Wednesday, August 24, 2011

What students don't know

This has been making the rounds in the higher ed circles. One of my colleagues mentioned that a faculty member contacted her as a result of reading this...if only we could all be so lucky.

What students don't know: study of student research habits

"...have learned over the course of a two-year, five-campus ethnographic study examining how students view and use their campus libraries: students rarely ask librarians for help, even when they need it. The idea of a librarian as an academic expert who is available to talk about assignments and hold their hands through the research process is, in fact, foreign to most students. Those who even have the word “librarian” in their vocabularies often think library staff are only good for pointing to different sections of the stacks."

"At Illinois Wesleyan University, “The majority of students -- of all levels -- exhibited significant difficulties that ranged across nearly every aspect of the search process,” according to researchers there. They tended to overuse Google and misuse scholarly databases. They preferred simple database searches to other methods of discovery, but generally exhibited “a lack of understanding of search logic” that often foiled their attempts to find good sources."

Wednesday, August 17, 2011

What is a Beta Sprint?

Interesting ideas on the Digital Public Library of America:




and this just announced...

After a careful selection process, the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) Steering Committee is thrilled to announce the eight members of the Beta Sprint Review Panel. The panel will convene in early September to review the Beta Sprint submissions. The creators of the most promising betas will be invited to present at the October 21, 2011 public plenary meeting in Washington, DC.

The panel is composed of public and research librarians and experts in the fields of library science and information management from around the country:

Patsy Baudoin, MIT Libraries
Maeve Clark, Iowa City Public Library
Laura DeBonis, former Director for Library Partnerships for Google Book Search
Eli Neiburger, Ann Arbor District Library
David Rumsey, David Rumsey Map Collection
Michael Santangelo, Brooklyn Public Library
John Weise, HathiTrust
Jessamyn West, library technologist