InfoLitEd

…WPWVC/ACRL members!

I attended the recent LOEX conference in San Diego about a month ago, and I’m just now getting around to blogging about it. There were quite a few sessions discussing libraries using “civic engagement” as a means of improving the information literacy skills of their patrons. In a nutshell -> get people interested in becoming active members of a community by showing them that their direct input will be taken into account by policy makers and you create a seed for lifelong information literacy skills.

At Carnegie Mellon we’re doing this with deliberative polling. I’ve been involved with this for one poll, but until the LOEX conference I hadn’t made the mental connections necessary to become convinced of its usefulness to libraries.

If you’ve read my other posts or spoken to me about information literacy I hope my marketing ideas came across clearly. In short: in addition to working at traditional informaiton literacy education and integrating information literacy standards into curicula, libraries are in a unique position to market themselves to faculty, administrators, teachers, policy makers, council members, and patrons etc. as the ‘human’ resource in making the world a less ignorant place. Libraries know how to research an issue and excel at teaching people those skills. Promoting civic engagement, whether through researching documents for deliberative polling or providing hosting space for town hall meetings is a promising means of promoting libraries and fostering information literacy in patron constituencies.

I attended a demo of the new SirsiDynix Eps/Rooms OPAC + Website product this morning and one of the questions raised by a librarian colleague of mine got me thinking about the role of information literacy in libraries.

The Sirsi trainer was explaining the ability to attach qualifiers to users’ searches on the back end within a subject-specific room. Essentially, when a user performs a search of the catalog within the “Arts” room, the qualifier “AND Arts” or “AND (Art OR Arts)” can be added for contextual search results. Some of the librarians raised concerns about whether this was “leading” the user without informing him of the qualifiers on his search.

This got me thinking about whether the user cares of his search is changed on the backend. Do most of our users think more deeply about their searches than one or two words? No! Usability research continues to confirm that given a box in which to type a search, users very often use the “Google” approach. Are we going to change this with traditional library-centric information literacy programs? Will users *(especially undergraduates) begin forming complex searches using Boolean logic in our OPACs given the current information literacy programming? Unlikely. That is an enormous task, and with staffing, funding, and curricular integration issues it’s improbable. We need to begin a new approach to fostering life-long information literacy skills by targeting affective library/research skills.

The people developing the ACRL standards should closely follow the creation of the new AASL information literacy standards. These new standards address students’ feelings toward libraries and research and how those feelings may affect their information seeking behavior.

I see an opportunity here to raise library awareness and promote use of the skilled information professionals at the library. Maybe we should stop focusing so much effort on creating proficient searchers and start focusing on making users comfortable asking for help. It may help save our profession from the endangered list.

My new interest in GIS lead me to this blog. Really cool, sometimes ridiculous maps. I wonder what Edward Tufte would have to say about some of these maps?

Boy, librarians sure seem to be able to write about this topic. In recent months I’ve seen seemingly dozens of articles with the words “disconnect” “library” “millennial” “net/next gen” in their titles. The vast majority of these papers cite S. R. Ranganathan’s five laws and advocate their restructuring in order to keep millennials interested in libraries. But how? Come on, I want concrete ideas here people! There are lots of free, relatively easy-to-implement ideas for academic libraries (many of which are already being attempted by some courageous librarians at other institutions), but as a profession and an institution, librarians and libraries are bound by what I see as a serious catch 22:

Many of the electronic information systems we provide are just not as slick design-wise as the tools our users are familiar with. And I’m not just referring to young users here; I recently co-taught a 6 week course called “New Ways of Doing Research on the Internet” for Carnegie Mellon’s Academy of Lifelong Learning. Senior citizen status was the only prerequisite requirement, and these people blew me away! They were very adept at searching Google and quickly grasped concepts such as Boolean logic, phrase searching, domain searching and other advanced search techniques. I dare say they were just as proficient as most of the undergrads I’ve met.

So look, we know people of all ages and most walks of life are becoming more tech-savvy by necessity so lets get the ball rolling revamping libraries’ web presences and deisign intelligent interfaces! I want:

RSS catalog updates (Now please)
Instant messaging widgets on every page with staffing during reference hours.
CSS! CSS! CSS! (what I’m getting at is semi-professionally designed library web sites)
My list will undoubtedly continue to grow…

Back to my catch 22: How and where are libraries to get the funding to do this stuff?! We cannot in good conscience relegate the S. R. Ranganathan’s principles as they are fundamental to our internal identity as librarians, but we must adapt and dump more time/money/resources into being reflexive entities.

I don’t have one answer to this grand question, but I do have a few suggestions. First, lets quit talking about this as a “millenial disconnect”. This is a USER disconnect that affects the majority of our users from ages 5-105. Second, administrators need to hire more “jack of all trades” librarians to handle multiple roles with equitable efficiency. This means shifting from the current trend of hiring for experience over initiative. Perhaps take a look at a newish librarian with 3-5 years of experience (but with many skills) than a much more experienced librarian with an extremely focussed, but static career of 20-40 years. Lastly, comes marketing and user education: some public and academic libraries are catching on here but more needs to be done in changing the stereotypical old, slow, rigid library into a hip, reflexive, technology-filled place that still serves its community as an information hub (including print literature!). If we do these things and remain open minded and flexible, libraries will continue to serve functional roles in American society.

I just had a virtual meeting today with a colleague using LetsPowWow. This is a free downloadable app. It has a chat window thats very much like an IM client like AIM, but what makes this free tool really cool is it’s ability for one user (of the up to 10 users) to give over control of his or her desktop. This was especially helpful to this meeting because my colleague and I were discussing graphic design elements of library signage and posters.

The only thing I wish LetsPowWow had is voip ability. With two people it wasn’t necessary, but in a larger group the IM text could get overwhelming rapidly.

With the increasing pressure from accrediting bodies and now the federal government to focus on measuring student learning it is becoming more important for instruction librarians to perhaps reconsider their teaching models.

Is a librarian’s ability to “wing” an instruction session a detriment to student learning? I’m a strong believer in establishing learning objectives before teaching anything, but I admit to winging instruction sessions that I’m familiar with. A librarian may choose to go unprepared for numerous reasons. He may feel he’s too busy to prepare. He may feel he’s doing himself and the students a favor by maintaining the ability stay on his toes.

This instructional flexibility is especially important when an attentive/interested faculty member attends the session. Many times a faculty member with good questions/intentions completely side tracks an instruction session.