With the Winter semester in full-force, I’ve been doing the usual information-literacy tour. We usually show students some key library resources, give them a little virtual tour of our LibGuides, and then hone in on a few tools and resources we think are going to be useful for their work in that class. This isn’t a perfect model for teaching, but it seems to hold the attention of most of the class, and then often have a question or two.

This past week, at the request of the instructor, I switched things up a bit and focused less on tools, and more on higher-level thinking. I discussed concept of critical thinking, information literacy, and the application of these concepts to their real-world information seeking, be it for their assignments, or down the road as professionals in the field. It was one of the trickiest presentations I’ve ever put together, because I too had to step back and figure out what exactly we’re all doing here — librarians, professors, students — and why any of this matters.

Frankly, I thought it was awesome. I even used a tasty analogy: ” You can’t have a delicious meal without starting with high-quality ingredients. Similarly, you won’t be able to write a good paper — no matter how smart you are — without high-quality resources. Think of wikipedia as the Taco Bell meat of the research world.” That’s cute, right?!

Well, I have never seen a class of more bored-looking 18 year olds in my life. And I’ve seen a lot of bored 18 year olds in my day, lemme tell ya. It was really dissuading and I vowed never to bother trying to integrate concepts of higher-level thinking into my teaching again. Then I went home and ate some ice cream. My bruised ego has recovered, but I wonder: Is there any point it trying to force students to care about information and research, beyond what they need to get a decent mark? Are there better ways to impart these complex concepts that doesn’t induce total boredom?

Libraryland tends to be critical of tools-based information literacy, but I’m a pragmatist: If tools are going to keep them from literally putting their heads down and going to sleep during my presentations, then tools they shall GET.

Have you ever successfully (or unsuccessfully!) integrated discussions of higher-level thinking into your teaching? Do you think it’s something to reserve for students in third or forth year? Or perhaps there are programs that are more hospitable to such discussions than management (i.e. philosophy)?

Perhaps you, like me, are not on the cataloguing side of things because perhaps you, like me, didn’t do so well in Intro to Cataloguing class and swore off cataloguing forever. If this is the case, and you do collections development, I would encourage you to befriend your Friendly Neighbourhood Cataloguing Librarian and ask about getting some usage statistics reports generated for your perusal. Those Cataloguing people — they really know things. Things that I know nothing about. How did I actually go to school with these people? It’s like they have a different degree than me.

My library uses Millennium as their ILS — hence the blog title  – but maybe your library uses a different product (there’s a nice list of ILS products here). I have been forced to learn several modules within Millennium and I have to say: It’s really quite a nice program. Bravo, Innovative Interfaces. I must admit to having wasted an entire afternoon playing around with the module that generates reports. It is FUN! And INSIGHTFUL.

I know it sounds crazy — that as a librarian responsible for collections development, I have no idea what books my students and faculty are checking out of our general collection, what language is being used the most, or what subjects our users are most interested in…. but I don’t. I just buy, buy, buy like a mall  rat with their parents’ credit card, and little thought is given to whether the purchases I’m making are good choices specifically for the needs of my students and faculty. And I’m only slightly comforted by the fact that I’m not alone. All this has now changed, since I hunkered down with our Cataloguing Librarians and figured out which books in the catalogue were “mine,” which ones were being checked out, and which ones were not.

The numbers can sometimes be disheartening, but there are some pleasant surprises. For example, it’s obvious that a few of our human resources classes (or perhaps professors?) have come to depend heavily on our print collection. And that despite the fact that e-commerce is an online phenomenon, someone still wants to read paper-based books about it. But I’ll level with ya — there were lots of zeros in that spreadsheet under “times checked out”. These numbers can serve as the cold hard truth in some cases — argument perhaps for more money, or maybe more money somewhere else, or maybe for a change in how collections gets done.

Librarians though, are already on the case. I blogged about Patron-Driven Acquisitions, which will certainly be a step in boosting usage for library collections. There are greater moves towards eBooks which certainly will drive usage too, and digitization projects, and improvements to catalogue interfaces so that users can actually find this stuff. More and more universities are getting those high density storage sites for low-usage books, though sometimes with minor revolts from faculty and students.

Of course there are sound arguments to be made about having books even though they might not get checked out much. A robust research collection includes an enormous amount of materials from a variety of subjects, time periods, and analytical perspectives. Bestsellers stand next to obscure independent-press books and foreign government documents, and books that are considered hearsay is some countries, and that is part of what makes research collections awesome. Research collections are not about popularity contests — this ain’t no Barnes and Noble, y’all. What was that dude, that said something about every reader having his or her own book? Some books will only get checked out once or twice and I am totally okay with that.

It’s just that now I have some sense of which books those actually are. The next steps are to get a hold of eBook usage statistics from our eResources Librarian, to get a sense of which eBooks are being used and how that compares to print books (Thanks Google Analytics). It’s a great feeling to get a full picture of my collections and how they being used. And I’m proof positive that you really don’t have to be a good Cataloguer to do it — you just have to know a good Cataloguer.

Aaaanyway, Ottawa is great so far! I’m moved into a little sunny apartment that’s about a 15 minute walk from work — joyous, since York was about an hour by transit. It’s really interesting to observe how different things can be from one university library system to the next. Particularly with regard to organizational structure and budgeting decisions during what has become a verrrry difficult time financially for Ontario’s universities. It sucks to go through budget cuts, but it’s an interesting lesson for a newbie.

My job tasks remain quite similar, but of course I’m still on an enormous learning curve. It’s going to stay interesting for sure, but will probably not be nearly as terrifying as last year, when I knew nothing. One year under your belt makes a huge difference (Librarians with 25+ years — you can chuckle now. Go ahead — chuckle away at my naivety).

That’s about all I can report on so far… Lots of introductory stuff last week and getting signed-up for the right stuff (workshops, collections platforms, French classes…).

I don’t know when I’ll be reporting back… Perhaps we can say that I’m going to go on a small hiatus until the new school year? It’s difficult to find blogging time when there are so many patios to go sit on. I’m sure you understand.

I’m talking about videos created by academic educators — librarians among them — that explain really complex scholarly concepts in clear and succinct 5 minute (or so) videos. They’re from a variety of places, and have a variety of approaches, but the common thread is that they are amazing teaching tools. Watching them has actually made me a better instructional librarian, and I even played one in a class I taught because I though the creators did such a fantastic job of relaying key information literacy concepts.

So, I thought I’d include a few here, in no particular order. Drum roll, please:

Scholarly vs. Popular Periodicals, by PeabodyLibrary

After I viewed this video for the first time, I told my boss we needed to get a cartoonist on staff. *snort*
The distinction between scholarly and popular publications is hugely important for business students. Their assignment topics are tangible and rooted in the real world of current affairs and commerce, and they’re often required to review not only academic publications, but also trade magazines and newspapers. But of course, they need to know when to use which. This video lays out the differences fantastically, and it’s also entertaining.

Peer Review in Five Minutes, by libncsu (a.k.a. the North Carolina State University Libraries)

I love this video because I found myself having to explain to students what peer-review is, as an extension of the whole, “What IS a scholarly article? And why is the librarian explaining this to me?” discussion. It’s hard for students to understand just how different scholarly articles are from popular articles, but I think this really hits the point home. And anyone who’s demo-ed how to look up journals in Ulrich’s will understand why I’m glad she explained what “referred” means.
“Just look for the referee jersey!”
“Wait, I though I was looking for journals that are peer-reviewed, not refereed.”
“Ah, I forgot to mention… those are the same thing…”
*look of skepticism/confusion*

It’s funny when she says, “As you know… professors are up to a lot more than teaching students.” Because literally: My first-year students didn’t know that. They didn’t know that their professors were distinctly different than their high school teachers. And why would they? Nobody told them! But this video makes the connection.

Critical Thinking, by QualiaSoup

This one was brought to my attention by my friend Mark, who is the Continuing Teacher Education Librarian at Queen’s University. It tackles critical thinking, in video format. So right off the bat, we have to give kudos for grappling with such a tough subject matter. But further kudos to the creators for grappling with it so well. There is not an instructional session that goes by that I don’t find myself telling students that they have to think critically about the information they’re using in their research. It’s the whole point of information literacy, and it’s paramount to the work of academics. And librarians. And especially, academic librarians.

Now, I might not ever show this one in a class. But like I told Mark, watching it and understanding its contents makes me a better instructor, and helps immensely to relay those high-level concepts in a clear and logical way.

As a part of my Re:Generations work, I’m trying to get content created for the Canadian Academic Libraries Network, which is sponsored by CACUL (Canadian Association of College and University Libraries). It’s supported by this program called Ning, which is actually sort of a cool way to display your webpages, integrate things like blogs, events, announcements, etc. into a nicely formatted interface, and create a virtual space for communities. Communities such as Canadian academic librarians.

Anyway, we’ve been working away at this little corner of the interwebs, seeing if it fits the needs of CACUL, and when I went to visit the homepage today, there was a whole bunch of new activity! People have begun joining and creating their own little groups. Yay! It’s warms the cockles of my heart when things like this get buy-in. If you’re interested in this type of stuff, check it out!

Let it be known that I am not the first among my friends to undertake this type of project. My buddy Ania, as part of her practicum placement during school, got to make these BIG and REALLY COMPLEX videos. She worked at U of T’s Gerstein Library and the topics covered in her captivate projects included: Citation Tracking in Web of Science, Citation Tracking in Scopus, and Citation Tracking in Google Scholar. That’s her, talking in the audio!

I want to chat with her about how she was able to ensure the right kind of detail and context, without making them unwieldy for student use, but she is in Jasper all summer cutting wood and climbing mountains. *sigh*

And my friend Monica has also undertaken the how-to video making for the internets: She test-drove Jing, a free screen-casting software application available online, and made a video for her mom, about how to set-up a Gmail account. So cute!!

To help me in the struggle to create concise, usable videos that are neither so brief that they still leave students confused, nor so detailed that they suffer from a bad case of the TMI’s (too much information), I’ve referenced a really great article from Reference Services Review, written by Joanne Oud, entited, “Guidelines for effective online instruction using multimedia screencasts.” The article is scholarly, but provides a lot of sensible tips on how to create online videos that are sound cognitively, pedagogically, and aesthetically… i.e., that are not junk. Stuff like “giving an outline of what will happen right at the beginning” is common sense (Oud 2009), but doesn’t always make it into the final edit. So to Joanne Oud, whoever you are: Thanks for the article.

Also helping to guide my movie debut is this awesome project called ANTS: the Animated Tutorial Sharing Project. They collect screencastings that libraries all over the universe have created, and aggregate them into a single site. They have a blip.tv account called LION (Library Information literacy Online Network) where you can view all kinds of videos from all sorts of libraries, with clear instructions on how to embed videos into your own library’s website (they did the whole Creative Commons thingy so it’s legit). Particularly videos about questioning the validity of online resources: That is universal, like the sun and taxes and stuff. They’d be helpful for any library. That is to say: Let’s not reinvent the wheel, people!

And finally, let it be known that the American Psychological Association keeps up with the times: From the latest APA Style Guide to Electronic Resources under “Video Weblog post,” they have instructed us in how to cite a YouTube video:

Norton, R. (2006, November 4). How to train a cat to operate a light switch [Video file]. Video posted to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vja83KLQXZs

That is, author or video creator, date, title, and URL. And now you know!

Note that with all this video-making going on, there are grave dangers… The infamous Rick-roll being one of them. But there are ways to keep yourself safe from these attacks! Check out the instructions online. Har har har.

One of the movements sweeping the world of academic publishing is the Open Access movement. I didn’t realllly get it until I attended some sessions on the topic at the CLA Annual Conference. And then had to explain it to non-librarians (the true test of knowledge).

I had to sum up my job to parents, and in doing so, found myself explaining in the simplest terms possible, the whole “Open Access” movement. I told them this:

1) Professors make research. It is expensive! But important. So the government gives the universities money to do it.

2) Their research is brilliant! So they want to share it with others by publishing it in a journal. Also, if they don’t publish in some really prestigious journals, they don’t get tenure. Tenure is where you get some job security and a nice-sized paycheque.

3) They don’t get paid to put their work in those journals, though. It’s like getting paid to receive the Order of Canada – just being there is enough prestige.

4) Those journals have important information in them! And universities need that information so people can do research. They work with libraries to get those journals into the library collections.

5) These journals can cost tens of thousands of dollars a year. It is expensive! But important. So the government gives the universities money to do it.

You’ll note that two of these stages are the same. Open Access just seeks to cut out the last stage, so that tax payers aren’t paying for that research twice (There are a lot of other really good reasons that OA is awesome, but that’s the explanation that resonates the most with my parents. No doubt they agree with concepts related to freedom of information and a narrowing of the global digital divide, but taxes – that really gets ‘em).

A big report just came out from the Knowledge Exchange in Europe, which discusses the economic savings of Open Access policies for research bodies. Among the most interesting points is the assertion that,  “Open access or ‘author-pays’ publishing for journal articles… might bring net system savings of around EUR 70 million per annum nationally in Denmark, EUR 133 million in the Netherlands and EUR 480 million in the UK (at 2007 prices and levels of publishing activity…”.

So, beside the important ethical and technological merits of this movement, there’s an even more salient reason for institutions to pursue economic policies… And it is called the bottom line.

The CLA Conference was held here, at the Palaise de Congress in Montreal. Colourful!

Bruce Harpham and I presented at the poster session. Our topic – near and dear to my heart – evaluated students’ perceptions of professional development opportunities at the Faculty of Information. We looked at whether students were successful in securing employment during the summer between first and second year, and whether their career aspirations changed throughout their MISt degree. It was a great experience to follow from a research problem and design, right through to synthesis and presentation of results.

"Hello, welcome to our poster! Please, take a handout!"

I went to a full roster of sessions pertaining to all sorts of cool stuff – Joseph Janes being hilarious about the future of libraries, Mount St. Vincent developing a credit-course on Information Literacy, a video-game developed to teach students about academic integrity, and how copyright is ruining everyone’s lives and destroying the whole world – delightful, fascinating topics!

In particular, I attended several academic library sessions and the topics were great. Here’s a sampling of the issues that came up:

Open Access: This is an issue that continues to be at the forefront of scholarly communications debates in academia. Librarians are in an interesting position because we engage with scholarly publications on so many levels: As authors and researchers; through support for faculty publication and authorship; and as professionals who are all about free and open access to information. Oh, and as those who have seen their budgets decimated by journal subscription fees and crazy access agreements.

Information Literacy: As the risk of sounding like a big jerk: Traditional IL is broken. Students do not need a one-off every September about how to access the catalogue.

Luckily there are several go-get-em librarians in this country who are eager to fix it! Mount St. Vincent librarians have successfully implemented a credit-course on Information Literacy that is open to all students at the university. One of their librarians, Meg Raven also did some AMAZING and BRILLIANT research on students’ and faculty perceptions regarding student’s research habits. When the slides are posted on the CLA website, I will be sure to post them here, since – effectively – students’ expectations for their research, and professors’ expectations for student’s research are OPPOSITE.
INVERSE.
NOT THE SAME AT ALL.
It’s totally nuts.

Academic Integrity: Along with the IL issue, and flowing nicely into the Copyright issue, is the fact that it is easy for students to copy+paste stuff off the Internet. We need to teach them that that is a terrible idea. There are many fascinating initiatives academic librarians are undertaking to tackle this issue, from the aforementioned video game, to workshops on information synthesis and ethical research. This is an issue that has come up as a concern among faculty at York as well, so no doubt I will be grappling with issues of plagiarism, citation and information synthesis in the future.

Copyright: Well this is a dizzying issue. And terrifying. And infuriating. But mostly just confusing.

We had a fantastic panel, including a presentation from Margaret Ann Wilkinson, possibly the smartest person on the planet, and faculty at Western Law School. It’s frightening how much of a risk we really take with digital information formats. There are some key class action lawsuits raging between authors and publishing houses over digital content that has profound implications for academic libraries. I’m pretty sure the only people who actually understand the issues are the lawyers though, so one can’t help but feel helpless about the whole mess.

In a workshop on academic integrity at college libraries, the notion of a “Copyright Help Desk” came up; librarians are being approached more and more about issues of intellectual property, copyright, patents and pirating and simply don’t know the answers/don’t want to risk libel. Fascinating but scary (and possibly very expensive, depending on how those law suits go).

I went to some very interesting sessions where – true to form – I obsessively took notes on the various topics covered. My friends Ania, Monica, Bruce and I participated in the poster session, in which we presented on new student initiatives at the Faculty of Information. Ania and Monica discussed the brilliant success of the Housing Memory student conference, Bruce discussed his launch of the iSchool Podcast, and I covered the work done with the Faculty of Information Quarterly. People were very receptive to our work (librarians are so nice, seriously), and were keen to talk about the initiatives and technologies we used to achieve these projects. It was good practice for the CLA poster session in which I will be participating at the end of May. Key factors in poster session success: poster design, logistics, and being shameless about passing along your handouts.

The conference was a great opportunity to connect with the other Toronto universities (it seems there are nearly as much collaborative and sharing opportunities among the three schools as their ought to be…), and a neat dynamic the big ol’ schools (hello York and UofT @ St. George), and their nimble little counterparts (enter Ryerson, UofT @ Mississauga, and U of T @ Scarborough). Like a family reunion!

I’ll post more about the specific sessions in some subsequent postings – there was lots of neat stuff discussed in areas around information literacy and research help that I’d like to pick up on as I embark on my work at York. Monica, Ania, and Bruce have already written far-more reflective and insightful postings on their own blogs which are worth checking out. All in all: A lovely, thought-provoking day.

UPDATE: Here is what our poster looked like! Doesn’t seem like much in this little space, but it was very lovely in real life.

I have been on temporary hiatus from this poor, neglected blog throughout the past semester. This is because I have been so busy at school, that all I want to do when I come home at night is: 1) Eat a delicious dinner, and 2) Allow my tired brain to be washed over with the mindlessness of prime-time television. Glorious, glorious television!

One interesting project that kept me busy was a presentation for the Housing Memory Student Conference, at the Faculty of Information. This conference was organized by two incredible students, Ania and Monica, who single-handedly organized the event, complete with 24 panelists, a brilliant keynote from information science superstar, Geoffrey Bowker (you can listen to the podcast of his presentation from the iSchool Podcast website here), and a roundtable with a whole bunch of really smart people, who discussed, “memory and its architectural manifestation in archives, libraries, museums, information systems and material and digital artifacts.” Can you IMAGINE doing all that while going to school full-time and working? Good lord.

Anyway: The overarching theme of “housing memory” was an attempt to facilitate broad discussion about how we store, preserve, and institutionalize memory – be it individual, collective, organizational, national, or cultural in nature. The topics were absolutely freaking fascinating, and I was literally excited to hear the presentations. I’m not normally the type of person who gets hyperactive about archival theory, ya know? But I moderated a panel on Memory and Conflict, which included discussion of the Pinochet regime and archives; Apartheid and museums; and libraries in times of war, and I could barely sit still because I was getting so excited. About ideas. And not House. It was awesome (find the abstracts for these presentations here).

My own topic (which, frankly, does get me pretty excited, but that’s just my dorkdom shining through), was part of a panel called, “Collecting, Sharing and… Forgetting?” in which I explored the role of organizational memory, and the challenge of effectively capturing and sharing “tacit knowledge” within companies. Tacit knowledge is the stuff you know, but can’t write down. It’s like riding a bike, or enjoying art – you might know how to do those things, but you can’t just tell someone how to do it. I argued that this type of knowledge – paramount to organizational success – can be exchanged through Communities of Practice, mentorships and storytelling. I was pretty much terrified throughout the presentation and don’t remember much of what I said/did, but it was an awesome experience, and the Q+A period afterwards was an excellent exchange that forced me to really think about my research in this area. I mean, I didn’t get to talk about the radical potential for emancipation through cultural and information institutions or anything. But still. T’was a lovely learning experience.

Those panellists who submitted their papers will be published in the Faculty of Information Quarterly next month (we’re slogging through the editorial process right now). Oh man, I really starting to feel like a real-life grown-up academic person or something!

Everyone who went to the conference said it was incredible; there was a buzz in the air of the Claude Bissell building, and everything went off without a hitch. It was a fantastic experience, and I really hope it becomes an annual event at the iSchool. Yay Ania and Monica!