Book Review: The College Student's Research Companion

(Crossposted from The Itinerant Librarian)

Arlene Rodda Quaratiello, The College Student's Research Companion: Finding, Evaluating, and Citing the Resources You Need to Succeed. Chicago: ALA Neal-Schuman, 2024. ISBN: 9780838938386.

Genre: academic writing and research

Subgenre: reference, guides

Format: paperback

Source: Hutchins Library, Berea College 

 

This is basically a research guide to academic research for undergraduate students. In the preface, the author argues what many of us librarians argue: "to write better research papers, you must go beyond the basics of googling your topic and learn how to use the wealth of other resources available to you" (ix). That argument sounds great in theory, but in my many years as a librarian and teacher, I am concerned many students still do the superficial path of googling and hoping to find something just good enough. They also hope they can get it past their professors. The issue of students finding materials just "good enough" to pass and the faculty who may let them pass is a question I ponder here or there, but it is not something to consider now. I will just say I am not too optimistic. 

The book takes students through the research process from selecting a topic, finding and evaluating resources, and then how to use the sources ethically. Each chapter includes review questions to reinforce learning. The book also includes appendices with extra information like classification lists and citation style. 

The book is relatively an easy read, and the author keeps a light humor at times to keep things accessible. Comparisons and analogies to illustrate ideas are plentiful. Explanations are clear and straightforward. This can be a good resource for undergraduates to learn about research. It is not a substitute for library instruction, but it can supplement it. I can see some undergraduate writing class adding this to their textbook list. It's a pretty good guide with some good advice. 

However, the book suffers the issue of so many LIS texts: it falls out of currency as it is published. This edition has a 2024 publishing date, but the material was likely  written in 2023, maybe 2022. That is just the academic publishing cycle. The point here is the book has no mention of AI (artificial intelligence) and/or LLMs (Language Learning Models) that are becoming the latest issue in information literacy and academia at the time I am writing this. I have a 7th edition is already in the works. Still, the book covers the basics well, but you may want to consider whether to get this edition and add supplementary material as needed or wait for a later edition. At this moment I am good with this edition. 

This book is a good option for academic libraries to have a copy on hand, maybe on their ready reference shelf (if they still have a ready reference shelf). We bought a copy at my library, and it is a circulating copy. We'll see over time if it circulates or not. I'll make a small promotional post on the library blog later on. For now, I like this book overall. It has a good presentation of academic research skills for undergraduates. 

4 out of 5 stars. 

Article Note: On adapting the Project Outcome model in libraries

 This article looks at Project Outcome, a toolkit designed for public libraries to assess the impact of their programs and services. It is a collection of short patron-focused surveys. Idea is to measure things that public libraries have in common, and it then allows for comparisons between libraries. Soon, academic librarians decided they wanted in on this, and ACRL (Association of College and Research Libraries) partnered with PLA (Public Library Association) to create a version for academic libraries. Part of why I am reading this now is that our library is working to adapt it as we move to a more simplified way to assess our library services, in particular reference and instruction services. Survey options include immediate surveys designed to be done after a service and follow-up surveys to be done some time after a program. For us here at the moment, we are interested in doing immediate surveys. In my unit, this would be post-library instruction surveys of students in a class.

Some notes from the article: 

What this paper does: 

"This paper describes the task force's work to establish standard learning outcome measures for academic libraries, initial field-testing results, and how Project Outcome can create opportunities for growth and change" (1) . 

What the outcomes are based on: 

"These key outcomes are based on social theory that performance is more adequately measured when capturing the outcomes of knowledge, attitude, and behavior change (Schrader and Lawless 2004)" (2). 

The Project's definition of outcome: 

"Project Outcome has defined an outcome as: 'a specific benefit a patron receives from a library program or service. They can be quantitative or qualitative and are expressed as changes that individuals perceive in themselves'" (5).

The focus of the Project Outcome tools is "on generating useful actionable new knowledge (practical, local, applied, 'good enough') for improvement. . . "(6). 

Article includes table with activities, some suggestions for use, and sample survey questions. 

 Concerns, from their key findings from field-testing:

"Interest or need for assessment does not always translate into practice. Both survey fatigue and lack of time (users' or librarians') can make librarians reluctant to administer surveys, even if the results may be useful" (13).

Our campus is notorious for survey excess (I am sure we are not the only campus, but surveying is pretty heavy here), and survey fatigue among students is a significant issue that is rarely acknowledged as yet another survey goes out from some campus unit. In our case, by doing small surveys at the end of class sessions we hope to get better response and catch the students on the spot so to speak. We hope it will be easier to collect meaningful data to help us keep improving and growing our programs, as well as appease the higher ups.  

Citation for the article: 

Ackermann, Eric, Sara Goek, and Emily Plagman, "Outcome Measurement in Academic Libraries: Adapting the Project Outcome Model." Library Assessment Conference, 2018 (link to PDF document). 

Article Note: on Chat GPT and academic librarians

This short article out of C&RL News is mostly a very flattering paean of LLM's (large language models) and ChatGPT (one of those LLM's). The authors basically envision ways the tool will displace some workers for an AI (artificial intelligence) assisted future. To be honest, a good amount of this has echoes from the days of Library 2.0 and the hype that went along with it. As I read the piece, I found myself writing small comments and questions in the margins. At times I wondered if the authors had read or seen various news on ChatGPT and AI that are not exactly worshiping the models. 

Here are then some highlights that caught my eye: 

ChatGPT is a...

"...tool that uses deep learning techniques to generate text in response to questions posed to it. It can generate essays, email, song lyrics, recipes, computer code, webpages, even games and medical diagnoses" (99). 

It can also generate, to put it bluntly, a lot of bullshit and right out make up stuff (CNN; AP). 

Also, 

"...ChatGPT has been trained on a large corpus of text, including news articles, books, websites, academic articles, and other sources." (99).

Yes, and a lot of it is outright stolen from creators and/or scraped from the web without any form of compensation or attribution. In fact, some news organizations are suing due to what they see is content theft from the AI companies (via CBS News).  See also this piece out of Futurism on a guy basically stealing content and using AI to "repackage" it to sell. 

One detail from the article that also caught my eye is an optimism that seems to have little regard for any ethical concerns, a somewhat naive assumption that everyone involved will be honest. Keep in mind that very often plagiarism is a concern of faculty in academia. In earlier days, they might ask a librarian for assistance, then they turned to Google, and now they rely on tools like Turnitin (another tool that comes with its own ethical issues, but let's not digress further), and next it is AI. Somehow using a tool that basically steals content to check if content is stolen does not feel right, to this librarian at least. 

The authors do mention plagiarism, but then ask, gee, is a student turning in work done with ChatGPT really plagiarizing? (101). I'd say yes they are, and I say it both as a librarian and a former writing teacher, but the authors use a loophole: since plagiarism is defined as "presenting someone else's work or ideas as your own" and ChatGPT is not a someone, well, you get the idea. That is a nice loophole if you can get away with it.

As for librarian roles, a lot of it according to the article will be basically working as "prompt engineers" to "assist researchers by providing tips in asking the right questions to get the best results" (100). Uh huh. At least we may have some job security teaching faculty, and especially students (we all know faculty are not exactly known for wanting to be taught anything, but I digress), how to tell if some text or piece of art is real or AI generated. That will not be an easy task. 

Authors also mention that researchers may have concerns AI could seep into academic writing. Well, it is already happening as researchers are getting caught passing ChatGPT generated essays as their own for publication (via Futurism, but a small search will yield a few other stories).  

I could go, but I am stopping here because I just do not share the rose colored vision the authors of the article appear to have. At any rate, as I was reading this mercifully short article, other thoughts came to mind. Below then are some links that may not be as rosy in their view of ChatGPT and AI that I read recently as of this post. 

Citation for the article noted: 

Christopher Cox and Elias Tzoc, "ChatGPT: Implications for Academic Libraries." C&RL News, March 2023: 99-102.

 The additional links to consider against the whoopee of the original article in addition to the links I included in my comments above:

• "Researchers warned against using AI to peer review academic articles" via Semafor. 
• "'At best it's wrong, at worst it's dangerous:' More generative AI impacts" via The Wild Hunt.
• "This girl does not exist: how generative AI is destroying commercial art and killing an industry" by Michael M. Hughes.
• And speaking of issues with Turnitin, according to them, "more than half of students continue to use AI to write papers."
   

 

Article Note: On using library chat reference to answer campus questions

This article caught my eye initially because I do not recall people using our library chat reference much to answer campus specific questions. I would have to dig into our local statistics to be more certain, but at least from what I have observed in our chat reference service questions related to the campus are minimal. A good question for us to explore down the road may be where are people going then to get campus-specific answers, but that is another story for now. 

This article's goal is to investigate how academic libraries not only provide academic assistance but whether they are seen as an option to provide information on their campuses. In their opening, the authors remind us how chat reference services in libraries picked up during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our virtual services certainly picked up during the pandemic's prime time days. 

Authors establish topic relevance for the article by connecting the growth of chat services to the need of libraries to prove their value to stakeholders, in this case campus administrators. That is certainly one of the reason we and other libraries are always collecting a variety of service statistics; we have to justify our existence to the bean counters. For example, we collect data on things such as number of research consults and library instruction sessions. One of the places that data ends up is on the campus fact book, which is available online on the campus website. So in a way an ulterior motive for this article is to show a library's value to its campus community.

The significance of this study is that, unlike previous studies of reference chat services in libraries, none up to now has focused on whether a reference chat service answers campus related questions that are not related to the library. 

Some highlights from the article: 

• Method: Analysis of chat transcripts from 5 large four-year public universities during the 2-year period of 2019 to 2021. The choice of campuses "were selected based on only the affiliations of the collaborating authors and do not necessarily reflect a representative sample" (15). To be honest, that is a small sample, but that is somewhat consistent with this type of LIS article.
• What they found: "This study found that non-library campus questions, on average, accounted for 2.44% of library chat questions, a relatively small proportion of all library chats" (12). At this low percent, I would not call this "filling a gap." Again, I do wonder where are patrons and others going for that information. 
• A curious to me finding is that this kind of information from reference chat may be "a more significant resources for less privileged student populations" (12). Not sure at this point what to make of that. 
• They did notice that reference chat often gets IT-related questions. A possible reason could be "their I.T. department may have insufficient hours of staffing" (13). I can testify to this a bit since our I.T. department is fairly notorious for their insufficient hours of staffing. I'd call them bankers' hours except bankers these days actually open late and on weekends. 
• Call for further research: "Further research building on this study could examine the prevalence of campus-related questions at physical service points in the library and compare this to chat" (15). They also suggest doing some comparisons with private institutions. 
• One good thing of analyzing chat reference transcripts: "...these transcripts provide a unique opportunity to identify areas where students are in need of additional information and support. The data can help identify offices and services on campus with which library chat operators should be most familiar and prepared to address in chat inquiries" (16). 

Article citation: Erin Owens, et.al., "Beyond the Library: the Role of Academic Libraries' Chat Reference in Answering Campus Questions." The Reference Librarian (April 2024): 1-24. 

I got this one via Interlibrary Loan.

Article Note: On Chinese aid in developing libraries in Africa

This is a short article that begins to explore the topic of Chinese investment in the African continent, specifically investing in developing local libraries. The reason I read this was one of my students. They were doing broader research on China and its Belt and Road Initiative. When helping them with their research, this article came up. I figured they could maybe mine the citations for additional resources, but otherwise this article was not for them. However, an article about libraries often catches my eye, and since it was short, I read it. 

I wrote that the article begins to explore the topic as the author states that little research has been done on this area. The author's study then strives to see how China is investing in libraries on the continent. To do so, the author does a newspapers and news content analysis; the study relied on China Daily. China Daily is a Chinese English language newspaper; it is controlled by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and it is a source many around the world read even with that caveat as it provides important information on Chinese issues. Author does acknowledge there are limitations to using China Daily as the research source such as possible biases from the newspaper's ownership. 

Author found that the Chinese invest in library development in three main ways: 

• China provides direct funding and is involved in a library's construction.
• A Chinese multinational corporation may be involved, a form of corporate social responsibility. 
• Other NGOs may be involved in developing a library 

Forms of aid can range from infrastructure and construction to donating books. Author notes book donations can have mixed results, especially if a lot of the donations are books written in Chinese that may have limited use and/or interest in the African nations. Author ends by calling for further research in this area. 

Citation for the article: 

Swapan Kumar Patra, "Chinese aid in the library development of Africa: a brief survey." Annals of Library and Information Studies Vol. 70 (2023): 126-131.