It's Academic

Has something exciting happened at your library this last year that you want to share? Share it with Pennsylvania Libraries: Research & Practice (PaLRaP), the peer reviewed, open access journal of PaLA’s CRD. Click here to submit information such as staff changes, awards/recognitions, events, initiatives, etc. happening in PA libraries that may be of interest to other libraries. Submission deadline is April 3.

For more information about PaLRaP, visit www.palrap.org.

PaLRaP is a peer reviewed, online, open access publication of the Pennsylvania Library Association’s College & Research Division. This journal will provide an opportunity for librarians in Pennsylvania to share their knowledge and experience with practicing librarians across the Commonwealth and beyond. It includes articles from all areas of librarianship, with a special focus on activities at or of interest to Pennsylvania’s academic libraries.

When available, audio and video content will supplement text based documents.

Published biannually: March and October

Editors: Anne Behler, Penn State University; John Barnett, University of Pittsburgh

Peer reviewers: Members of the Pennsylvania library community.

#palrap

You are invited!

On March 27, TCLC members Mary Beth Parkinson and Sara Hartman-Caverly–at Montgomery County Community College–will facilitate an active learning session to explore the concept of Inquiry Guided Learning (IGL), a teaching philosophy promoting student-centered learning through increasingly independent inquiry and investigation.

A morning of brainstorming will reveal ways to bring IGL principles and strategies to your information literacy instruction.

Participate in a discussion of the draft ACRL Framework for Information Literacy in Higher Education.

Explore how IGL concepts relate to the ACRL guidelines, and more importantly, how to use them to produce more effective information literacy instruction.

Bring…

your lesson plans,

student learning outcomes,

classroom activities,

and your thoughts, questions, and ideas        

…to the workshop for discussion.

Remember!

“Engaging Information Literacy Instruction:

Applying Inquiry-Guided Learning Pedagogy to Information Literacy Teaching and Learning”.

The time? Friday, March 27, 2015

The place? Montgomery County Community College

Please refer to the flyer at http://tclclibs.org/ for complete details and registration information.

We’re looking forward to seeing you there!

It’s about 8 pm, and the usual complement of patrons is in our library. Two students are having a study session at the big table in the middle of the stacks area. Several other students are using computers—some doing homework, some watching YouTube videos. Another student is making photocopies of a homework assignment from one of the textbooks we have on our Reserve shelf. There is a student worker manning the Circulation desk, waiting for someone to return something (or check something out)—while doing his homework. As the librarian on duty, I am at my desk, logged into our Chat Reference program and monitoring my email account—that’s where the Text Reference questions appear—while I work on various projects and tasks such as finding an article in full-text at another library for one of our students.

Around 9 pm, the students start to trickle out, returning to their rooms to watch Netflix or play the Xbox game they just checked out from us. By 10, there are usually 1 or 2 people left, contentedly working away with their headphones on, enjoying the quiet that settles over the library at night. Some nights—especially in the colder months—it is only me and the student worker after 10 pm. Our various Reference-question channels are quiet most nights, and generally no one comes up to the desk with questions any more complicated than, “Can you show me how to use the copier?”

Although it is nice to have mainly peace and quiet for my work environment, that atmosphere does raise certain questions. We know our students need help with things such as searching databases for useful articles and creating correct APA citations. Are they not aware of our various options for contacting the library at night? Do they even know we’re open at night, until 11 pm Monday through Thursday? Do they not realize all the questions we can answer for them, all the help we’re waiting and hoping to provide?

Perhaps our students do much of their work during the day—or on the weekends. However, I fear some of the silence stems not from our students already knowing what they’re doing, but from them: a) believing they know what they’re doing (although they don’t) and/or b) not caring whether their answers are correct or whether their papers have useful arguments from evidence found in the wonderful articles, books, and e-books to which the library gives them access. I wonder if some of the students’ attitudes come from a generation so accustomed to asking Google for everything that they haven’t yet realized that quality college work requires answers that not even Google can provide.

What are evenings like in your library? Are they bustling with students working hard, asking questions, looking for resources? Or are they mostly quiet, with a few scattered patrons submitting “something” (anything[?]) to Blackboard so they can go hang out with their friends?  I’m hoping that with the weather improving, our library will find itself used by more of our students.  We’re going to continue thinking of creative ways to spread the word about librarians being available–and interested–in helping students improve their grades–and their minds.