What is APAL?

May 30, 2006 at 11:27 pm | In APAL | 1 Comment

More thoughts on an earlier suggestion for an organization for librarians, rather than libraries.  Again, these reflections are spurred by the observation that librarians are unhappy with ALA for various reasons – maybe that many librarians feel that ALA doesn't care about what they care about?  That ALA is frustratingly slow, that it can't/won't keep up with where the profession is going, that it ignores what many new librarians feel is a pressing issue: the lack of professional jobs?  Personally, my experience with the ALA constellation hasn't been great – I've been disappointed with what I've seen in some committees and disappointed with what I've seen presented at conferences – but I'm still a member and I'm not sure, at this point, that this will change.  

Perhaps my ambivalence with ALA and its offspring stems from what I've seen happen online: people are providing excellent tips, professional development, thought-provoking essays …  When I wanted to set up a wiki for one of my professors, did I turn to ALA?  No, I searched Meredith's website for advice on free wiki services.  I'm sure there are those who feel like they learn more from Walt Crawford or from Michael Stephens than they do from American Libraries or C&RL News.  Yes, there are good things that ALA does (and provides freely online, though I still think they should be running an OA journal), but, and this is the sticking point for many, is it worth the cost?  Is it worth the $100+ every year to be a member?  Is it worth all the time and expense to attend two ALA conferences every year (plus, the magic third every other year: ACRL)?

So, this brings us to APAL – the Association of Public and Academic Librarians.  Maybe it should be APALW to be more inclusive ("library workers" instead of "librarians")?  As I had previously imagined, what if there were an organization run by librarians for librarians that published an OA, peer-reviewed journal and put on an online conference every year so that more people could participate without all of the expense?  An organization with low membership fees (or none at all!) that was more flexible, with people who participated because being a librarian was important to them, not because there's a line on the resume that needs to be filled?  This seems utopian and also readily achievable.  I'm not sure how this would work in a real, everyday way (hence the utopian part), but thinking about the component parts, each one seems readily achievable.

The thought just crossed my mind:  why have an organization at all?  If there's so much good stuff already going on – Meredith's working on providing more free, online educational opportunities, we can all keep up (more or less) with major stirrings via blogs – why bother to set up another organization?  I think the commitment of belonging will ensure that there's a core group of people supporting each other's work – it will institutionalize to some degree various social networks while creating new contacts and new opportunities for those who labor on the margins of the main librarian social networks (not everyone keeps up with blogs, for example, so there are a lot of people who could be participating but currently don't; heck, there's probably only ten people who even know this blog exists!).  APAL/APALW could also enable local, face-to-face interactions as people who have tuned out of ALA find common ground with other members in their area.

OK, enough disjointed rambling for the evening – it's time to make dinner. 

Undergraduate History Competencies

May 19, 2006 at 5:37 pm | In history, research competencies | Leave a Comment

OK, here's a draft of some research competencies for undergraduate history students. These assume some exposure to information literacy standards and are intended as, perhaps, a second tier. I really, really, really would appreciate any feedback on this. I will not feel bad if you have only negative things to say!

Undergraduate Research Competencies for History (Draft)

1. Can identify, and distinguish between, primary and secondary sources.

  • The student should be able to define what is a primary and what is a secondary source.
  • The student should know when to use a primary source vs. when to use a secondary source when working on assignments.

2. Can identify resources (electronic and print) for locating primary and/or secondary sources.

  • The student should be able to locate appropriate databases via their institution's web page.
  • The student should be able to execute searches in the library catalog that will yield appropriate resources (Use subject terms to locate primary sources and use subject terms to locate reference materials [indexes, encyclopedias, bibliographies]).
  • The student should be able to execute searches in online search engines that will yield appropriate resources (and can identify history-specific web portals).

3. Knowledge of search strategies for electronic and print resources specific to the discipline.

  • Can locate appropriate materials in a print index or bibliography.
  • Can locate appropriate materials in electronic databases (book reviews, articles, dissertations).

4. Can locate primary and secondary sources (electronic and print) both within the library and outside of it.

  • The student can execute searches in the library catalog to find materials.
  • The student can identify and use union catalogs (print and online) to locate materials not held by their institution (Regional catalogs; WorldCat).

5. Can identify and evaluate sources in various media.

  • Evaluate primary sources (through use of reviews and references).
  • Evaluate secondary sources (through use of reviews and references).

OA for History

May 12, 2006 at 6:44 pm | In history, open access | 2 Comments

Sharon, of Early Modern Notes fame, has created Early Modern E-Prints, a directory of online scholarly books and articles relating to early modern history. In her blog post announcing the E-Prints project, Sharon remarks:

I hope that eventually there will be full-scale open access repositories for history and this resource will no longer be needed. But in the meantime it should help to facilitate access to good quality academic research for people who are studying early modern history but don’t have access to well-stocked university libraries, and it may also encourage the development of open access publishing/archiving by historians.

This brings many things to mind. First, history is one of those disciplines that non-academics care pretty deeply about. There are genealogists, war buffs, local history "amateurs" – a long list of people who are not in school but who love learning about history or who want to know more about the past (and perhaps their family's place in it). The broader public would eat up scholarly content if it were made more freely available. Even if there were simply open-access indexes to scholarly and popular works, this would be a large boon to the general public. Second, and this relates more crucially (in my mind) to world history but generally applies, it is difficult for scholars in various parts of the world to know about or access the work being done by other scholars. A repository for history scholarship would be a wonderful point of exchange for scholars around the world; take a look at DLIST, a repository for library scholarship – there are articles from Indonesia, Australia, the U.S., Spain, South America, Africa … and the statistics show that articles posted to this repository are downloaded around the world. It is detrimental to scholarship for historians to work in isolation; some kind of online repository would go a long way toward enabling greater collaboration in the discipline. The last point I'll raise is one of access here in the U.S. I went to library school at a large research university that had access to all sorts of databases and other resources; I currently work at a library where that level of access is not financially possible. Think of the differences for historians at either institution and how much more quickly someone at a large research institution, with access to a lot of scholarship, can produce articles, presentations or monographs for promotion, etc. than someone working at an institution with less access. This kind of access imbalance results in a scholarship deficit and the discipline as a whole suffers when a select few can produce more scholarship and thus make more scholarly "noise" than those in less-privileged positions. Also, consider the kinds of scholarship and experience that students at privileged institutions can have that are denied students at other, less well-endowed institutions.

While scientists and social scientists have taken to open access repositories (and journals and indexes), the humanities have lagged behind. The AHA made a positive step by making articles in the American Historical Review freely available online (via History Cooperative); more needs to be done.

UPDATE: I forgot to mention something important about Sharon's early modern directory of e-prints:  if you have suggestions of what she should add, leave her a comment. 

History Research Competencies (Part One)

May 5, 2006 at 8:07 pm | In Instruction, history, research competencies | Leave a Comment

Time now permits me to work a little more doggedly on the whole history research competencies thing. This is something that the RUSA-History Section/Instruction & Research Committee is working on (and I guess that I am spearheading somewhat). It does seem silly to me that the committee have dibs on this work, so I encourage anyone interested in the process to join in – that's what blogs are for.

Anyway, I've been looking at AHA guidelines and want to work through the "Historical Thinking Benchmarks" found in Benchmarks for Professional Development in Teaching of History as a Discipline. [I'm listening, incidentally, to the Bell Orchestre CD as I do this - it's quite good if you go for that sort of thing] The Benchmarks are geared to K-12 teaching, but there are a few general principles to be drawn from them. Many of the competencies I list below will be redundant, but I want to get them out on the table and then I/we can reassemble as needed.  I won't list all of the benchmarks because some of them are too out of scope for library-centric purposes.

1. Analysis of primary and secondary sources. This is fairly obvious, and we draw from this a number of competencies (that is, what students would have to know how to do in order to achieve this benchmark):

  • Can identify, and distinguish between, primary and secondary sources
  • Can identify when primary or secondary sources are called for
  • Can identify appropriate resources (electronic and print) for locating primary and secondary sources

2. An understanding of historical debate and controversy. History, as a discipline, is "a complex process of critical dialogue" (AHA Statement on Standards, Section 2), and students have to be aware of that conversation.

  • Can identify appropriate resources (electronic and print) for locating secondary sources
  • Can locate scholarly book reviews
  • Can identify and locate scholarly articles & journals
  • Can use citations from scholarly articles to identify threads of a scholarly conversation
  • Can use citation indexes to locate sources that cite books or articles [this is perhaps a weird obsession of mine, but I've found that grad students here, and some faculty, really like following citation trails to identify who is participating in a scholarly conversation; this is likely a graduate student competency]

3. Appreciation of recent historiography through an examination of how historians develop differing interpretations.  I can't think of anything not covered in #2.

4. Analysis of how historians use evidence.  Ditto.

5. An understanding of bias and points of view.  See what I mean by redundancy?  But maybe someone will have thoughts on these.

6. Formulation of questions through inquiry and determining their importance.  This seems to head in the direction of helping students figure out how to put together a research topic.  The gloss on this one refers to using historical works to identify the major questions guiding the work and then developing one's own questions about the general topic.  This could be a useful exercise in helping students initiate the research process – or, at least, the concept could prove useful in assisting undergrads (the exercise itself wouldn't fit into a BI session).

The remaining benchmarks are too out of scope, so I won't get into them. 

The Fifth Pillar of Information Literacy

May 2, 2006 at 4:58 pm | In Instruction, libraries, research competencies | 2 Comments

As many librarian readers may recall, there are five "pillars" of information literacy:

  1. The information literate student determines the nature and extent of the information needed.
  2. The information literate student accesses needed information effectively and efficiently.
  3. The information literate student evaluates information and its sources critically and incorporates selected information into his or her knowledge base and value system.
  4. The information literate student, individually or as a member of a group, uses information effectively to accomplish a specific purpose.
  5. The information literate student understands many of the economic, legal, and social issues surrounding the use of information and accesses and uses information ethically and legally. (Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education, Section 7, "Standards, Performance Indicators, and Outcomes").

I want to focus on no. 5, the one about the social uses of information. There are three components ("performance indicators") of this part: an understanding of the legal, ethical and socio-economic factors related to the use of information (copyright, freedom of speech, privacy/security, economic barriers to information); a willingness to follow laws, etiquette, ethics of information access and use; uses correct documentation/cites sources/gives credit where credit due. This is all well and good: everyone should be aware that there are barriers to access, that there are laws pertaining to the use of information, and we definitely want people to be aware of plagiarism and avoid it. However, lately I've been wondering if this part, for all of its prohibitionism, is missing something, something more positive and productive relating to the social uses of information.

In pitching a wiki for an undergraduate history methods course (which I have described before), I focused on the importance of collaboration and collegiality, playing off of the Prof. who has been sounding the same note with her students: no historian is an island, to paraphrase Donne. The importance of the collaborative nature of scholarship is embedded in the AHA Statement on Standards too: "Membership in this profession is defined by self-conscious identification with a community of historians who are collectively engaged in investigating and interpreting the past as a matter of disciplined learned practice;" and "Historians strive constantly to improve our collective understanding of the past through a complex process of critical dialogue—with each other, with the wider public, and with the historical record—in which we explore former lives and worlds in search of answers to the most compelling questions of our own time and place" ("Statement on Standards of Professional Conduct", Section 1 and 2). I don't think this emphasis on the importance of dialogue is unique to the historical profession: one of the platforms of higher education as a whole is dialogue and the exchange of ideas.

When I talk about citing sources to students, I always think of something a Professor from my undergrad days said:  "I don't read articles anymore, just footnotes."  Footnotes are not important simply because they document a writer's use of someone else's ideas; footnotes are a form of communication.  Scholars read a paper and want to know where the ideas come from so that they too can follow paths indicated via citations; footnotes also often communicate scholarly identity (citing certain thinkers puts one in a certain scholarly camp).  But how successful are we in communicating the importance of citations to students?  Importance not just because we want to check their papers, as it were (for punitive reasons), but because we want to show students how to communicate their learning and their successes to others.  Because we want students to know how to share what they've discovered.

The change in emphasis from negative (cite your sources so we know whether or not you're cheating) to positive (citing the sources you use is a way of participating in the scholarly community) is fairly simple and emphasizing the importance of sharing information does not have to preclude reference to plagiarism and its attendent perils.  Isn't it better to emphasize that college students are participating in a scholarly community?

The difficulty is how to assess/measure such an outcome – how do you measure collaboration?  I'm not sure, but encouraging (or even requiring, along the lines of "class participation") sharing resources via a course wiki is an interesting step in that direction.

I'm getting away from my larger point here (it's not just citations):  collaboration.  Sharing information, collaborating with others, working as part of a larger conversation among scholars and the public at large – shouldn't these be a part of an information literacy scheme?  Don't we want to help produce citizens/scholars who not only know how to use information, but share what they've discovered?

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