shortly thereafter, bit.ly joined in the fun.
On the downside I recall reading (somewhere on the internet; it sounded plausible at the time) that, cool as QR codes sound, since they're mostly being used by advertisers, actual real people aren't really all that keen on using them.[citation needed] On the upside, I've also heard anecdotes from people who do use them. And in any case they don't cost any money and almost zero time.
Library tutorials
- An old post I just came across: Subversive Handouts: One Librarian’s Secret Weapon - a sneaky way to get some extra face-time with a class.
- When an imploring librarian is not enough - a sneaky way to get students to actually want to use Web of Science etc rather than Google Scholar
- Dramatic Growth of Open Access
- The Economics of Open Access points out that "Every time a researcher or teacher cannot get to the information she needs to do her work, or must obtain it by labor-intensive means like interlibrary loan or direct contact with the author, time and knowledge, which are both worth money, are wasted; open access reduces that loss."
- Open access: the world is your consortium sees open access as a new solution for the inability of library consortia, let alone individual libraries, let alone individual scientists, to be able to afford access to journals.
- Almost Halfway There: an Analysis of the Open Access Behaviors of Academic Librarians "presents results of a study of open access publishing and self-archiving behaviors of academic librarians" and discusses "several strategies to encourage academic librarians to continue embrace open access behaviors".
Thursday, 26 August 2010
Links of interest 26/8/10
Scandal du jour (aka the power of social media)
JSTOR's new interface made searches default to covering their entire database - so results might include articles students didn't have access to on JSTOR and which wouldn't even be linked via OpenURL to the library's subscription in another database. (Meredith Farkas describes the problems neatly.) Librarians complained loudly on blogs, JSTOR's Facebook page, and elsewhere, and a day later JSTOR has announced that they'll change the default while they continue work on OpenURL.
Tools
WolframAlpha has added widgets that focus on a specific kind of data and can be embedded into a webpage by copying and pasting the code. Categories cover all kinds of subject areas - some widgets might be relevant in a subject guide. (You'd need to add a new rich text box, then select the plain text editor and copy/paste in the embed code from WolframAlpha.)
Librarian as resource
University of Michigan Library's search results now bring back subject librarians as well as relevant databases, catalogue items, subject guides, institutional repository hits, and external websites. Their blog about this links to some examples.
eBooks and compatibility
Jason Griffey writes a clear explanation about why ebook filetypes and digital rights management means that purchasing an ebook doesn't mean you can read it on any old e-reader.
Library instruction
Cooke, R., Rosenthal, D. Students Use More Books After Library Instruction: An Analysis of Undergraduate Paper Citations College and Research Libraries (preprint)
JSTOR's new interface made searches default to covering their entire database - so results might include articles students didn't have access to on JSTOR and which wouldn't even be linked via OpenURL to the library's subscription in another database. (Meredith Farkas describes the problems neatly.) Librarians complained loudly on blogs, JSTOR's Facebook page, and elsewhere, and a day later JSTOR has announced that they'll change the default while they continue work on OpenURL.
Tools
WolframAlpha has added widgets that focus on a specific kind of data and can be embedded into a webpage by copying and pasting the code. Categories cover all kinds of subject areas - some widgets might be relevant in a subject guide. (You'd need to add a new rich text box, then select the plain text editor and copy/paste in the embed code from WolframAlpha.)
Librarian as resource
University of Michigan Library's search results now bring back subject librarians as well as relevant databases, catalogue items, subject guides, institutional repository hits, and external websites. Their blog about this links to some examples.
eBooks and compatibility
Jason Griffey writes a clear explanation about why ebook filetypes and digital rights management means that purchasing an ebook doesn't mean you can read it on any old e-reader.
Library instruction
Cooke, R., Rosenthal, D. Students Use More Books After Library Instruction: An Analysis of Undergraduate Paper Citations College and Research Libraries (preprint)
(They compared classes which received library instruction with identical classes which didn't.)"In Fall 2008, students from first-year Composition I and upper level classes at Florida Gulf Coast University participated in a citation analysis study. The citation pages of their research papers revealed that the students used more books, more types of sources, and more overall sources when a librarian provided instruction. When these results were compared to those produced by students in upper level classes (all of whom received instruction), it was discovered that as the class level increased, the number of citations and the percentage of scholarly citations generally increased and there was a high preference for books from all disciplines, especially history."
Wednesday, 11 August 2010
Links of interest 11/8/10 - open access, accessibility, statistics and more
Open Access
- the Creative Commons NZ mailing list.
- The State Services Commission has released the New Zealand Government Open Access and Licensing framework.
- In a brown-bag lunch conversation about open access yesterday a bunch of us also talked about the digitisation of the AJHRs, the Directory of Open Access Journals, ways/issues with getting more open access content in our catalogue and/or Summon, and a bunch of other things.
- Char Booth writes about e-texts and library accessibility including a great quote that "ebooks were created by the blind, then made inaccessible by the sighted."
- NZETC has just posted about the 1064 works in DAISY format available in their collection for people with print-related disabilities. (DAISY = "Digital Accessible Information SYstem")
- Dave Pattern at U of Huddersfield blogs about how "non- and low-usage of library services/resources [...] relates to final grades"
- Some results from extending the Angers university library's opening hours - in French and in Google Translate's English
- Stats from the Toulouse library's standard OPAC vs its mobile OPAC - in French and Google Translate's English.
- And Meredith Farkas writes about "the unsupported interpretations" librarians often make based on our statistics
- The first year of research on the Researchers of Tomorrow (pdf) study finds that "in broad approaches to information‐seeking and use of research resources, there are no marked differences between Generation Y doctoral students and those in older age groups. Nor are there marked differences in these behaviours between doctoral students of any age in different years of their study. The most significant differences revealed in the data are between subject disciplines of study irrespective of age or year of study."
- Assessments of Information Literacy collects links to infolit tests, assessments, rubrics and tutorials available online.
- Christina Pikas lists a Rundown of the new [database etc] interfaces this summer. There were some surprises, including a ScienceDirect/Scopus merger apparently due August 28...
Wednesday, 21 April 2010
Reference / Info-literacy links of interest 21/4/10
Reference
Singer, Carol A. (2010) Ready Reference Collections: A History. RUSQ 49(3)
Ready reference collections were originally formed, and still exist, because they perform a valuable function in providing convenient access to information that is frequently used at the reference desk. As library collections have been transformed from print to electronic, some of the materials in these collections also have inevitably been replaced by electronic resources. This article explores the historical roots of ready reference collections and their recent evolution.
A post on the Oregon Libraries Network notes some differences between the old and new RUSA Guidelines for Implementing and Maintaining Virtual Reference Services.
Library instruction classes
A Librarian's Guide to Etiquette suggests: A librarian should begin each library instruction class by plucking headphones from students' ears, confiscating cell phones, and searching all bookbags for contraband food. If there is any time remaining, show them all how to become fans of the library's new Facebook page.
In Getting Students to Do the Reading: Pre-Class Quizzes on Wordpress (at the Chronicle of Higher Education) Derek Bruff cites the idea that learning involves both transfer of information and assimilation of that information, and that as the assimilation is the hard part it should be done in class time while the transfer is handled before class through readings (or videos). He then discusses how he's tackled the problem of motivating students to actually do their pre-class readings by creating pre-class quizzes -- the answers to which he can then skim before class, and alter his lesson plan if students are finding some topic easier or harder than anticipated.
In the Library with the Lead Pipe is a group blog that posts longer, heavily referenced articles. In Making it their idea: The Learning Cycle in library instruction Eric Frierson quotes the idea that people learn better by putting the pieces together for themselves, and discusses ways to use this in library instruction classes, using the topic of "peer reviewed journals" as a case study.
Steve Lawson blogs about Making time at the beginning for questions - starting a library class with the projector off and just chatting informally with the students about their assignments/projects - he says, "It's like a mass reference interview."
For myself, I've had a lot of success with adding more interactivity into classes (even some large ones with 250+ students) but one series of my classes in term 1 turned clunky because (as I discovered too late) when I was chatting with students about what they needed to know for their assignment, none of them bothered to mention that they hadn't actually read the assignment instructions yet.
So for my next class I started off by asking them to explain the assignment to me - fortunately these ones had read it and could talk about it, but my fall-back position would be to stop and give them five minutes to read it, because they're not going to learn anything in class if they don't know why they're being told about it.
I spent the rest of the class alternating between asking them how they go about research and adding other sources/techniques they can use. The students were awesome and the class went like a dream. I used a PowerPoint presentation in edit mode so when I asked a question I could write their answers onto the blank page - colour-coded with white pages for my set-speech stuff, yellow pages for their stuff (and my very occasional additions when they reminded me of something) - and embed it into their subject guide after the class:
What about you: what other techniques have you read about / tried for library tutorials?
Singer, Carol A. (2010) Ready Reference Collections: A History. RUSQ 49(3)
Ready reference collections were originally formed, and still exist, because they perform a valuable function in providing convenient access to information that is frequently used at the reference desk. As library collections have been transformed from print to electronic, some of the materials in these collections also have inevitably been replaced by electronic resources. This article explores the historical roots of ready reference collections and their recent evolution.
A post on the Oregon Libraries Network notes some differences between the old and new RUSA Guidelines for Implementing and Maintaining Virtual Reference Services.
Library instruction classes
A Librarian's Guide to Etiquette suggests: A librarian should begin each library instruction class by plucking headphones from students' ears, confiscating cell phones, and searching all bookbags for contraband food. If there is any time remaining, show them all how to become fans of the library's new Facebook page.
In Getting Students to Do the Reading: Pre-Class Quizzes on Wordpress (at the Chronicle of Higher Education) Derek Bruff cites the idea that learning involves both transfer of information and assimilation of that information, and that as the assimilation is the hard part it should be done in class time while the transfer is handled before class through readings (or videos). He then discusses how he's tackled the problem of motivating students to actually do their pre-class readings by creating pre-class quizzes -- the answers to which he can then skim before class, and alter his lesson plan if students are finding some topic easier or harder than anticipated.
In the Library with the Lead Pipe is a group blog that posts longer, heavily referenced articles. In Making it their idea: The Learning Cycle in library instruction Eric Frierson quotes the idea that people learn better by putting the pieces together for themselves, and discusses ways to use this in library instruction classes, using the topic of "peer reviewed journals" as a case study.
Steve Lawson blogs about Making time at the beginning for questions - starting a library class with the projector off and just chatting informally with the students about their assignments/projects - he says, "It's like a mass reference interview."
For myself, I've had a lot of success with adding more interactivity into classes (even some large ones with 250+ students) but one series of my classes in term 1 turned clunky because (as I discovered too late) when I was chatting with students about what they needed to know for their assignment, none of them bothered to mention that they hadn't actually read the assignment instructions yet.
So for my next class I started off by asking them to explain the assignment to me - fortunately these ones had read it and could talk about it, but my fall-back position would be to stop and give them five minutes to read it, because they're not going to learn anything in class if they don't know why they're being told about it.
I spent the rest of the class alternating between asking them how they go about research and adding other sources/techniques they can use. The students were awesome and the class went like a dream. I used a PowerPoint presentation in edit mode so when I asked a question I could write their answers onto the blank page - colour-coded with white pages for my set-speech stuff, yellow pages for their stuff (and my very occasional additions when they reminded me of something) - and embed it into their subject guide after the class:
What about you: what other techniques have you read about / tried for library tutorials?
Thursday, 25 March 2010
Links of interest 25/3/10
Resources
C-SPAN Video Library "indexes, and archives all C-SPAN programming for historical, educational, research, and archival uses." (Content is primarily US politics but see here for overlap with other subject areas.) All programs since 1987 can be viewed online for free.
Twitter
Following in the popular footsteps of the Fake AP Stylebook Twitter account ("Use a hyphen to join words together, a dash to separate two words that really don't like each other.") come rival accounts Fake AACR2 ("2.17B1. Describe an illustrated item as instructed in 2.5C. Optionally, add woodcuts, metal cuts, paper cuts, etc., as appropriate.") and Fake RDA ("2.3.3 When attempting to parallel title, line title up to proper title, put title in reverse, turn left, shift into drive, turn right.")
Neat stuff
C-SPAN Video Library "indexes, and archives all C-SPAN programming for historical, educational, research, and archival uses." (Content is primarily US politics but see here for overlap with other subject areas.) All programs since 1987 can be viewed online for free.
Following in the popular footsteps of the Fake AP Stylebook Twitter account ("Use a hyphen to join words together, a dash to separate two words that really don't like each other.") come rival accounts Fake AACR2 ("2.17B1. Describe an illustrated item as instructed in 2.5C. Optionally, add woodcuts, metal cuts, paper cuts, etc., as appropriate.") and Fake RDA ("2.3.3 When attempting to parallel title, line title up to proper title, put title in reverse, turn left, shift into drive, turn right.")
Neat stuff
- Embedding chat widgets within EBSCO databases
- Darien [Public] Library offers prizes to Foursquare checkins at their library
- Lincoln University uses their page on Facebook to promote their own Foursquare check-in and to chat with students about famous pranks
- Crowdsourcing: How and why should libraries do it? includes a huge number of examples of successful crowdsourced projects (ie projects where the bulk of the work has been done by individuals of the general public a few bits at a time) and what has made them successful
- Common Craft have made a new "Augmented Reality" video in their "in plain English" series
Thursday, 4 March 2010
Links of interest 4/3/2010
Subject Guides
Springshare have created a Best of LibGuides LibGuide to share ideas about "the best of what the LibGuides system has to offer".
Gale notes on Twitter that "We analyzed search usage growth for 5k libraries; 20% of them use widgets. The libraries using widgets had 60% higher growth." Widgets can be built from their website (among other tools for measuring and increasing usage).
Infolit by video
Using video to address an immediate research need is an answer to a faculty complaint with students not researching broadly enough. The librarian put together a video in 30 minutes, posted it on his blog, subject guide, and course management system, and watched the video stats climb as students watched it.
COPPUL's Animated Tutorial Sharing Project collects video tutorials that can be shared among library systems to avoid reinventing the wheel - including project files so libraries can tweak it to fit their environment. The ones I've seen are licensed with a "share-alike" Creative Commons license (meaning you can use it and change it but you have to license your finished product with the same license). You can browse or search for databases eg JSTOR.
Miscellaneous Web 2.0
7 Things You Should Know About Backchannel Communication: Mostly backchannel communication happens at techier conferences but 7 Things points out that: "Backchannel communication is a secondary conversation that takes place at the same time as a conference session, lecture, or instructor-led learning activity. This might involve students using a chat tool or Twitter to discuss a lecture as it is happening, and these background conversations are increasingly being brought into the foreground of lecture interaction."
10 Technology Ideas Your Library Can Implement Next Week "to start creating, collaborating, connecting, and communicating through cutting-edge tools and techniques".
Measuring the impact of web 2.0 (via a colleague via the LIS-WEB2 mailing list):
Springshare have created a Best of LibGuides LibGuide to share ideas about "the best of what the LibGuides system has to offer".
Gale notes on Twitter that "We analyzed search usage growth for 5k libraries; 20% of them use widgets. The libraries using widgets had 60% higher growth." Widgets can be built from their website (among other tools for measuring and increasing usage).
Infolit by video
Using video to address an immediate research need is an answer to a faculty complaint with students not researching broadly enough. The librarian put together a video in 30 minutes, posted it on his blog, subject guide, and course management system, and watched the video stats climb as students watched it.
COPPUL's Animated Tutorial Sharing Project collects video tutorials that can be shared among library systems to avoid reinventing the wheel - including project files so libraries can tweak it to fit their environment. The ones I've seen are licensed with a "share-alike" Creative Commons license (meaning you can use it and change it but you have to license your finished product with the same license). You can browse or search for databases eg JSTOR.
Miscellaneous Web 2.0
7 Things You Should Know About Backchannel Communication: Mostly backchannel communication happens at techier conferences but 7 Things points out that: "Backchannel communication is a secondary conversation that takes place at the same time as a conference session, lecture, or instructor-led learning activity. This might involve students using a chat tool or Twitter to discuss a lecture as it is happening, and these background conversations are increasingly being brought into the foreground of lecture interaction."
10 Technology Ideas Your Library Can Implement Next Week "to start creating, collaborating, connecting, and communicating through cutting-edge tools and techniques".
Measuring the impact of web 2.0 (via a colleague via the LIS-WEB2 mailing list):
- The Twitter Experience at Chelmsford
- Twittering at Sheffield library
- Birmingham libraries use of Web 2.0
- Case studies/guest blog posts on UKOLN's Cultural heritage blog
- and the Libraries and Web 2.0 wiki
Monday, 14 December 2009
Links of interest 14/12/09
A library in a telephone booth
"Fix Your Terrible, Insecure Passwords in Five Minutes" talks about some common mistakes in creating passwords and suggests techniques for more secure ones.
Customer service
Zabel, D. and L. J. Pellack (2009) First impressions and rethinking restroom questions, RUSQ 49(1) has garnered a number of thoughtful comments, as well as reactions in the biblioblogosphere including:
Via someone I forget, who pointed out that this works perfectly if you replace the word "computer" with "library/catalogue/database/etc": How to help someone use a computer.
Information literacy
Karen Schneider recommends and discusses the Project Information Literacy report Lessons Learned: How college students find information in the digital age (PDF, 3MB).
Digital natives, scholarly immigrants on the ACRL blog discusses some of the findings of the Journal of Higher Education article University students' perceptions of plagiarism.
"Fix Your Terrible, Insecure Passwords in Five Minutes" talks about some common mistakes in creating passwords and suggests techniques for more secure ones.
Customer service
Zabel, D. and L. J. Pellack (2009) First impressions and rethinking restroom questions, RUSQ 49(1) has garnered a number of thoughtful comments, as well as reactions in the biblioblogosphere including:
Via someone I forget, who pointed out that this works perfectly if you replace the word "computer" with "library/catalogue/database/etc": How to help someone use a computer.
Information literacy
Karen Schneider recommends and discusses the Project Information Literacy report Lessons Learned: How college students find information in the digital age (PDF, 3MB).
Digital natives, scholarly immigrants on the ACRL blog discusses some of the findings of the Journal of Higher Education article University students' perceptions of plagiarism.
Wednesday, 4 November 2009
Links of Interest 4/11/09
Resources
New Zealand Electronic Text Centre has posted a list of online texts for current courses at VUW.
The Dept of Internal Affairs has launched Government datasets online, a directory of publicly-available NZ government datasets (especially but not exclusively machine-readable datasets).
Complementary Twitter accounts:
Information Literacy
There was a lot of interest at and after LIANZA09 about the Cephalonia Method of library instruction (basically, handing out pre-written questions on cards to students to ask at appropriate times during the tutorial). A recent blogpost by a librarian worn out from too many tutorials wonders "what if the entire class session consisted of me asking students questions? What if I asked them to demonstrate searching the library catalog and databases?"
Scandal du jour
A document by Stephen Abram (SirsiDynix) on open source library management systems (pdf, 424KB) appeared on WikiLeaks. The biblioblogosphere saw this as evidence of SirsiDynix secretly spreading FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) against their open-source competition. Stephen Abram replied on his blog that it was never a secret paper and he's not against open source software but it's not ready for most libraries. Much discussion followed in his blog comments and on blogs elsewhere; Library Journal has also picked up the story.
For fun
Also at Library Journal, The Card Catalog Makes a Graceful Departure at the University of South Carolina - rather than just dumping it the library is hosting events such as a Catalog Card Boat Race and What Can You Make With Catalog Cards?
Things Librarians Fancy.
Deborah
New Zealand Electronic Text Centre has posted a list of online texts for current courses at VUW.
The Dept of Internal Affairs has launched Government datasets online, a directory of publicly-available NZ government datasets (especially but not exclusively machine-readable datasets).
Complementary Twitter accounts:
- APStylebook (Sample: Election voting: Use figures for totals and separate the large totals with "to" instead of hyphen.)
- FakeAPStylebook (Sample: To describe more than one octopus, use sixteentopus, twentyfourtopus, thirtytwotopus, and so on.)
Information Literacy
There was a lot of interest at and after LIANZA09 about the Cephalonia Method of library instruction (basically, handing out pre-written questions on cards to students to ask at appropriate times during the tutorial). A recent blogpost by a librarian worn out from too many tutorials wonders "what if the entire class session consisted of me asking students questions? What if I asked them to demonstrate searching the library catalog and databases?"
Scandal du jour
A document by Stephen Abram (SirsiDynix) on open source library management systems (pdf, 424KB) appeared on WikiLeaks. The biblioblogosphere saw this as evidence of SirsiDynix secretly spreading FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) against their open-source competition. Stephen Abram replied on his blog that it was never a secret paper and he's not against open source software but it's not ready for most libraries. Much discussion followed in his blog comments and on blogs elsewhere; Library Journal has also picked up the story.
For fun
Also at Library Journal, The Card Catalog Makes a Graceful Departure at the University of South Carolina - rather than just dumping it the library is hosting events such as a Catalog Card Boat Race and What Can You Make With Catalog Cards?
Things Librarians Fancy.
Deborah
Tuesday, 13 October 2009
Here, there and virtually everywhere
library services for distance learners
Anne Ferrier-Watson
abstract (pdf)
[Argh, network cut out in this room.]
History of Virtual Education Reference Desk (VERD)
1997 - BTeaching started distance services
2000 - need to streamline processes so VERD was created
2008(?) - Moodle has taken VERD to a new level
Philosophy to "give students the fishing line, not the fish"
Over 3000 education students are enrolled in online papers
1.75 EFTS supporting VERD. Busier at some times than others.
Asynchronous service - answering Monday to Friday. Many questions asked have been answered before so they've got an ongoing work in progress of making previous answers easy to find
5 sections:
Jing screen capture software - easy to use, free-as-in-beer but not open source.
Feedback from students includes:
"The video instruction is fantastic too as I find it easier to do something if I see it in action."
"now if I forget a step I can use [the online tutorials] to find the right path again"
"you are like the referencing angel"
Can look at individual activity reports so when someone asks a question you can see where they've already looked for help.
Can look at overall activity reports to give an idea of where most activity is happening and most work is best spent.
Q: What's providing the format?
A: Working around the Moodle format. Not actually a fan about the format but it's the best they can do.
Suggestion: Worked with McGovern to create ManyAnswers.co.nz which can be put on your own website. (Me: ? Not sure whether she meant the whole manyanswers service or the platform to support your own FAQ.)
Q: Forums available to all students or just distance?
A: Available to those enrolled in those papers.
Q: Are guides available on public site or just private forums?
A: Some static guides (not interactive) are available on the public website. Looking at redeveloping some of this too.
Q: re answering repeat questions
A: Some refer back to previous answers, some move them into FAQs and refer there.
Anne Ferrier-Watson
abstract (pdf)
[Argh, network cut out in this room.]
History of Virtual Education Reference Desk (VERD)
1997 - BTeaching started distance services
2000 - need to streamline processes so VERD was created
2008(?) - Moodle has taken VERD to a new level
Philosophy to "give students the fishing line, not the fish"
Over 3000 education students are enrolled in online papers
1.75 EFTS supporting VERD. Busier at some times than others.
Asynchronous service - answering Monday to Friday. Many questions asked have been answered before so they've got an ongoing work in progress of making previous answers easy to find
5 sections:
- Request items or information (can fill out a webmail form or ask for help on forums - 7500 views in the last 12 months)
- Library FAQs (started as answers to easy common queries; now starting to use it for standard answers for more complex questions too)
- Help with APA referencing ("our favourite section" - laughter - 2500 views in semester B - a few pdf guides and a link to the forums too)
- Catalogue guides (not high use - many just use it for the link to the library catalogue; starting to think of putting in video tutorials)
- Guide to finding journal articles (high use - includes videos for using ebsco, proquest, indexNZ; also pdf guides to various databases)
Jing screen capture software - easy to use, free-as-in-beer but not open source.
Feedback from students includes:
"The video instruction is fantastic too as I find it easier to do something if I see it in action."
"now if I forget a step I can use [the online tutorials] to find the right path again"
"you are like the referencing angel"
Can look at individual activity reports so when someone asks a question you can see where they've already looked for help.
Can look at overall activity reports to give an idea of where most activity is happening and most work is best spent.
Q: What's providing the format?
A: Working around the Moodle format. Not actually a fan about the format but it's the best they can do.
Suggestion: Worked with McGovern to create ManyAnswers.co.nz which can be put on your own website. (Me: ? Not sure whether she meant the whole manyanswers service or the platform to support your own FAQ.)
Q: Forums available to all students or just distance?
A: Available to those enrolled in those papers.
Q: Are guides available on public site or just private forums?
A: Some static guides (not interactive) are available on the public website. Looking at redeveloping some of this too.
Q: re answering repeat questions
A: Some refer back to previous answers, some move them into FAQs and refer there.
Wednesday, 24 June 2009
Elsevier scandal for 24/6/09 and other links of interest
Not content with publishing fake journals, Elsevier's marketing division recently decided to "offer $25 Amazon gift cards to anyone who would give a new textbook five stars in a review posted on Amazon or Barnes and Noble." Upon exposure, it's now recanted the scheme.
More New Zealand libraries on the social web:
A hilarious and very true rant on attending vendor training sessions; and a more serious post in response on how this applies to the kind of training sessions we give students.
National Library of the Netherlands is to secure long-term preservation of the content of the Directory of Open Access Journals.
More New Zealand libraries on the social web:
- Lincoln Uni Library on Twitter;
- Otago Uni Library on Twitter and showing their Law Library refurbishments on Flickr; Christchurch City Library staff on Flickr (with photos of Paul Sutherland's 50th birthday party).
- Republic Polytechnic Library, Singapore -- lots of space; and
- Hjorring public library, Denmark -- a red ribbon theme flows through the whole building; lots of bright colours and cool spaces; self-checkin.
A hilarious and very true rant on attending vendor training sessions; and a more serious post in response on how this applies to the kind of training sessions we give students.
National Library of the Netherlands is to secure long-term preservation of the content of the Directory of Open Access Journals.
Wednesday, 15 April 2009
Why academic libraries need to be user-centric
It often seems like public libraries are leading the way with user-friendly websites. I think it's too easy for academic librarians to say, "Well, it's different for them: their users are kids and teenagers and the general public. Our users are academically-inclined young adults who should be able to cope with learning the Proper Way of Doing Things."
The problem is the other difference between public library and academic library users: a public library user is a user for a lifetime. An academic library user (barring the few who go on to research and lecturing) is a user for, say, 3-5 years.
Academic library users don't have time to learn how to do things the "Proper Way". They're too busy writing assignments and working to pay for their next electricity bill. And why should we waste our time teaching them the "Proper Way" - only to have to teach the same lessons to the next year's intake, and the next, and the next - when we could just fix our interface to let everyone get on with doing it the Easy Way?
The problem is the other difference between public library and academic library users: a public library user is a user for a lifetime. An academic library user (barring the few who go on to research and lecturing) is a user for, say, 3-5 years.
Academic library users don't have time to learn how to do things the "Proper Way". They're too busy writing assignments and working to pay for their next electricity bill. And why should we waste our time teaching them the "Proper Way" - only to have to teach the same lessons to the next year's intake, and the next, and the next - when we could just fix our interface to let everyone get on with doing it the Easy Way?
Wednesday, 4 March 2009
Tweets on libraries
Gerrit van Dyk comments on some tweets about libraries as (respectively) discussion space and quiet space, and I think these raise a couple of issues for libraries:
It's definitely illuminating seeing what people say about libraries online, though it occasionally feels like stalking. I've got an RSS feed of a search on tweets in New Zealand about libraries (due to the NZ ISP system I couldn't narrow it closer to my region). One recent one that is food for thought: "wondering why i'm being told to take a library course when i have been at uni for 3 years and know how to read a book". Hopefully the library course will answer that question...
- Often libraries do have the discussion areas people want, but people don't know we do! We're not always very good at promoting the resources/services we have. (In a focus group recently, a postgrad student timidly said that it'd be nice if the library could offer a service where if she was stuck on her literature review she could come to us and we'd help her do it. Us reference librarians running the focus group had a hard time not banging our heads on the nearest desk: this is #1 on our job description and she didn't know that's what we're here for!)
- Sometimes we get so focused on a trend (more people want discussion spaces) that we forget that this doesn't mean that everything's completely changed all at once (ie people haven't suddenly stopped wanting quiet spaces). (Last year I made a video with some of my library's students asking them what they liked about using the library, and a startling percentage said what they liked was that it was a nice quiet place to study.)
It's definitely illuminating seeing what people say about libraries online, though it occasionally feels like stalking. I've got an RSS feed of a search on tweets in New Zealand about libraries (due to the NZ ISP system I couldn't narrow it closer to my region). One recent one that is food for thought: "wondering why i'm being told to take a library course when i have been at uni for 3 years and know how to read a book". Hopefully the library course will answer that question...
Tuesday, 3 March 2009
Getting cheered
So my colleague and I got cheered at the end of a library skills lecture to 280 new engineering students last week. Ruling out, for vanity's sake, the possibility that it was because
A bit of background: this lecture was for the first year ("intermediate year") of Engineering students, in their first week ever at university. Latest figure I've heard is that 780 are enrolled; we gave the lecture in three sessions with ~250 students attending each day. The lecture is to support their first assignment, an essay requiring library research which they have a week and a half to write. Anguished quote from the first year this course was offered: "I choose engineering so I wouldn't have to write!" Citing is a completely new concept to 95% of them.
The last two years, we did a powerpoint going through the research process, different kinds of sources, how to evaluate sources including websites, the evils of Wikipedia, etc, and citing.
This year we did three things differently:
(1) Cooperstein, Susan E. and Elizabeth Kocevar-Weidinger (2004). Beyond active learning: a constructivist approach to learning. Reference Services Review 32(2), pp 141-148
PS Of course we're still having to tell half this stuff again and again to people coming to the combo lending/reference desk, and I'm considering how to find physical space for some mini-workshops, but that's par for the course.
- we finished early;
- that corner of the room was watching sports on their iPods;
- the students that way inclined thought I was hot;
- the students the other way inclined thought my colleague was hot...
A bit of background: this lecture was for the first year ("intermediate year") of Engineering students, in their first week ever at university. Latest figure I've heard is that 780 are enrolled; we gave the lecture in three sessions with ~250 students attending each day. The lecture is to support their first assignment, an essay requiring library research which they have a week and a half to write. Anguished quote from the first year this course was offered: "I choose engineering so I wouldn't have to write!" Citing is a completely new concept to 95% of them.
The last two years, we did a powerpoint going through the research process, different kinds of sources, how to evaluate sources including websites, the evils of Wikipedia, etc, and citing.
This year we did three things differently:
- we restructured the powerpoint to start with *their* research process - ie, Google and Wikipedia. We showed how some bad search results come up, eg tipsforsuccess.org, written by a follower of L Ron Hubbard, and I told the story of how Hubbard made a bet at an sf convention that he could create a religion and make a million dollars. (People laughed, it was great.) I showed the Wikipedia page from that Google search - it had some gorgeous orange warnings on it so we talked about those, then looked at the introductory paragraph which had footnotes. (Subliminal introduction to the concept of citing.) Scrolled to the reference list at the bottom of the page which had dictionary entries, books, journal articles, newspaper articles - and segued from *there* into the scholarly research process and the things we hold in the library. And so forth.
- Inspired by Beyond active learning: a constructivist approach to learning(1) we got interactive. We were really dubious about this because a) the class size was 250ish and b) these are engineers, and most engineering classes have mutely resisted interaction. So we made sure the powerpoint would work even if they didn't answer questions. The interaction itself was things like: "So you've got an assignment: where do you start?" We expected to elicit "Google" - actually people had various responses and were all talking at once so we couldn't hear them all. Some said the library so we cheerfully called them "greasers" :-) and then when we heard "Google" from others we moved on to the next slide. Google results - "What do you notice about these results?" - they noticed some things, and the rest of what we talked about we just added to what they were saying. Same thing with Wikipedia: "What do you notice? What do these numbers in brackets mean?" And so forth.
- We rejigged the slides themselves. The old slides were endless bulletpoints. So, inspired by the movement in conference presentations to use images rather than bulletpoints, we did the same thing. This worked particularly well for a photo-tour of the different parts of the library they'd need, eg a photo of where the reference collection was, then a photo zoomed in on some dictionaries. We had a series of photos physically walking upstairs to the main stacks of books for the assignment subject area. It was a bit hokey and people laughed, but... hey, people laughed, so it was cool.
3a. We paused in the middle for a couple of minutes to let the students write down links to the library website, the subject guide, and Internet Detective.
(1) Cooperstein, Susan E. and Elizabeth Kocevar-Weidinger (2004). Beyond active learning: a constructivist approach to learning. Reference Services Review 32(2), pp 141-148
PS Of course we're still having to tell half this stuff again and again to people coming to the combo lending/reference desk, and I'm considering how to find physical space for some mini-workshops, but that's par for the course.
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