Library Computers Used by a Third of Americans

Here are some interesting stats from a study paid for by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.  The study shows that a third of Americans – about 77 million people – use public library computers to look for jobs, connect with friends, do their homework and improve their lives, according to a new study released Thursday.

While this is good news for libraries right now, I hope library usage does not decline significantly as the “digital divide” narrows.  I would hope that people would still see the value of libraries even if they have Internet connectivity at home.  If the public sees the library as simply a place to gain free Internet access, there could be serious implications for public libraries.  For the entire article, go to http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/25/library-computers-used-by_n_512681.html

New Quarter – Tons of Work Ahead

We begin our Spring Quarter at Rose-Hulman today and what a way to start it.  I started with an 8 AM lightening round orientation for a senior design class.  I was given 15 minutes and had to speak fast and to the point.  While it was the quickest class I’ve even done, it certainly helped to wake me up.  Now I am ready to take on the day, the week, and the new quarter.  We’ve got our work cut out for us.  We’ll have training for our new ILS system (Millennium by Innovative) which will be implemented this summer.  We are right now planning for events for National Library Week in April.  We are doing some party on the last day of the week but are also going to do one of those “READ” poster campaigns.  I got it started by creating one of myself.  We will be doing some major weeding of the collection to make room for possible library “modifications.”  We are moving forward with our library liaison program with each of the departments.  I am not sure how that will go, but it’s definitely a worthwhile experiment.  I hope to complete scanning all of the Modulus yearbooks and finally be done with that.  That all depends on how many hours my student worker can work.  There are about 15 more books to do.  I will evaluating some EBSCO products.  I am about to submit a final draft of an ASEE conference paper that has been “accepted pending changes.”  I have to help plan for the IOLUG (Indiana Online Users Group) spring meeting.  I will be presenting on using mobile devices to access commercial databases.  I am getting an iPhone tomorrow to begin planning for that.  I will also have to plan for the ASEE conference in June.  And of course, I will have to continue to update those AtoZ records.  OK, now I’ve scared the crap out of myself writing all that down.  Time get to work.  CHOP CHOP!

Teaching Information Literacy in 15 Minutes

http://thisthatotherthing.wordpress.com/2009/10/14/teaching-information-literacy-in-15-minutes/
What?  Teach information literacy in 15 minutes?  Are you mad?  It can’t be done!  OBSURD!  Yes, I admit, the notion is absurd.  That is not my goal today.  In fact, I would be happy if all of our students were information literate by the time that they graduate in four years.  My goal today is to give 271 Freshmen (in addition to 208 already) a sliver of information literacy in 15 minutes.  Goals in the fifteen minutes:  1) Library website and LibGuides navigation and how to use it for research, 2) How to use our EBSCO AtoZ search tool, and 3) How to make an Interlibrary Loan Request.

So what is this all about?  All Freshmen at Rose-Hulman must be enrolled in a one credit College & Life Skills course their first semester.  They will spend five of their ten weeks in small group discussions with their mentor and the other five weeks they are introduced to an important academic support service that they need to know about.  This week they meet with the Library and the Learning Center downstairs whose primary duty is tutoring.  They spend a half an hour in each area.  The first 15 minutes in the library is spent on the main floor where our library director talks to them about the library and gives them a quick tour.  Then they come upstairs where I am set up with a laptop and LCD projector to give them a crash course in the basics of navigating the library website to conduct research.

Information literacy encompasses a wide area of knowledge including but not limited to, knowing what kind of formation is needed, how to select quality information resources, what access points to use, how to evaluate the quality of resources and how to understand the economic, legal, and social issues surrounding the use of information in an ethical and legal manner.  As mentioned in my previous post The Challenges of Teaching Information Literacy, we are grappling with revamping our library instruction program to incorporate all of the ACRL guidelines for information literacy so that our students are proficient in all of these areas by the time they graduate.  Since most library instruction sessions are only 55 minutes long, we have to come up with an approach on what points to cover for Freshmen Composition classes through Senior Design and graduate level classes.  So naturally since these are Freshmen, it makes sense to introduce them to the website / LibGuides and how to use it for research.  But I also took the time to touch upon our number one reference question “How do I find out if we have a specific journal, or how do I find this article?”   If I had a dollar every time I’ve been asked that question, I would be rich.  And so WHAM!  There you have it!  Information Literacy in 15 Minutes…kind of!

P.S.  I spoke to four sections last Friday, four sections yesterday, and ten sections today.

Redefining Library Relevance at Rose-Hulman

ACRL Value of Academic Libraries Comprehensive Research Review and Report is a RFP “seeking proposals for the development and delivery of a comprehensive review of the quantitative and  qualitative literature, methodologies, and best practices currently in place for demonstrating the value of academic libraries.”  The relevance of academic libraries is being questioned as a result of changing user expectations due to search engines like Google.  Libraries are scrambling to define themselves as relevant to their user community.  At Logan Library, we are doing this in a few ways.  One is through increased emphasis on information literacy.  We are changing the way we teach library instruction and trying to reach more classes each year.  Our goal by the end of this academic year is to develop a more comprehensive methodology for turning out information literate students by the time they graduate.  This process starts Freshmen year and builds in complexity throughout their four years at Rose.  Since we are starting with Freshman through Seniors all at once, it will take four years before we will see a group of students move through this process.  We are still hashing out this process which we will continue to do throughout this academic year.

The second way in which we are redefining our relevance is by our transformation to a Library 2.0.  While our users may not have any idea what this means, or simply think we are making up some trendy  sounding name for ourselves, they are aware of web 2.0 technology as it is already an integral part of their lives online.  We have done this through the implementation of LibGuides; chat widgets available on our LibGuides pages, Twitter to inform our users of changes to LibGuides and other library news.  We have also added a Twitter widget to our library home page to make our tweets visible to those who are not followers.  We will soon explore uses for facebook .

The transformation is taking slowly taking place.  So far the response has been positive.  We already knew that most research by students is being done outside of the library, so the chat option was implemented to reach students at their point of need.  So far, so good; we are getting several chat reference requests per day.  We have gotten positive feedback from the professors we have conducted library instruction for, and the students seem to be more engaged during the process.  While we do not have the funds currently to build a new library or add a number of new resources, we are in the process of redefining our role within the institution and hopefully increasing our relevance as well.

The Challenges of Teaching Information Literacy

An article in the Chronicle of Higher Education titled “After Losing Users in Catalogs, Libraries Find Better Search Software“  has led to a large number of comments that get to the heart of the matter of information literacy we are grappling with at Rose-Hulman.  The article discussed how libraries are moving towards new generation catalogs, which are for the most part open source, and away from traditional commercial vendors.  Not only are commercial catalogs expensive, but new generation USERS do not know how to conduct proper searches using controlled vocabulary and how to conduct traditional library research.  In short, they have all been Googlelized.

At Rose-Hulman we have a new library director, Rachel Crowley who is a very strong advocate of information literacy.  Our previous method of library instruction was inadequate.  We simply inundated the class with demos of databases and resources that were relevant to their class or project.  We also showed some different search strategies and added in information on how use our AtoZ service and make an ILL request.  We did ALL of this each class, thus repeating certain methods and never really starting at point A and ending at Pont Z by the time they graduated.  While this was good in pointing them in the right direction, it did very little to make them more information literate.   We both have similar ideas on what needs to be done but have different approaches to doing it.  So we are conducting our sessions together this quarter to devise a strategy that works.  For instance, we are trying to work in interactivity into the session instead of just talking at them for 50 minutes.  Another issue in regards to search strategies and when to use subject headings vs. keywords.

What I found most useful about the the article mentioned above, is the comments listed below it.  They are worth reading.  Some questions that are brought up include: Do we need to revamp the library catalog, or do we need to revamp how we teach?  How do we teach research proper methods to those who do not want to learn it?  These questions and many other mentioned in the article and comments are challenges that educators and librarians are facing and how we handle them will have enormous impacts on the role of libraries for the future.