Ego Sum ALA!

April 7, 2006 at 2:48 am | In APAL, libraries | 3 Comments

There is a long tradition of librarians who are unhappy with ALA (however, by long I mean for as long as I’ve been working in libraries, which is really only about 9 years), though lately I’ve seen dissatisfaction flourish more openly, amplified by blogs. The latest round of hostilities was caused by the suggestion on the part of ALA that retired librarians be part of a volunteer corps that will help fill staffing needs at underfunded libraries. I won’t go into all of the arguments as they are amply represented at librarian.net. What I do want to suggest is apostasy (hence the title of this post, a reference to Reformation-era Papal-bashing which should include an image here, but my old iBook is newly converted to Linux and I don’t know how to work GIMP yet).

Anyway, apostasy: why not form an organization for librarians? American Association for Public & Academic Librarians (AAPAL). Here’s how it might work:

  • an annual online conference with peer-reviewed conference presentations (this could grow into a non-virtual event if members wanted it)
  • monthly or quarterly open-access magazine
  • AAPAL website introduces people to librarianship and is also an outlet for white papers on pressing issues (job outlook, USA PATRIOT Act, etc.)
  • dues cover expenses incurred by web presence
  • committees: executive, publications, conference, mentoring/new librarians, policy, education, website …

There. Fairly simple, isn’t it? It’s just a matter of getting together a core group of 8-12 librarians who can formulate an organizational constitution and who might know another 8 or so librarians who might form the seed of the committees. The group can coalesce around the magazine, build a little word-of-mouth and grow from there.

Faculty-Librarian Collaboration in Instruction

April 6, 2006 at 2:14 pm | In Instruction, libraries | 1 Comment

One of our Business Librarians (and we are quite lucky to have 2 really excellent Business Librarians) was up for an innovation-in-teaching award with one of her faculty in the Finance Dept. Their presentation was yesterday morning and while they didn't win (unjustly), the presentation was great: it was well done and effectively communicated to a faculty and grad student audience the benefits of teaching faculty working with librarians to make students more successful (and from the questions at the end, the faculty really responded – though somewhat along the lines of "Librarians can/will do that?"). Honestly, the presentation made me proud to be a librarian. I'm not sure if our Business Librarian will present this at a conference any time soon (she should), so I thought I'd share a few salient points.

The gist of the collaboration is that the faculty-member was unhappy with the quality of the information that students were using in their papers, so he contacted his librarian to work with him to improve this situation. They collaborated over 3 semesters and evaluated student papers, with an earlier semester where no library instruction was done as the control group. Our librarian researched student information-seeking behavior and devised a teaching package together with the professor.

Teaching Package Elements:

  • Two in-class information literacy sessions
    • research planning and organization
    • intro to the library
    • searching skills
    • overview of key business resources
    • citing sources
    • plagiarism
  • Interactive activities (group work devising topics, etc.)
  • Handouts (to reinforce in-class content)
  • Course research web-guide
  • Team research consultations (small groups meet again with librarian for follow-up questions and early evaluation of group work)

Student papers were evaluated using a weighted scale divided up into four areas.

Evaluation Tool:

  • Quality of resources: Selected of appropriate information sources. Utilized information-rich sources such as journal articles, trade magazines, and company and industry reports.
  • Variety of resources: Resource selected provide diverse perspectives. Multiple sources consulted.
  • Citation format: Consistent citation format used. Format is based on an approved style guide.
  • Utilization of information: Data from outside sources is paraphrased or placed in quotations.

Their evaluation showed significant improvement over the 3 semesters and the professor is very happy with their collaboration – he urged other faculty to copy their work. To that end, they pared down their collaboration to five elements that would form the core of any faculty-librarian collaboration with the goal of information-literate students:

    • long-term instructor-librarian relationship [need to improve instruction - can't get it right the first time; need for assessment requires more than 1 semester; relationship at least helps librarian get a good sense of what the professor wants out of assignments as well as the content of the course]
    • well-defined learning objectives [and not too many! this obviously helps with assessment]
    • ample class time [this is always difficult, but I appreciated that the professor felt it was worth it to make extra time]
    • multiple avenues of support [students see both the professor and the librarian as resources to help them get ahead, etc.]
    • continual assessment

      I also seem to recall that the whole process is supposed to be student-centered: it's about their learning, their improvement, their success.

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