Assessment may be the direction in L2

As an educator, I have always known that you in order to know if what you are teaching is working, you have to assess. At the end of the day, it is basically a matter of proving that you do what you say you do. There is another L2 meme/storm out in the librarian blogs, but I think out of the various responses, that Meredith Farkas may be on to something when she suggests that the "Essence of Library 2.o" has to do with assessment. Go over and read her stuff. She says it a heck of a lot better than I ever could, but she basically must have been reading my mind at one point. The point for me is the idea about our need to know what are the needs of our local users. Sure, there are those big libraries out there doing wonderful things, but more often than not, for a number of reasons, those things don't necessarily apply to our local situations. This is basically common sense. For me, it was something I learned first in Houston, and that I am now considering here in Tyler. Now, what we need is formal assessment to provide evidence. If you ask me about my patrons, I can pretty much tell you what they use and won't use. I know this through a blend of observation, intuition, and instinct. Not exactly very scientific, but it works. The next logical step would be to assess more formally. Anything from a well constructed survey to focus groups to interviews with selected individuals.

To me, a lot of L2 is like high level philosophy. You expose yourself to it a bit, but you then return to the real world. It may be because my interests lie in the more practical. What can I do in my library with the resources I have to meet the needs of the patrons that we serve? That's my guiding question. If I can use an answer to solve a problem, provide better service, or simply enhance the library's presence and role on campus, I am pretty much set. It may not be glamorous, but again, it works. Just a thought.

Some additional notes on the Michigan U. Web Survey.

Here is the brief post that leads to this. The survey is here.

These are mostly some notes of things that caught my eye or just made me think a bit:

• The survey authors do point out that the survey is not representative of the UM Library's base. This is due to the fact the survey was not evenly promoted across all of their library websites (5). What this tells me is that we are looking at a limited sample. I mean, it will be a limited sample anyways, but this was limited by what did get promoted.
  
• "The top activities as ranked by average response (in descending order): email, social networking, IM, reading/using wikis, reading blogs. The bottom five as ranked by average response: create podcasts, write book reviews, edit wiki, write own blog, and social bookmarking" (7). The authors label the first five activities as "web 1.0" tools. I am not quite clear on the label, but they say that the more the activity is 2.0, the less the respondents did it (7). I thought something like social networking (if it is meant as using something like MySpace) was a 2.0 activity. The authors at this point suggest asking about web enabled mobile devices and use of applications like Google Docs. The basis for this is that if they are more used, the library could then move on in that direction, doing things like offering a calendar for events that one could subscribe to. Actually, that sounds like an intriguing idea.
  
• On purpose to use the library, "using the Internet had the most 'daily' [used] answers. . . " (9). This is not terribly surprising in my estimation. We pretty much see this in our library on a daily basis. It's using the Internet, and often for non-academic things like checking the MySpace. Now before anyone jumps, I will say that I don't particularly care what the students do online; it's their tuition, so they get to use it as they wish as long as it's not for anything illegal. However, the observation is that a good amount of time is devoted to the social tools like MySpace rather than research or other academic endeavor. Take it with a grain of salt.
  
• Question 10 made me pause a bit. They found that "respondents are overwhelmingly self-taught. . ." (12). As much faith as I have in people being able to learn, it did make me pause for a moment. The authors also argue that BI should not be relied on to get people to use the web tools the library offers. I am not ready to scrap BI. I am hoping the authors meant more like BI should not be the only method, to which I would agree. We should be using any means at our disposal to educate our users. I would work on promoting BI more and look at building a broader context for information literacy beyond just basic one-shots. We also need to do more advertising of services we offer. You can have the most user-friendly research portal in the world. It does no good if no one uses it or knows about it. Build the tool and promote it.
  
• I found interesting that the authors were careful to make a distinction in questions between asking what users thought the library had and what they have actually used. Vocabulary is always a challenge.
  
• I just found this analysis item interesting: "The library website is perceived as being slightly more trustworthy, accurate, reliable, and helpful than web search engines but is not considered as easy to use or as convenient. Difficulty using library resources is a constant theme in the free-text responses at the end of the survey. Also, people feel more strongly about search engines being easy to use and convenient as compared to their strength in feeling of the other four attributes" (16). We are here in the process of redesigning our website. We have conducted two focus groups, and we are in the middle of redesign. This looks like something to keep in mind as we make progress in trying to make the new site user-friendly.
  
• "Patrons are more willing to read online than expected but definitely prefer to print electronic journal articles" (17). Actually, that would describe me. I find a lot of articles via online tools, but I do print them out to read them.
  
• "Only three respondents selected the option 'Download to a mobile device to read.' We hypothesize that our patrons have yet to embrace this technology and/or that content providers do not make mobile reading easy enough" (17). This tells me that not everyone has a mobile device capable of downloading or displaying that content. The reason this caught my eye is because this is contrary to what many dwellers of Mount Ubertech would have us believe that there is some massive demand for us to provide stuff on mobile devices. That may be the case some day down the road, but it is not today or the day after. Right now, it's pretty much the geeks and early adopters who have those devices. The mainstream is not there yet, which means ROI on this is pretty low, if we are again thinking in business model terms.
  
• "Although there is great interest in 'Library 2.0' technologies among librarians, the concepts are still not widely understood by survey respondents--at least, not when librarians use our own terminology to describe them" (19). This also caught my eye. One thing: at times I think librarians are way more enthusiastic about the whole L2 thing than the users actually are. Maybe a finding like this might temper some overzealousness (wishful thinking on my part). But note the statement goes on to say that the lack of understanding can come from our own terms. Something we then need to work on. Then again, just because they know what some 2.0 tech is, it does not follow automatically that they want to use it, or that they want libraries to offer it or have a presence there. Just a thought. In my case, just because I am somewhat aware of 2.0 techs (I would not call myself an expert by any stretch of imagination on any 2.0 thing), it does not mean I go and embrace every thing out there.
  
• I liked this idea from one of the verbatim responses at the end of the survey. I think it may be something we could try here in time: "Maybe 'what's new at the library' sessions, for use expert users who maybe aren't up to speed with the niftiest and newest search tools, or a web page showcasing new features and databases" (26).
  

Anyhow, just this humble librarian's two cents.

So, social networking and libraries may not be such a big deal

If I was posting this over at the unruly cousin's place, who has tags set up (something I need to get around doing here), I would probably label it under "Department of the Obvious." However, since this is not just snark, here goes. To be honest, it is the sort of thing I usually let the Mount Ubertech dwellers deal with, but what the hell. I was not planning on living forever anyways.

The finding from the University of Michigan survey that a majority of students would not respond to a library presence in a social network should not come as a surprise. This is not a new finding; it simply validates what a few brave librarians who don't go "ga ga" over every 2.0 shiny gadget already knew. Heck, I already knew it. Just in case I did not know it from common sense, my own experience in Facebook (see a sample here) would have confirmed it for me.

The people who won't give up will say that there is still about a fourth of users who would respond. Actually, it is 17% that would not respond, and 6% said maybe. That is not quite a fourth. And "maybe" can boil down to a 50-50 chance they may or not respond, which is not exactly a ringing endorsement. The point is that 17% is not exactly great return on the investment (or ROI for those who like to use business jargon). I am not saying we neglect the 17%, but the evidence shows this is not a groundswelling wave of users needing or demanding our presence in places like Facebook. It is not popular to say something like that. The dwellers of Mount Ubertech would be very displeased, and I am sure one or two are already making excuses or saying something along the lines of "just because the number is low. . . ."

However, I am willing to step back a bit. This is only one survey. There are anecdotal accounts in the library sector of the blogosphere claiming some degree of success. Some of those places should conduct surveys of their own and get some actual evidence. Would that new evidence replicate the Michigan finding? I would like to know, but I'll say that, at the moment, the evidence is telling us that social networking is not the hot frontier for libraries it has been made out to be. It's nice, but it's not such a big deal.

By the way, I actually went ahead and read the whole Michigan report, all 33 pages of it. Hey, it actually has a lot of charts, so it can be read quickly. I made some notes for me, which I will post next time as there are other things of interest in the survey. Hey, the thing about social networks is the 20th question on the survey. There are other things worth looking at. I will look at them next time I post.

A hat tip to the Librarian in Black. Some of the comments on her blog are worth a look too.

Article Note: On Undergraduate Perception and Selection of Information Sources

Citation for the article:

Kim, Kyung-Sun and Sei-Ching Joanna Sin. "Perception and Selection of Information Sources by Undergraduate Students: Effects of Avoidant Style, Confidence, and Personal Control in Problem-Solving." The Journal of Academic Librarianship 33.6 (December 2007): 655-665.

Read it via EBSCO's E-journal service.

This article, in brief, did not tell me anything that I did not know already. Even though the authors provide a good number of tables and charts to go along with their survey results, in the end, much of the advice they offer for instruction librarians are things that are known in the literature and in the field. The authors were investigating how undergraduates make decisions about selecting information sources; they did so by considering the impact that an avoidant style, confidence levels, and personal control in problem-solving have in the decision process. The authors take the time to define these concepts and to lay out their methodology, but in the end, the findings are not terribly new. If nothing else, their findings confirm previous studies, some of which the authors include in their literature review.

A couple of examples of the findings:

• "A particularly noteworthy finding was that Web search engines and Web sites were rated highly in most dimensions except 'accuracy,' 'objectivity' and level of 'organization.' Participants tended to perceive that resources available on the Web were highly accessible and easy to use" (659). This is not ground-breaking. Any IL librarian in an academic setting pretty much knows students see the Web as convenient, accessible, and easy to use.
  
• "If information cannot be retrieved 'successfully' in their initial attempts, individuals with low self-efficacy might experience more uncertainty and stress than those with high self-efficacy. This might, in turn, contribute to less efficient searches and also low level of satisfaction with the search process as suggested in previous studies" (662). This gives some idea of how the students view themselves: how confident are they in their skills? Here I think there is something missing from this study, and that is the notion of competency. Melissa Gross's article, which I noted here, discusses this idea of how accurate is the feeling of being competent. In other words, if you are not competent, but you feel that you are, how would you know? Low-skilled individuals, if they have some confidence, often tend to overestimate their actual skill. I right away recalled that article when I was reading this one. By the way, the Gross piece is not cited in this article, which I would have expected. I would guess Gross's work was not readily available when this study was being done (I am giving them the benefit of the doubt).
  

There are a couple of pieces of advice for instructors, which serve more as reminders:

• I do this pretty much on a regular basis for instruction sessions, especially if dealing with low-skilled or at-risk students: "Especially for those with little confidence, instructors should underscore that confusions and anxieties are commonly experienced during the research process, and that having difficulties in searching is not necessarily an indication of failure. User training can also support such users by helping them develop and practice effective strategies for query formulation and reformulation (such as the use of synonyms, thesaurus of index terms), and for finding and using alternative sources" (662-663).
• "To encourage use of high quality sources, especially among the users with a high avoidant style, IL education could help users become aware of the availability and accessibility of high quality sources. For example, IL programs can highlight the fact that some resources that are not physically available could be delivered fairly quickly through document delivery services; and that librarians are easily accessible through a variety of channels (e.g., phone, e-mail, live chat, instant messaging, and in person)" (663). Ok, the first part of this statement I found a little condescending. To help them become aware of the high quality sources? That is a basic part of our jobs. Do we really need to be told that? As for the part about librarians, I will grant we can still work on advertising the various ways in which we are accessible. However, this is something that is pretty much all over the library sector of the blogosphere.
  

Overall, while this study confirms previous works and a lot of the conventional wisdom, it does not reveal anything new. While the authors claim this is one of the few studies that looks at undergraduates in terms of their perceptions and propensities, the findings seem to repeat knowledge that most experienced librarians already have. At least to me, after reading all about their method and how the study was made, the article fell short.

Article Note: On surveys of faculty attitudes to collaboration

Citation for the article:

Hrycaj, Paul and Michael Russo. "Reflections on Surveys of Faculty Attitudes Toward Collaboration with Librarians." The Journal of Academic Librarianship 33.6 (December 2007): 692-696.

Read via EBSCO's E-journal service.


This short article questions what seems to be the conventional wisdom when it comes to collaboration between librarians and faculty. That wisdom, based on surveys, conveys that many faculty see the collaboration with librarians as desirable or as a good thing. The authors of this article review previous survey studies to find that is not always the case. What the authors found, in essence, is that professors don't always put their money where their mouths are. In other words, they are willing to give lip service to how good the idea of collaborating with librarians to teach information literacy is. However, all that is fine as long as the librarians do it in someone else's classroom (or not at all).

The authors of this article conducted their own survey. They noticed while looking at the results that there was a gap between methods to teach library research used by faculty and what faculty said they would support (692). This led the authors to raise additional questions.

First, the authors dispel the common excuse faculty use that they did not use library instruction because they were not aware library instruction was available. The authors write:

"This explanation, predicated on library ignorance, seems implausible. For instance, Leckie and Fullerton note that efforts were made to inform faculty at the two universities participating in their survey about library instruction services. They say that Table 7 of their study 'demonstrates that a high proportion of faculty never made use of library instructional services, despite the fact that both library systems make efforts to publicize these services'" (693).

I'll go ahead and say it. Very often the faculty do have the information available; they are just choosing to ignore it. And if a campus as a whole pays little attention to the need to promote and teach information literacy as part of the curriculum, the faculty can go on ignoring the library.

Ignoring the issue is certainly safer than simply admitting a lack of interest or an outright opposition to information literacy. It would take an extremely recalcitrant faculty member to actually say he/she opposes information literacy. Given that even accreditation bodies are at least mentioning IL, most faculty will at least be polite enough to feign interest. They can take a passive resistance route of saying they would be interested in information literacy. The authors consider this:

"If respondents to the survey had a negative attitude about collaborating with librarians on instruction but wished to avoid expressing this attitude, while still answering the survey questions truthfully, then exploiting the vagueness of 'interested' would be a good way to do so" (694).

In other words, very often someone saying that they are "interested" is the polite way to ignore you without showing a negative attitude.

The author conclude that the overall optimism of previous surveys is not justified. However, given the pedagogical benefits, they do believe that collaborations should still be pursued. I have to agree, even as I have faced moments when saying that "some faculty need to be educated" is seeing as stirring the hornets (heaven forbid one has something to offer to them was the attitude). It may take IL implementation at the curriculum level (or a major push to avoid accreditation failure) to get better collaboration. In the end, the authors acknowledge that other options are important as well:

"Based on the above considerations, however, the authors also conclude that the efforts of library instruction programs should not be expended solely on faculty/librarian collaboration. Instruction approaches that involve little-to-no-faculty involvement (for example, standalone library instruction credit courses, one-shot library orientation classes, online tutorials, teaching at the reference desk) must still be pursued" (695).

I am a believer in collaboration when possible. Students gain benefit when faculty and librarians, who share a common goal of student success, come together. However, teaching information literacy skills that will enable students to be lifelong learners is too important. If it means then we need to use other methods, then I say let's do it by any means necessary.