Being a librarian who reads books helps me help students better

As I am preparing for a research consultation, I had a random thought that it pays off as a librarian to be a reader as well. Especially so if you read books from your own library on various topics. I can then recall book options for students that may come in for a consultation. 

For example, for the student writing on George Orwell, fascism, and the United States, Antifa (link to my review) comes to mind right away. 

For the student writing on Black history and suppression of Black history in schools, Our history has always been contraband comes to mind (link to review). 

I went to the library stacks, found them, and added them to the materials I would offer those students when they came in to meet with me. 

By the way, this can also include articles I may have seen and read on a student topic that I can then share with a student. At times, I have sent a student a link to an article on their topic after a research consult in the hopes they will find it helpful. 

I will note further that I have met librarians who, for whatever reason, declare that they do not read, or read as minimally as possible. For me, reading broadly helps me in my work. Even if it is just being aware and reading reviews as part of collection development can be helpful in helping students. But when I can put a book in their hands I have read and tell them that I have read it I think it has a bit more power. Now whether the student reads it or not, or at least skims it, is their choice. I am under no delusions they will read a whole book for a research assignment. All I can do is offer. Up to them to then use the resource or not. 

As I am typing this, I am thinking of making the occasional list of books I have read from our library that I can recommend for certain topics. It could be an occasional blog post here in part for my own reference. 

 

 

Book Review: Verified

 (Crossposted from The Itinerant Librarian)

Mike Caulfield and Samuel S. Wineburg, Verified: How to think straight, get duped less, and make better decisions about what to believe online. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 2023. ISBN: 9780226822068.

Genre: reference

Subgenre: information literacy, internet, research

Format: trade paperback

Source: Hutchins Library, Berea College

 

This book is an essential guide everyone using the internet needs to have handy. This book teaches how to be skeptical of what you see online and how to evaluate it. In these Hard Times where the internet and social media are full of scams, click bait, rage bait, and all sorts of assorted bullshit, this book gives you the tools to separate the crap from the few good things that remain. This guide can help you navigate the enshittified internet. 

The book is arranged as follows: 

• Introduction.
• Chapter 1: Get quick context.
• Chapter 2: Cheap signals. 
• Chapter 3: Google.
• Chapter 4: Lateral reading. 
• Chapter 5: Reading the room.
• Chapter 6: Show me the evidence. 
• Chapter 7: Wikipedia.
• Chapter 8: Video games. No, it is not about games. This is more about how videos are used to deceive. 
• Chapter 9: Stealth advertising. 
• Chapter 10: Once more with feeling. 
• Chapter 11: Conclusion. 
• Postscript, which briefly covers large language models, so-called AI, and verification.
• Notes and bibliography. 

Caulfield, one of the two coauthors, created the SIFT method (Stop, Investigate, Find other coverage, Trace the claim). Along with Wineburg, they basically give you a full course on how to evaluate what you see online so you can be empowered and act accordingly. The authors take you through the process step by step. These are skill you can learn with relative ease, and you develop the critical habits taught in the book you'll be able to better navigate the internet. A strength of their lessons is that often they do not take a lot of time. That is because you learn to assess quickly. If you decide to pursue a topic further, the authors show you how to do so. If you assess and decide something is not valid, relevant, or just not worth your energy, you can swiftly move on. Being efficient is a key element here. 

The book is relatively easy to read. Each chapter gives you practical examples and then they explain how to best handle each situation. You then learn the overall lesson so you can apply it when you go online. Chapters also include various tips and pieces of advice. Every chapter ends with a list of takeaways summarizing what you are learning. 

By now I am sure many academic librarians apply the lessons from the book in library instruction. We've done some some of it, but we will be working on adding more formal elements from the book in our instruction sessions. However, you do not have to be in an academic setting. This accessible book works for anyone wanting to learn how to find reliable information, evaluate it, and avoid the rest of the crap out there. In a time when Google largely has gone to shit, this book gives you steps and advice for making some good from Google. You learn how to do lateral reading like fact checkers do, and Wikipedia can be your ally, contrary to what some old time educators may claim. Learn that and more reading this book, then keep it handy for when you need a reminder now and again. 

This book is essential for all libraries. Librarians who have not ready it need to read it and then promote it to their patrons. The book can be beneficial for students in composition classes that require research. It may also be of interest to journalism students, journalists, and other writers who do or should be doing research. I recommend it fully, and I would buy a copy for my personal shelf. 

5 out of 5 stars. 

Additional reading notes: 

What this book can help you with: 

"Instead of being driven by emotion and outrage, you'll come to see your gut reactions as precious gifts that signal you to pause, take a breath, and ask a basic question: Is what I am looking at even what I think it is?" (3) 

 

Google is a search engine, not a truth engine:

"Google is not a dispassionate partner in information seeking who diligently corrects you when you've taken a wrong turn. Google is out to please, trying to determine what you want-- even if doing so means giving you a dubious answer but one you want to hear" (78). 

 And with its high commercialization, predominant advertising model, and now integrating LLM and AI features, it's gotten worse in terms of finding what you actually need. 

Need to beware expertise cynicism: 

"In authoritarian regimes, creating a broad cynicism about all sources of expertise-- the press, academics, professionals-- serves to make sure political power, not truth-seeking, is the ultimate arbiter of what is true" (109). 

This book qualifies for the following 2024 Reading Challenges: 

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."