It is wonderful for libraries to have UNESCO digital publications free-of-charge. It is particularly useful for those who are interested in issues in an international scope, whether in teaching or researching.
UNESCO Publications to Be Free Under Open License
The LACUNY Emerging Technologies Committee, the LACUNY Scholarly Communications Roundtable, LILAC, and the Office of Library Services are delighted to announce our Spring program:
Computers and Crowds:
Unexpected Authors and Their Impact on Scholarly Research
Friday, May 17th; 9:30am – 12:30pm
Graduate School of Journalism, Room 308
Please join us for an exciting half-day session that begins with an introduction to new content production models and ends with a moderated breakout discussions of specific topics in the field.
Part 1:
Hats, farms, and bubbles: How emerging marketing & content production models are making research more difficult (and what you and your students can do about it)
Description:
Google, and other search engines, have made tremendous progress organizing the world’s knowledge. However, accessing that knowledge is becoming increasingly difficult because of emerging marketing and content production models utilized by high-ranking sites like eHow.com and ExpertVillage.com. Search Engine Optimization (SEO), “content farms” and Google’s increasingly personalized search algorithms are making search engines less effective as academic research tools. Therefore students are exposed to more shallow, low quality results than ever before. In this session, learn more about the technologies behind these emerging marketing and content production models. Learn strategies faculty, students, and librarians can use to respond to new information environment.
Speakers:
Kate Peterson
Information Literacy Librarian, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities
Paul Zenke
DesignLab/Digital Humanities Initiative Project Assistant, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Part 2:
Three concurrent breakout conversations on content farms, algorithm-written content, and crowd sourcing. Recommended readings will be made available in advance on the Academic Commons.
Refreshments will be served!
The invention of the concept of Information Literacy leads to an evolution in library instruction. The changes are gradual (as what “evolution” is) but inevitable. Compare with pre-IL era, we can see the impact of IL on library instruction from many angles. The following two are examples.
We teach. Academic librarians play duo roles, educator and provider. Although it is an on-going debatable issue, CUNY librarians carry faculty status.1 We teach library courses (credit-bearing or non-credit, required or elective), one-shot-workshops, or library orientations in the library’s classroom or lab. What’s new today? Embedded Librarianship and Massive Open Online Courses (or MOOC, Web 2.0 technology enabled method for distance learning), just to name two.2 IL extends our teaching activities from library-centric to outside classrooms and on the Web. While EL and MOOC are not in common practice yet on all CUNY campuses,3 it is important for us to keep up with the trending issues in academic librarianship.
We are used to offering bibliographic instruction, teaching library research skills, or conducting theme-based workshops. What’s new today? Computer applications 4 and bibliographic tools, just to name two. For example, when teaching a class on how to navigate in electronic book databases, we encounter various e-reader platforms and interfaces (say, an ebrary reader is different from an EBSCOhost eBook reader, or an add-on program vs. an xhtml page). Before standardization is in place, which I doubt, we will have to teach the class each way for each database.5 Looking at the trends in publishing business, we can expect electronic books to become an increasingly important component in our lesson plan in addition to electronic journals. As to bibliographic tools, it is interesting to see a fundamental shift, for better or worse, in teaching citation styles from manual contents to how to use bibliographic tools, e.g. RefWorks.6 In other words, we teach students how to utilize modern “tools” made by computer to automatically formulate citation styles. It surely saves a lot of time. What students of today skip is the direct process of the task on their own. Instead, they learn how to tell the computer to find answers for them, and we teach that. This reminds me of so-called “Google effects”, a phenomenon in information seeking behavior in the Information Age. “The Internet”, a research report concludes, “has become a primary form of external or transactive memory, where information is stored collectively outside ourselves.”7
We don’t necessarily do all the new things, nor do we have to agree to every new thing. However, one thing we should do is to keep up with the trends, because knowing and understanding contemporary academic librarianship issues helps us work better.
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Notes
1 For those who are interested, you may attend LACUNY Dialogues: The History and Future of Library Faculty Status on Friday, May 10th, 10:00 am-12:00 pm at Graduate Center.
2 For those who are interested in EL, you may join ACRL (NY)/QBCC Webcast: Embedded Librarians on Tuesday April 30th, 2-3:30 pm. As to MOOC, LCC will have a lecture A Conversation about MOOCs on Friday, May 3rd, 2-4 pm.
3 York implemented EL for one academic year, but discontinued due to the shortage of librarians.
4 It is not really a “new” matter, I admit, but with much more involvement today.
5 At the time of this writing, Simon & Schuster announced that it would join HarperCollins, Penguin, Random House, Hachette, and Palgrave to sell ebooks to libraries. [See news release at <http://newsbreaks.infotoday.com/NewsBreaks/Simon--Schuster-Joins-Big--in-Moving-Ebooks-Into-Libraries-89200.asp>]
6 FYI, another piece of news today is “Thomson Reuters Offers New EndNote Basic —Aimed at Mendeley Users” <http://newsbreaks.infotoday.com/Digest/Thomson-Reuters-Offers-New-EndNote-BasicAimed-at-Mendeley-Users-89198.asp>.
7 Betsy Sparrow, et al. “Google Effects on Memory: Cognitive Consequences of Having Information at Our Fingertips.” Science 333 (5 August 2011): 776-778.
[Written on Friday, 4/26/2013]
The purpose of this workshop series is to bring together high school and college instructors and librarians to share and discuss common teaching challenges, barriers and aids in helping high school students make a successful transition to college. In the series, participants revised high school curricular units in English and social studies using shared objectives for high school seniors and college freshmen and shared understanding of the challenges and realities teachers and students face. It is hoped that high school faculty will be able to implement the revised units during spring 2013. The workshop took place in the Architecture Library at City College, CUNY.
Let’s see what others in the world are doing.
A report, released in January 2013, to ACRL’s Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education Task Force describes the following four British information literacy models currently in use in the United Kingdom:
- ANCIL (A New Curriculum for Information Literacy)
- SCONUL (Society of College, National and University Libraries)
- National Information Literacy Framework Scotland (The Scottish framework)
- Information Literacy Framework for Wales (The Welsh framework)
The author, Justine L. Martin of Minnesota State University at Mankato, uses “ground theory” qualitative method to analyze documents and interview data. Also provided is “Mapping British Models to ACRL Information Literacy Standards” (Appendix 2), which I found informative.
According to the author, creating guidelines is one step in revising information literacy standards because IL is an evolving concept and, “as such, professionals will continue to adapt frameworks to meet the needs of today’s information users.”
Full report (51 pages) can be viewed at http://mavdisk.mnsu.edu/martij2/acrl.pdf
Many faculty members in the library and beyond strive to help students learn to evaluate the information sources they use, whether in print, or on websites, or presented as images, audio, or video. Evaluating sources is a core competency of information literacy, and is highlighted by the Association of College and Research Libraries in ACRL Information Literacy Standard 3:
The information literate student evaluates information and its sources critically and incorporates selected information into his or her knowledge base and value system.
I’ll be honest: Standard 3 has always been my favorite of the ACRL standards, and I spend lots of my instructional brainstorming time on ways to incorporate more discussion of evaluating sources into my teaching. One of the first things I read on the topic when I first became a librarian was Marc Meola’s article in portal: Libraries and the Academy called Chucking the Checklist. Meola suggests that librarians stop using checklists of evaluation criteria — often accuracy, expertise, currency, relevance, etc. — to teach students to evaluate websites. Instead, we can approach instruction on evaluating sources as an opportunity to discuss the library’s vetted resources like article databases, and to use comparison and corroboration to contrast websites and library resources.
I enjoy Meola’s article and agree that the checklist approach is simplistic, however, there’s often not enough time in our instructional sessions with students to delve as deeply into a discussion of the differences between information sources as Meola suggests. So I confess that I do use checklists, though I try to contextualize and discuss the criteria with students, either individually or as a group, while they search. I also like to frame this as source interrogation: what questions can students ask about the source, and what do the answers tell us?
At City Tech we started out (following the lead of many other academic libraries) by using a set of questions to ask about sources created by the Merriam Library at California State University, Chico. This list of questions is called the CRAAP Test — guaranteed to get a giggle out of even the sleepiest class — which stands for currency, relevance, authority, accuracy, and purpose. Each criteria includes several questions to ask about the source. It’s a long and thorough list, and it’s deservedly popular in academic libraries.
Last week I followed a Twitter link that led me to another set of criteria for evaluating sources, this one called the SMELL Test. This guide from PBS.org’s MediaShift website urges readers to consider the source, motivation, evidence, logic, and what was left out of the information they read about online. Since it’s presented in article form it’s not exactly a checklist per se, but I think the SMELL test would make an interesting article for students to read and discuss.
Finally, I thoroughly enjoyed this 13-minute TED Talk from journalist Markham Nolan on How to Separate Fact and Fiction Online. In it, Nolan details the tools and strategies that journalists use to check sources and verify information in images and video even as a news story is developing. For example, he discusses how photos of Hurricane Sandy were fact-checked. I think students often forget that they should evaluate their image, audio, and video sources as well as text-based sources, and I think this video can help us make that case.
Do you have strategies or materials that you use to help students learn to think critically about information sources? Share them in the comments if so!
Information literacy is an important component in a set of critical thinking skills. Or, do we all agree that information literacy is a ‘prerequisite’ in critical thinking skills?
Back in April 2012, LILAC and Gale co-sponsored an event at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. The theme was ‘Workplace Readiness: Gaps in critical thinking skills of early career professionals’. (Check Amrita Dhawan’s posting on this blog on March 27 and on April 17, 2012 for a description of the event.)
A newly released research report coincides LILAC’s April event “Workplace Readiness”.
Founded in 2008 at University of Washington, Project Information Literacy (PIL) carries its mission that is to conduct ‘ongoing, large-scale research about early adults and their research habits.’< http://projectinfolit.org/about/> The organization investigates issues on college student, especially freshmen, to see how they adjust from high school environment to the college information landscape. Now, PIL moves a step further with its current report: How College Graduates Solve Information Problems Once They Join the Workplace. The report is written by Dr. Alison J. Head, Director of PIL and a Fellow at Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society and the Harvard Library Innovation Lab.
The PIL report is based on interviews with 23 employers and 33 recent graduates in the U.S. Among findings, I found the lack of social skills to be prominent and profound. Our current IL practice is usually focused on college course work in the form of classroom learning while students’ life after graduation is less of a concern. Students acquire knowledge and get information from their professors. When they joined the workforce, however, they are on their own. No teachers, no mentors, no professor to teach them how to find/filter/sort/synthesize/utilize information when their boss wants; traditional Google search won’t do the trick; and there is a deadline. The people they can turn to now are colleagues but the new grads don’t know how and when to ask. Apparently, a set of social skills is necessary, to say the least. We are aware that campus mentality is different from real world in the form of workplace; hence we shall teach students surviving skills for their future. How do we teach this set of skills and integrate the content into the current IL curriculum is an open question. After all, the mission of information literacy programs is to create lifelong learners. Another notable finding is that new college graduates are not ready for corporate’s deadline pressure because they are so used to casual schedule in college. It gives us something to think about.
1) Watch the preview/summary of the report: <http://youtu.be/5gOtjexhyvE>
2) The full report is available at <http://projectinfolit.org/pdfs/PIL_fall2012_workplaceStudy_FullReport.pdf>
3) Read Barbara Fister’s comments on the report (posted on Inside Higher Ed) <http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/library-babel-fish/project-information-literacy-inventing-workplace>
York librarian Scott Sheidlower and co-author Joshua Vossler provide advice and strategies on how to use humor to encourage student learning during librarian-led instruction sessions. From a review in the Colorado Libraries journal: “Vossler and Sheidlower focus on ways to make library instruction sessions interesting. … Recommended for academic and school instruction librarians who are looking for a new way to breathe life into what can sometimes be a monotonous and repetitive presentation. “ Humor and information literacy was also selected for the “Books to check out” column of Computers in Libraries, in October 2011.
A longer review from John Drobnicki is in the York College library newsletter Passport Password for summer 2012, page 4.
Joshua Vossler and Scott Sheidlower. Humor and Information Literacy: Practical Techniques for Library Instruction. Santa Barbara, CA: Libraries Unlimited, 2011.
The Center for Intellectual Property will host a Community Conversation on July 19 from 1-2pm EST. If you are interested in attending this free, virtual event which is for CIP members, please contact Kathleen Collins by June 27. While it appears to be geared toward the U of Maryland audience, there will undoubtedly by some excellent ideas for you to incorporate into your teaching at CUNY. Here’s the description from the Center’s site:
Join the Community Conversation with Mark de Jong, Document Management Librarian and Institutional Liaison, UMUC Academic Center at Largo. The discussion topics include Best Practices in Copyright Literacy, including Staff Training and Development issues.
The UMUC Library supports the educational mission of UMUC by educating students, faculty, and staff in the use of library and information resources and services, emphasizing the critical importance of information literacy knowledge and skills for success in today’s information-rich world, Partnering with The Undergraduate School, The Graduate School, and UMUC faculty worldwide to promote and embed information literacy within the curriculum, and Developing and managing extensive online library resources and user-centered services for UMUC students, faculty, and staff worldwide.
Workplace Readiness? Gaps in critical thinking skills of early career professionals
Speakers
Marisol Hernandez, Memorial Sloan Cancer Center
Dawn Hoffman, Global Strategy Group
Jeffrey Holmes, Woods Bagot
Brendan Molloy, KPMG
Kate Wittenberg, Portico
The “Workplace Readiness?” session, sponsored by the City University of New York’s Library Information Literacy Advisory Committee (LILAC) and Gale, a Cengage Learning Company, will be a chance for librarians and other faculty as well as career development professionals to hear from employers how well we are doing in preparing early career professionals with the critical thinking skills they need to succeed in the workforce. Representatives from various fields will be invited to speak with an audience of librarians, subject faculty, and CUNY career development specialists.
Speakers will address gaps they see in employee preparation and the skills needed to thrive in the workplace. The program will provide ample opportunity for discussion about how to close the gaps. Participants will take away a broader understanding of the requirements for success in the 21st Century workforce, as well as suggested strategies and tactics for how better to prepare students for their lives beyond academia.
Friday, April 27, 2012, 9am, Room L2.84
John Jay College of Criminal Justice
Registration information is available here: http://metro.org/events/174/
