An idea to try

So I've been thinking about how I can apply active and critical teaching techniques to a one shot IL session.  One idea that I have is sort of a free form exploration of the library website.  Most library websites are designed to be a one stop shop for your information needs, but I find that many student do not know how to use it right off the bat.  However, I suspect that many of them, if left to their own devices, could figure out how it works through exploration.  So, I want to take this natural ability to learn through exploration and put it in the more structured setting of a classroom.  Perhaps I could start with a few open ended questions like, What do you notice first about the page? Then, based on their response, I could cover the Catalog or the Databases or whatever struck them first, incorporating other research skills such as search strategy as we discuss features of the website.  Thus covering the research tools and concepts at the same time, so that students can see how they work together.  hmm....

Vocabulary Lessons

I've been doing some reading on pedagogy, due in large part to a discussion I had with a new administrator at Texas State, where I worked as a temp librarian for about 5 months. She suggested that I read some work by Paulo Freire because of my interest in teaching and active learning techniques. Which lead me to my current reading material A Pedagogy of Liberation with Paulo Freire and Ira Schor.

The book is structured as a discussion between Freire and Schor. A structure which I find engaging and representative of the authors' styles of teaching. So far, I've only read 25 pages, but the text is rich with insight and the history of education. One of the major themes I've picked up on is that we need to communicate with students in a language that they understand. At first this may seem like an obvious and easy thing to accomplish, however, I find that the library is awash in terms that students unfamiliar with libraries are not likely to know: Database, Catalog, E-Journal, E-Book, Record, Call Number, etc. Therefore, to effectively communicate with students, librarians may need to completely rethink our vocabulary during reference transactions, information literacy sessions and on our library websites.

In restructuring library terminology, at least on the public side, Target #1 for me is the term catalog. A little personal background, I am 28 years old, and I do remember card catalogs. There was one in my local public library until I was around 10 years old, 1991. Now, stop a minute and think about that. People born in and after 1991 probably have little or no concept of what a physical card catalog was. They have no frame of reference for that term. Students born in 1991 are now college freshmen or sophomores. At the reference desk, I often have students come in and ask how they can 'find books'. Many of them seem to know that there is a way to find out what books a library has, online, but they don't know where to go.

Many library websites that I've worked with make a stab at user friendly vocabulary, often having catalog search boxes on their homepages labeled with terms like 'Start your Research', 'Books & More' or 'Find Books & Videos'.  However, many of these quick search boxes are keyword only, which offers users little control, and links to the full catalog are labeled with terms like 'More Library Catalog Options', 'Advanced Catalog Search', or simply, 'Catalog'. I think that libraries could make the purpose of their catalogs clearer by linking user vocabulary with library vocabulary on the homepage. So, if a user is thinking 'I need to find a book', the library web page should label the catalog search box with something like 'Find a Book - Library Catalog'. This would help the terms 'book' and 'catalog' to become linked in the user's mind.

This could work for other library jargon as well, 'Find Articles' connected with Journals or Databases, or 'Research Strategy or Skills' with Library Instruction or Information Literacy. Schor mentions that this alteration of vocabulary is perceived as a lowering of standards by some. However, he argues that some level of student understanding is necessary for knowledge to be attained. Once that basic level of knowledge is achieved, more specific or technical vocabulary can be added. In other words, once a student learns the function of the catalog, they can apply the official label, much like an infant who can signal the function of an object before they learn the word symbolizing that object.

I hope to do more research on these ideas in the future. I would love to measure how changing terminology affects learning during IL sessions. I also think that user friendly vocabulary will be very useful for library outreach. I believe that if more students understand the services the library offers, more students will feel comfortable using the library and its resources.

Is there an Information Literacy Gap to Be Bridged?

One word:    Yes.

Today I am reading:

DaCosta, J.W. (2010) Is there an information literacy skills gap to be bridged? An examination of faculty perceptions and activities relating to information literacy in the United States and England. College and research libraries, 71(3), 203-222.

"English faculty....placed a greater emphasis on student's ability to access and retrieve information and less on the ability to recognize the information need." (204)

This is odd to me, it seems that at the college level we ought to be teaching students to analyze and recognize the types of information they need.  College is all about higher order thinking. We would be doing a disservice to students if we only provided them with the basic skills for finding information without also informing them how to evaluate the information that they find.

"The research confirmed that faculty expected information literacy skills to be largely acquired through what Clair McGuinness describes as "osmosis.""

This is surprising to me. I suspect that most professors probably had at least some research training from a librarian.  Did they forget?  I suspect that for faculty, as for librarians, research skills and habits become so ingrained that we forget that they are learned skills.

"Students demonstrate the use of a coping mechanism rather than an information strategy"

Interesting. I have seen this in action, students will go to Google and find anything that remotely relates to their topics, sometimes stretching a source to make it relate.  This, instead of planning out which information sources and keywords will locate resources that are directly relevant to their topics.  This type of information panic could be alleviated with instruction about subject specific resources and constructing a Boolean search strategy.

The conclusion?  Yes, there is a gap between how important faculty thinks information literacy is (very) and what they are actively doing to promote literacy (not so much).  Dacosta suggests, and I concur, that in order to close this gap, librarians need to promote information literacy services to faculty and administrators, and to give them examples of how embedded or collaborative information literacy can be successful.