Library Research: A Follow Up for Faculty

Yesterday, I wrote about an article that inspired me to think a little bit differently about how I will work with students during the new school year.  In that post, I noted that the original article included quite a few bits of information and I didn't get a chance to touch in my review.  However, after thinking about it a little bit more, there is one other issue discussed in the article that I think is really important.  And faculty, it deals with you!

The article points out that "teaching and library faculty are likely to have been...skilled researchers as undergraduates...[and] might have a hard time putting themselves in the shoes of a student who walks into the library knowing practically nothing."  Now, while I confessed yesterday that my undergraduate research skills were probably lacking, I know that we often see a disconnect between assignments and students' capabilities, here at the library.  When we work on the reference desk, we hear the questions and confusions that students have over assignments that have to do with scholarly resources and other library-related topics.  And for every question that we hear, we can probably safely assume that there are 10 other people with that question who aren't brave enough to approach the reference desk and ask it.

Because this is something that we librarians have been thinking about for quite awhile, we've come up with some good suggestions for helping you (faculty) build effective assignments that address library research and help develop critical thinking and inquiry skills.  Our webmaster posted a brief piece entitled "Designing library research assignments" last week during our Faculty Week series of posts and suggestions.  I definitely, definitely recommend that you peruse the whole piece; however, I can also briefly highlight the most important ideas communicated here.  When designing a research/library assignment:

• Communicate and collaborate with your College Librarian (me, in your case!)
• Consult the subject guides we've created for you and your students
• Set up a library tour with your College Librarian, or refer students to our regularly scheduled library tours
• Point students to our research portal and have them use our Research Paper Scheduler

As always, I'm happy to provide any support that you may need!  Simply contact me, and we can work together to design and execute efficient, successful research assignments!  

Library Research: The Ideal v. The Practical

Happy first day of school!  I don't think I will ever NOT feel excited on the first day of school--at least, I hope I won't. Everyone is happy to see old friends and filled with good intentions for starting off the school year right.  I had a whole "welcome back" post planned, but an Inside Higher Ed article came out today that I just have to discuss.  And in a way, it is a good welcome back discussion!

The article, entitled "What Students Don't Know," has been making the rounds on all my professional listservs and Facebook sites today; after quickly skimming it, I knew why.  I'd be interested to hear what you (students and faculty!) think of the points made in the article--leave a comment at the end of this post if you have an opinion or insight!

Librarians know that we're underutilized (there are so many ways we can help!), and this article attempts to understand why that is, and what we can do about it.  "Students rarely ask for help, even when they need it," the article's author, Steve Kolowich, summarizes from an ethnographic study conducted at several universities in Illinois.  [Really?  They needed an ethnographic study for that?]  Fortunately, the study was much more complex than this, and indicated several good reasons why students don't ask for help and several solutions for this.  I'll not cover everything discussed in the article--you should definitely read it yourself. However, there were some major points that really resonated with me:

First of all, the study found that many librarians and faculty members overestimate students' research skills.  In general, I don't think high expectations are a bad thing.  We have smart students here at Virginia Tech, and I know that they are very capable of pursuing in-depth and complex research.  However, the article points out one downside to this way of thinking:  isolating and alienating those that we are trying to help by not offering realistic or efficient support strategies.  The study found that a "gulf" exists between students and librarians because librarians may not be offering the kind of help that students need!

So, what do students need?  According to the article, students need practical research suggestions rather than idealistic research discussions.  So, should I stop helping students learn about library databases and stop expecting them to to perform thorough research?  Not at all!  As one librarian phrased it, "It's not about teaching shortcuts [in research], it's about teaching them not to take the long way to a goal."  I didn't mention this before, but I was one of those undergraduate students who never asked for help, even when I needed it.  And I frequently took the "long way" in my research projects.  Who knew that a reference librarian would have been able to save me time?  I could have avoided many long hours sitting on the floor, in the middle of the stacks browsing through books if someone had just shown me how subject headings work.  Similarly, I could have taken advantage of the wealth of information available through my library, rather than just sticking to the one database I knew (JSTOR).

Basically, the article seemed to suggest that librarians have an image problem on college campuses.  And that's hard to argue with, since the image that I always had of librarians was intimidating, and kind of scary. As an undergrad, I was afraid of being overwhelmed by information--which may have happened, since librarians want to help students so badly that they often overwhelm them.  This article, though, has reminded me that I need to keep student research in perspective--get a sense of what they need to succeed, and then balance thoroughness with a sense of efficiency.  Similarly, as a librarian, I need to put myself OUT there and meet people where it might be easier for them to talk to me. This is one reason that I started HNFE Librarian Office Hours in Wallace Atrium--a way of meeting students and faculty in their own space.

This is a lot for the first day of school.  If there's an overall takeaway from this piece, it's that librarians really can help, and that we need to make it easier for you to ask for, and then receive, that help.  And that's what I look forward to doing with you this semester!

On Librarians...

Last winter, I wrote a series of posts that were part of a national project--the Library Day in the Life Project.  This national project occurs twice a year, and I will be participating in it again next week!  Watch the tag librarydayinthelife for those posts.  The point of the project is to make the roles and work of librarians more transparent to those that we work with.  I just came across a fantastic set of images from the site MastersinEducation.org that takes stab at visually describing the international significance of librarians.  While their sources are cited in a rather haphazard way at the bottom of the image, they are indeed authoritative sources.  So take a look and ponder a librarian's worth on this Friday!

++ Click to Enlarge Image ++

ImageSource: MastersinEducation.org

A Few Interesting Updates...

It feels like forever since I've posted here, but apparently it's only been a week.  In that week, I've traveled to New Orleans and back for the annual conference of the American Library Association.  During this conference, librarians meet to conduct business, share ideas and practices, and (perhaps most importantly), talk with library vendors about resources and products that we use in our libraries.

This year, I was able to bring back a few interesting tidbits that you may be interested in:

• EndNote X5 was just released!  Currently, only the PC version is available, but the Mac version should be coming out this fall.  If you have a PC, you can now download EndNote X5 from the VT network software site.  Contact me if you'd like to set up any group or individual training for EndNote X4 or X5.  
• The 2010 data is now available in ISI's Journal Citation Reports.  You can read our library release about it here, and also brush up on why Journal Citation Reports and impact factors are important!
• Web of Science has an enhanced interface.  I saw a few demonstrations of the new interface, and you can read about these enhancements here.  The changes didn't seem to be too big, but there may be a few options that you find helpful!  More on this later.  
• Springer has a cool (totally free, to anyone!) tool called AuthorMapper that will allow you to search for institutions and authors and plot their locations on a map.  Check out the "Virginia Tech" map that I just created:

Powered by AuthorMapper.com

That's about it for the big news from the vendors that you all may be interested in from the American Library Association annual conference. However, there was quite a bit of discussion surrounding a few library issues that you may also be interested in:

• E-books.  The general consensus is that they're here to stay, but that libraries are in the throes of negotiating what our collections will look like.  More and more libraries are lending Nooks, Kindles, iPads, and other e-readers.  
• Collaborative arrangements.  Since storage is tight on many campuses, and because university libraries are opening up more space for collaboration, many libraries are turning to collaborative agreements to house print journals.  Overall, access to journals won't be impacted (from the user perspective), but it may change the way libraries look (and act on-campus) in the near future.
• Institutional repositories.  It is becoming increasingly common for libraries to build their own institutional repositories to house the research coming out of that university.  Virginia Tech is moving toward this goal, and I, for one, am very excited to see where this takes us!

Happy Birthday, U.S. Copyright

In today's issue (May 31, 2011) of the Roanoke Times, I noticed an interesting tidbit in the Odds & Ends section.  According to this page, George Washington signed into law the first U.S. Copyright Act on May 31, 1790.  Of course, I verified this through Wikipedia, and then got to thinking about how copyright affects students, researchers, faculty, and many other components at a large research university.  Much has changed within U.S. copyright law since 1790, especially in the wake of the digitization of information!  Since 1790, U.S. copyright law has gone through several iterations, the most recent of which created the Copyright Act of 1976.  Recent updates to this Act have included the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), and the Teaching, Education, and Copyright Harmonization Act (TEACH), all of which affect instructors, students, and researchers at a large university like Virginia Tech.

At University Libraries, we get regular questions about copyright, so I thought today would be a good day to go over a few copyright basics and point you to some library resources that may help you understand everyone's rights a little bit better.

Copyright Basics

• Copyright gives the owner of a copyright six exclusive rights.  You can read about those here, on the website for the United States Copyright Office
• Copyright, for most works, now lasts for the lifetime of the author + 70 years.  They then pass into the public domain.  Use this chart from Lolly Gasaway to help you figure out when that might be for a particular work!  
• Government documents are completely within the public domain--they are not under copyright protection
• Copyright protection begins the moment that the work exists--no one needs to register anything for copyright protection
• Several categories of material (such as ideas, names, methods, procedures, etc.) cannot be protected under copyright
• Copyright limitations do exist...

Copyright Limitations

As people at a large research university, we are all probably aware (at least vaguely) of various limitations to copyright, and how that might benefit us.  A few of these limitations include:

• Fair Use
• The TEACH Act
• First Sale Doctrine (the piece of copyright law allowing libraries to lend books!)
• Personal Copies

Students and faculty will often use the principle of Fair Use or rely on the TEACH Act to justify using copyrighted material.  Click on the links above and read more about each of these limitations to read about what these really entail.

Here at University Libraries, we have a lot of valuable resources related to helping you understand your rights within copyright law.  We have an entire page devoted to copyright:  http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/copyright/.  On this page, we focus on helping you understand what you can and can't do, and also how you can keep the copyright to your own work, if you are publishing an article or other resource with a publisher!  One of my favorite tools on this page include the Fair Use Analyzer, a form designed to assist you deciding whether or not your use of copyrighted material is "fair" or not.  Similarly, our pages tailored to needs of Instructors and Scholars/Researchers really help different users figure out how copyright law and protection applies to them.

As always, don't hesitate to let us know if you have any questions about what may or may not be legal (or ethical).  And, Happy Birthday, U.S. Copyright!  

Happy National Library Week!

Image from www.haynerlibrary.org

I've been remiss in my role as a librarian blogger this week!  I have so far failed to wish you all a Happy National Library Week!

National Library Week celebrates the important work done in and around libraries in the USA.  The American Library Association had a full week of events and programs, all of which you can check out here:  http://www.ala.org/ala/conferencesevents/celebrationweeks/natlibraryweek/index.cfm.

And on this Friday, I will leave you all with a CNN article:  Librarians:  Masters of the Info Universe.  I even learned something from this article--the American Library Association reported that, during 2010, reference librarians answered an average of 5.7 million reference questions per week!

Bookmobiles, Audrey Niffenegger, and Roanoke

Niffenegger behind the wheel of the Aurora Public Library
bookmobile.  Image from www.pio.ala.org

Yesterday was National Bookmobile Day!  The celebration was part of National Library Week (which is this week, April 11-16; there will be a blog post about that tomorrow, I promise), and I just realized that it has a hometown tie for us here at Virginia Tech.

This year's Honorary Chair for National Bookmobile Day was Audrey Niffenegger.  Her name may sound familiar to you because she has written several bestsellers, including The Time Traveler's Wife and Her Fearful Symmetry (my personal favorite).  She has also written an illustrated short story for adults--The Night Bookmobile.  If this title sounds familiar to you, that is because the Taubman Museum of Art in downtown Roanoke is currently hosting a special exhibit on The Night Bookmobile.

I actually just visited this exhibit earlier this week, and was completely enthralled.  The exhibit will be at the Taubman through Sunday, April 24, and I highly recommend both the museum and the Audrey Niffenegger exhibit.

You can read more about National Bookmobile Day and Audrey Niffenegger here:  http://www.pio.ala.org/visibility/?p=2859.

Library Day in the Life Project

Starting on Monday, January 24, I will be participating in a project called Library Day in the Life.  Since 2008, Library Day in the Life, a week-long event, has happened twice a year in an effort to promote an understanding of the work that librarians do and support networking among library colleagues.  Although I have never participated in this international project before, the timing of Round 6 of Library Day in the Life, which begins on Monday, coincided with several things, convincing me that participating in this project is something that I need to do!

First of all, the post on the Academic Library Autopsy Report that I wrote yesterday really got me thinking that I need to do a lot more to develop my presence on campus and promote the ways that I can support faculty and students.  What better way to do this than provide a few snapshots into my regular day?

Next, I have made this blog a real priority for the upcoming year:  I'd like to beef it up with lots of information about resources and research that will benefit you, as members of the HNFE community, of course; however, I've decided that I would like to use this blog as a tool for explaining and promoting what academic librarians do here on campus at VT.  We make a lot of difficult decisions about resources, services, etc., and I want to share with you some of our thoughts along the way, and how these may reflect national and international trends in information and research.

So next week, I will write posts on Monday, Wednesday, and  Friday chronicling my day-to-day activities as the HNFE library liaison!  You can use the tag librarydayinthelife to find/read these posts quickly.  Interested in reading more about this project?  Visit the Library Day in the Life Wiki!

I'll still be posting other, HNFE-related information next week, as well, but stay tuned for a unique glimpse into what librarians actually do!

Academic Library Autopsy Report: My Response

On January 2, the Chronicle of Higher Education published a brief commentary entitled Academic Library Autopsy Report, 2050.  In this commentary, the author, an instructional librarian at Alfred University in New York, highlighted five key factors that he believes may lead to the eventual (and relatively soon) death of the academic library.

Of course I, as a librarian, had a pretty strong reaction to this article.  My first thought was that the piece was totally extreme; my next thought, as I saw that the author was also a librarian, was that the article was a call to action from one librarian to the professional community of librarians.  In the comments below the article on the Chronicle website, the author himself, Brian Sullivan, chimes in and pretty much says this himself.  That said, I think the author makes a few interesting points that could underscore the ways that academic libraries NEED to change in order to maintain relevancy and value in the academic community--the thoughts below are the first ones I had in response to Sullivan's report.  As a library user, do you agree?

1.  Book collections become obsolete
Sullivan takes libraries (and their administrators) to task when he writes that libraries "signed their own death warrants with deals to digitize their books," like in the Google Books situation.  Although I do believe that electronic collections are the future (see my post on e-books from last week) for many types of books, I think that libraries can drive the electronic book phenomenon in a way that it currently is NOT.  Right now, publishers hold the power with how and when books are published, and who can access them.  Libraries need to take a more proactive role in figuring out what's going on with e-books and how we can leverage access to the.  I don't have an answer here, but I am actively questioning!

2. Library instruction was no longer necessary
Sullivan seems concerned that better tools (like web-scale discovery tools:  think Google for library resources) will eliminate the need for librarians to focus on resource-specific instruction.  To a certain point, I think he's right!  Interestingly, a group called Project Information Literacy just published a report that, among other things, suggested that students really need instruction on the research process, rather than specific resources.  I agree!  If we can teach the process, the resources bit will follow--especially if we have better, more faceted searching tools.  More on this in the next section...


3.  Information literacy was fully integrated into the curriculum
Okay, this one is definitely happening.  You may see it called "inquiry" in the literature, but information literacy has become more and more a concern within all academic disciplines, it seems like.  As Sullivan writes, I do see major, campus-wide adoptions of information literacy standards (like ACRL's) in the future, and with librarians playing a major role in this--which Sullivan agrees with.  However, I think that what's missing from this picture now is the intimate, simultaneous instruction related to information literacy (the research process) and discipline specific information.  Essentially, an intimate collaboration between librarians and faculty members.  Librarians have made it their lives' work to help students understand how to research; faculty members can spend MORE time covering discipline-specific material if they collaborate with librarians who are able to support students in experimenting with, and learning more about, the research process itself.


4.  Libraries and librarians were subsumed by information-technology departments
Again, I see collaboration as the key here.  Digital resources really are changing the collection development game, but let's face it:  librarians bring a special expertise in selecting, weeding, and maintaining library collections, whether they are print, electronic, or something else that we haven't even dreamed of yet.  That said, I think that librarians need to become technology savvy in order to understand the new environment of information and research materials.  Sullivan's "report" envisions librarians using their talents to work with major publishers or IT groups--since the library will be dead--but if we establish an identity early on (as, ahem, e-book leaders, for example), collaboration will occur, and the "librarian" identity will stay strong!


5.  Reference services disappeared
In academic libraries, the focus has very much moved from reference to instruction and other tasks.  I'm sitting on the reference desk right now while I write this, and I have only been asked for directions to the bathroom and the printer, and to locate lost books.  I think that many members of the university community still value the idea of reference services, but again, I think that librarians need to be more vocal about communicating that this service exists.  We're not exactly competing with Google, but we could stand to improve our visibility and promote our services.


6.  Economics trumps quality
I think that this factor is what, in many ways, drives the previous five.  But I don't think that this WILL happen if librarians establish an identity (see 4) and provide evidence and support of their value.  Librarians need to be more proactive in establishing relationships with faculty AND students, in claiming their identity on the college campus, and in promoting it.  That's my goal, at least!

E-Books: The Future is Here (?)

Image from www.baby-boomer-resource-center.com

Over the past week, several really big announcements have been made about major publishers and e-books.  JSTOR, Project Muse, and Oxford University Press have all announced that they will be supporting e-book platforms.  E-books are here, and libraries are trying to figure out how to handle this!  I actually received a Kindle 3 for Christmas, so have been experimenting with e-books in a way that I never have before; in fact, I kind of like them.  A lot.  In addition to using my e-reader for pleasure reading, I've also been using it for professional reading.  It's ridiculously easy to convert PDFs and other papers that I might want to read into e-book format.  I feel like I'm saving trees AND carrying around an entire library that only weights 8.5 oz. (Of course, there are lots of debates going on about whether or not e-books actually ARE greener than paper books).

Yesterday, the Chronicle of Higher Education published an article about these developments in the e-book world, and wagered that many e-book platforms would be up and running by fall.  For libraries, this means that the way we collect books may be a bit (er, very!) different.  I'm a little anxious, and a little excited, to see how it all develops.  I will definitely be posting more on this blog about e-books and options that may be particularly relevant for you HNFE folks--but for now, what do you think about e-books?  Do you use them for research?  Pleasure reading?  At all?  Use the comment option on this blog to let me know what you're thinking!

Wikipedia on the Cusp of Adolescence

On January 10, 2011, Wikipedia (the free, online, editable encyclopedia) turned 10 years old. All of us here in the university community--whether we're librarians, faculty members, or students--have had mixed feelings about Wikipedia from the very beginning. Students are told from early on that Wikipedia articles should not be used in bibliographies or serious research! Librarians and instructors always feel the need to mention the site when discussing serious research and what NOT to do.

However, as a librarian, I must admit:  I use Wikipedia.  Frequently.  I use it to find background information about topics that I know little about, and I use to double check certain dates, places, events, etc. that I figure the conscientious Wikipedia community would ensure are correct.  NPR has been running stories on the wiki all week long, and today's story was particularly interesting, to me, since they interviewed NPR's reference librarian Kee Malesky.  While Ms. Malesky admits to using Wikipedia like I do--to gather basic, background information--she is also "well-known" for her distrust of the site.  She even keeps a running document, "So You Think Wikipedia is OK," that tracks errors on the site.  I wish I could see that!

Some of you may remember the 2005 Nature news feature that compared Wikipedia and Encyclopaedia Britannica in terms of errors and content.  Interestingly, the study found that the average science article in Wikipedia contained 4 inaccuracies, while the average science article in Britannica contained 3 inaccuracies--not a huge difference, overall.  The feature goes on to discuss lots of more interesting details about the content of Wikipedia, as compared with other, more "authoritative" encyclopedias, and is thought provoking.

I think we can all agree that Wikipedia has its merits, even though we may always approach it with a bit distrust--but is this really different from any of the other sources that anyone in the scholarly community may use?  As instructors and teachers of the research process, librarians often emphasize the critical step of evaluating information in the research process--this is the crux of many of my instruction sessions with both undergraduate and graduate students.  I try to teach the significance of ALWAYS evaluating sources--whether they come from a scholarly database or the free web.  It's a given that Wikipedia should never be used as a sole source for research or cited in a bibliography--but using it as a starting point?  It can be a great resource for students (and others) to practice their evaluation skills...

*1/13/11 Update:  Just found a January 7 Chronicle article that contains a similar argument.

More on this later!  For now, listen to what others are saying about Wikipedia, how they use it, and why they do or don't trust it: