It's Academic

Recently, I was offered the privilege of an in-person interview with Bethany College in Bethany, West Virginia, for the position of Research and Instructional Librarian. Unfortunately, circumstances did not allow for me to make the five-and-a-half hour drive across Pennsylvania, and I had to decline the opportunity. Part of my interview would have included a presentation on how I would completely renovate the current information literacy instructional process at the college. With my limited background in academic libraries, this really was a challenge. With some research, however, I secured some guidance on how I would have went through with the information literacy critique and renovation had I done the presentation.

An academic library is not an island and does not operate solely without the connections and support between other departments and campus units. Factors such as the library’s budget, the educational needs of the academic community, and the resources currently available to instruct must be taken into consideration. For this reason, an academic library should have in place a written mission statement for its instructional program. This statement of purpose should consider the educational mission of the institute and the needs which are becoming increasingly more intricate as diversity and inclusion surge within higher education. (I can testify for that having been the secretary for the Center of International Education at my local community college for two years. I regularly interacted with students from all over the globe and often had to overcome language barriers, sometimes with the help of a translation app on my smart phone!) Not to be forgotten are those non-traditional students who take courses online. How does the library’s mission statement reflect those students’ needs? Will the library’s instructional literacy’s impact extend beyond its institute and even that of the college’s, influencing a student’s self-development, career paths, and lifelong learning?

The second step of evaluation is to identify the content of instruction. Content will vary among academic institutions, but it is critical that the objectives of the learning outcomes are closely aligned with the Association of College & Research Libraries’ Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education. These standards assist academic librarians with general campus discussion in identifying information literacy, and coupled with the Association of College & Research Libraries’ Objectives for Information Literacy Instruction, provide guidance in establishing measurable outcomes for any given information literacy program.

Identifying the modes of instruction is the next step. Here is where I see the use of surveys as a very beneficial tool in gauging just how and where students receive their information literacy instruction, and the impact, if any, it makes on their education and coursework. Additionally, surveys designed for faculty, staff, and department administration can ascertain their needs as well. The feedback from these surveys can be a driving force in directing information literacy instruction to better benefit all involved. Perhaps students might not understand the importance of a reference interview when conducting research for a project and do not know where to begin. Could embedded librarians make a huge difference in online courses? How do we reach out to distance learning students to create an atmosphere of inclusion so that they feel they belong to the academic family? Students will be conducting research at all facets of their education, whether it be as an undergraduate, an intern, or working on their capstones, so it is crucial that librarians are implementing effective instructional programs to reflect the total campus learning environment every step of the way. Even reaching out to incoming freshmen at orientation is desirable; making our presence known from the very beginning that we are here to help sets the wheels in motion that our library should be a dedicated and cherished cornerstone in our students’ campus experience. Virtual tours of the library facilities and meet-the-staff videos can reel in distance learning students to increase the likelihood that they will use the library remotely.

Evaluation of the instruction programs should be an on-going process. Regular meetings with faculty, staff, and department administration can determine if the specified outcomes are being implemented and if any needed changes in direction is necessary. There needs to be ongoing support for continuing education, training, and development. New librarians, such as myself, coming on board with no prior information literacy instructional experience, can develop and nurture these skills through structured training sessions. Continual training for those librarians who are already conducting information literary instruction will ensure that their qualifications are constantly being challenged and sharpened. Sensitivity and responsiveness to changing technologies and the overall chemistry of the campus environment is essential. What worked even three years ago may not work now. Make sure your library has the essential tools needed to conduct effective instruction, budget withstanding.

I wonder if I would have been offered the position at Bethany College, and if so, how I would have gone about redesigning and evaluating their current information literacy instructional programs. I certainly would have been up for the challenge. How does your library evaluate your information literacy instruction? What is your greatest obstacle when doing so? Do you feel as though you have that open communication with other campus departments and faculty? For academic librarians, information literacy instruction is a very crucial facet of this profession, one that requires reaching out to the students to instill lifelong appreciation for acquiring what is accurate and conducive to learning and the ability to retain and utilize reliable resources for a more productive lifestyle.

Thanks to http://www.ala.org/acrl/standards/guidelinesinstruction for the help!

The Money Smart Week presentation by Emily Mross and Olivia Sullivan is available at this link:

https://zoom.us/recording/play/OVUipP97FEtpUiBz9wxF0qbjo-67AcyBf-q6hb8317GkJ-L8ALVRtWAgy_S3d3S3

Link will be active for 30 days.

Thanks to all who participated!
~Erin

Revisiting the Discovery Tool: a Periodic Exercise

The academic library has always been a place to develop and adopt new technology, tools and services. Over the last several years we have witnessed a great increase in the reliance on discovery tools. All the big players are here. EDS, Ex Libris and OCLC are some of the very prominent names we have seen in Pennsylvania. And let us not forget Pennsylvania’s own VuFind! Call them what you will, debate has continued as these tools are refined and adopted. It is always good to give a good hard look at what we offer our patrons. As we instruct students in class or assist them at the research help desk, do we see an improvement in their ability to find quality sources? Are these tools really successful in drawing users to our resources or will the familiarity of the “web” always come first? Does it matter? Let’s look again at some of the concerns.

In 2014, Marc Perry wrote a piece in the Chronicle of Higher Education referring to these issues as “the messy world of discovery tools.”[I] The word “messy” jumps out. He identified some of his concerns based on his thorough research. Have we made progress since then? Have we found a balance? One does not need to perform a rigorous study to make similar observational conclusions about discovery tools today.

While a visit to the website of many of the academic libraries in Pennsylvania will show that these products have a strong presence, not every school uses the same system. Sure the products are similar but as practice points out, even slight differences can confuse, delay or even deter a new researcher from continuing to use them. How many times do students approach you about how they “found this source on Google Scholar, do we have it?” When you tell them “Why yes, and here is how easy it is to find”, are they really listening? Do you find students tuning you out when you try to lead an instruction session about a discovery tool? Practice shows this can be a daunting obstacle for even the most skilled instructor. Yet we somehow persevere in our commitment to illustrate how useful the discovery service can be. And they can be. WE know that in our library world, but put yourself in the chair of the student. We are asking them to learn a new way of seeking information for their scholarly efforts. They seem to want grab and go. And why not, that is what they are used to doing for everything else in their lives. Experience shows most of our first-year student’s feel they have been, and can continue to be successful with the internet alone. Our discovery tools don’t yet truly emulate the familiar web search. Any experienced library instructor will try to convey that when it comes to modern research it is not simply one or the other- internet or discovery.

What about those subject-specific databases? Do we do a disservice to our students by tacitly pointing them away from the specific knowledge and tools provided by a focused database? Can you limit results in your discovery tool to “articles written by registered nurses” or would it be easier to point them to CINAHL? How about a company profile for business students? The databases are each different and information can be missed in large indexes of aggregated content. It is sometimes the case that students find the proprietary interface of a standalone database more intuitive and relevant.

Then one might want to consider what we tell/sell our students. “Hey check out this box, it searches everything we have!” It sounds like the best way to go and many students are drawn to the idea. But has this really come to fruition? Promises are made by vendors yet results prove that not every database and discovery service play well together. This has the potential to miss relevant results. About relevancy, are we convinced that the “relevancy-ranking” is not impacted by vendor? Observation shows that when a discovery tool vendor also packages content in databases, bias and business appear to impact results no matter how you configure your particular tool.

If the “one-stop box” approach is our primary answer to the “googlefication” of university research, why do most of our websites still offer links to databases, libguides, legacy catalogs, etc.? Probably because at our core we know we are not quite there with discovery layers alone. Every layer we add has the potential to stall research. It does not serve the mission of easy, quality research if students find an overwhelming amount of results or a dead link or at the end of a search. Are we making progress? Absolutely. Will these tools go away? Probably not.

Time and Effort

The work that is asked of us to maintain these tools is overwhelming. You may have a team at your college or university. You may be solely responsible. Either way the library world salutes you. While progress has been made some issues are likely never to go away:

• different indexing
• ever-changing licensing agreements
• decisions to go with a cheaper competitor
• learning curves
• interaction with campus IT departments
• systems that don’t speak to each other
• the dropping/adding of databases and records
• how the results appear at your institution
• broken links/gateway errors
• lag time of vendor response to issues
• vendor bias and competition

These are a few of the many concerns of supporting the discovery tool from the back end. This doesn’t even include uploading cataloging and holdings information for books and serials. The hours/months/years of continuous work in simply maintaining the tools is incredible and often insurmountable. So once again- thanks to all those in our libraries that try very hard to keep up. We know it is a necessary yet often untenable position to be in.

So what do we need to remember? First and foremost, we are making great improvements but we need to keep assessing. Things are better yet many of the same issues remain with each periodic review of discovery tools. This is unlikely to change anytime soon. We should also never forget the user experience. WE see the value, do they? It should be considered one of the larger missions of our libraries to properly market the true value of these tools. Lastly, ask ourselves often if discovery tools should be the only gateway to information students are expected to use.

Do YOU see a day when it will be enough to simply provide one box to rule them all?

[I] Parry, M. (2014, April 25). As Researchers Turn to Google, Libraries Navigate the Messy World of Discovery Tools. Chronicle of Higher Education. p. 18.