Taking a break

Just see the details over in the scratch pad if interested. Be back when I feel like it I guess. Best, and keep on blogging.

Article Note: On using a menu for library instruction

Citation for the article:

Benjes-Small, Candice and Blair Brainard. "And Today We'll Be Serving. . . An Instruction a la Carte Menu." C&RL News 67.2 (February 2006): 80-82, 96.

This short piece features one of the most interesting ideas I have seen in a while: using a menu to describe services an instruction unit will provide for professors and their classes. It is as simple as it sounds. There is a menu of services with prices. For example, search strategies may take 20 minutes to cover in a session, so that is the price, 20 minutes. The idea is for professors to pick and choose the topics they want covered. They do have to "stay within budget" (i.e. make sure they stay within the time frame of their class, usually 50 minutes). If they go "over the budget," they have to either cut back on topics or "buy" (schedule) another library session.

The idea has caught on, and it now works as a nice way to have better conversations with faculty when it comes to library instruction and teaching research skills to the students. It sounds like something I could have tried at one point or another. The only thing I would be skeptical about is the homogenizing nature of the menu. In other words, a concern that all the library sessions may end up sounding the same. I was never one to give much credit to fixed library scripts that every single librarian had to use. However, the authors do point out their menu is a work in progress, and that there is some room for customizing. If nothing else, if one needs an element to get faculty to be better prepared when it comes to library sessions, to be a bit more thoughtful about what they want covered and what they request, and to provide some structure to an instruction program, it may be an idea to consider.

Article Note: On research guides as instruction tools

Citation for the article:

Brazzeal, Bradley. "Research Guides as Library Instruction Tools." Reference Services Review 34.3 (2006): 358-367.

Read via Emerald.

This article looks at research guides, also known as pathfinders, in the context of information literacy and instruction guidelines. It caught my eye a while back, but as we redesign our library's website and look at streamlining subject guides, I got an incentive to finally read the piece. In terms of the two types of guides mentioned in the article, we are probably more interested in subject-based guides (the other type being class-specific), but a mix is possible.

Brazzeal looks at the ACRL Information Literacy Competency Standards and draws on principles of instruction from the La Guardia and Oka book Becoming a Library Teacher to see how well the research guides function as instruction tools. The sampling in Brazzeal's study comes from "subject-level forestry research guides found online at the web sites of academic libraries in the USA and Canada" (360).

So, what did the author find?

• Guides contain the usual common elements: lists of databases, reference books (print), and free websites. What varied was the degree in which the guides' authors attempted to interact with users. For instance, providing a librarian's contact information prominently. In this example, providing the contact is important because
  
• "this may be especially useful for distance education students, who may rarely step inside the physical library and meet librarians face to face, but it has also shown that on-campus users who know the name of a library staff member tend to seek assistance more than users who do not (Durrance, 1986)" (qtd. in 361). This is certainly a concept I have seen validated many times in my experience as an instruction librarian. Getting to know your students and having them know your name and that you are available makes a difference.
  
• Providing reference sources meets Outcome 1c of Standard 1. This is the one that says, "explores general information sources to increase familiarity with the topic."
  
• We are reminded that we can't just stick to one format. Brazzeal writes,
  
• "the absence of print resources in a research guide could reinforce students' assumptions that everything is available online, but in the forestry guides examined, only 65 percent listed any print resources, and exactly half of those listed print indexes" (363).
  
• On indexes, a lot of the basic ones have gone online, becoming searchable and more current in the process. But there are still some print indexes that are necessary, often in very specialized fields (whether this is a comment on those fields needing to "get with the program," so to speak, I leave to others to ponder.).
  
• As for other print resources, like encyclopedias and handbooks, I always try to include them, even if a lot of librarians would rather do without. As I tell my students, a good reference book will you a topic overview, some vocabulary and terms, and a list of additional sources. Plus, it will work even when the Internet goes down (and it will go down. It is not a matter of if, but a matter of when.).
  
• Not much promotion of Interlibrary Loan. "Few of the guides had interlibrary loan links inside the guide" (363).
  
• More guides need to provide better guidance on search strategy and coming up with good search terms. This is significant because, as Brazzeal puts it, "providing researchers with access to a database is no guarantee that they will be able to search it" (364). This is part of the reason that in my guides I make it a point to put something about keywords and some suggested subject headings.
  
• A reminder: "Research guides are not a substitute for the personal instruction received at the reference desk or library instruction sessions, but they are one avenue of teaching users how to use library resources and services effectively" (366).
  

Overall, the article provides a good set of ideas to make better subject guides. It shows that guides can incorporate the standards and work as good instruction tools.

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.