Tag Archives: information literacy

Making students care about IL: Mission Impossible?

*A cross-posting from the Re:Generations blog*

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. Continue reading

I need help with research help

Let me tell you a story about a group of third-year marketing students who came in a few weeks ago, looking for help finding consumer attitudes and market information pertaining to smart phones and wireless chargers (yes, wireless chargers, specifically this one). I was able to help the students find some pretty great resources, created and sent an e-mail with a few links, and sent them happily down the path of successful research.

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Back from the Dark Side

Fun times at the liberry!

My summer break stretched into a first-half-of-Fall-semester break because, as you can probably imagine, things were a touch busy during September and early October. However it’s now Fall reading week here at the U of O, which means things have quieted down significantly thank the GOOD LORD. No more twelve hour days okay, work? Ugh.

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YouTube: More than just cats.

Sometimes people put videos on YouTube that are so divine, and so delightfully brilliant, that they merit some honourable mention. No, I’m not talking about that video of the kid who just got back from the dentist. Or the ninja cat.

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.

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I am teh busy.

K, I realise I have not posted on this blog since JULY. But I have a good excuse: I am so GD BUSY. Who are the jerks that spread rumors about librarians going home at 5pm? They are big liars!

ANYWAY: I have been prepping for instruction-season at York, and it’s lots of fun and students are adorable and all but it’s ALOT OF WORK. Here’s an example of a web guide I put together that will go along with a presentation I will be giving for a class in a few weeks. I earns ma pay! (See where it says, “The handout provided in class is available here.”? CLICK ON IT. My infamous clip-art skillz live on!) (Okay, I could resist including an image of the handout. I luuuuv ma handouts!)

Clip Art Awesomeness

Clip Art Awesomeness

Also, I am taking part in a few associations.
1) FIAA: Faculty of Information Alumni Association. It’s fun! I am on the social media committee (Ooooooh!). I’d like to point out that to organize the group, Kim (Elle Presidenta) created a Huddle space. From what I can tell, Huddle is a project Huddlemanagement application, and the functionality is really hot. If you’re interested in an PM app, Huddle is worth checking out.
2) I am the newest blogger for the Re:Generations blog, which is a blog hosted by the Re:Generations committee — the branch of the Canadian Association of College and University Librarians that is for the lil’uns (read: New and Emerging Librarians). I’m also the New Professionals Rep (or something to that effect), so I get to like… professionalize. And such. I just had a conference call with the group, and I’m pretty stoked!

Re Generations

Video Killed the Radio Star.

Adobe CaptivateI get to make some Adobe Captivate videos at work and it is fun! I feel like Steven Spielberg. I sit in my office with my headphones on, murmuring, “Highlight Box goes her to underscore the name of the webpage.” And people look through the doorway and think I’m doing complex technical things. I’ve switched my office chair to a director’s chair and have taken to wearing a beret. The students mock me, but I think they’re just jealous of my genius?!

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CLA! Yay yay yay! Gooooo librarians!

I just got back from the CLA Annual Conference and Trade Show 2009 in Montreal. What a busy weekend!

The CLA conference was held at the Palaise de Congress in Montreal.

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!"

"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!

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Information Literati

I’ve been thinking a lot about information literacy at late: One of my responsibilities at my new job is to give information literacy workshops to students come the new school year, and while I took the Information Literacy course during school, I’m still utterly terrified. That’s normal, right?

Information LiteracyA resource I came across recently is a report from two researchers at the University of Washington, who are doing a comprehensive study of university students’ information seeking behaviours when attempting to undertake research for coursework. The authors published their preliminary findings in a report called, “Finding Context: What Today’s College Students Say about Conducting Research in the Digital Age” and they’ve done a great job of generalizing the challenges students face when they go about writing their papers for school.

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IFLA Pre-Conferencing

I had the good fortune of attending bits and pieces of the IFLA pre-conference here at the Library of Parliament. As the press release attests, Parliamentary Librarians from 40 countries attended the event to learn about the work of other legislative libraries, while having an opportunity to express their own achievements and concerns.

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