GPC Information Literacy Blog

Google scholar

2005-03-21T16:54:00.000-05:00

Hey Everyone,
I've been looking at Google Scholar a bit lately, and I just wondered what others thought of it. I have found some of the results are links to articles in subscription databases which are not very helpful. What have your experiences been like? Should we be teaching ATEC students about Google Scholar? Thanks.

What's In A Name?

2005-03-01T16:39:00.000-05:00

Howdy. I encountered a little controversy today during a Faculty Development Day presentation when referring to "teaching faculty" and "librarians" in an exercise on perceptions. Where I was trying to go was that while "teaching faculty" and "librarians" have different roles (and maybe different perceptions of each other and info lit)in the educational team of an institution, these differences can used as a positive when collaborating on research/ library assignments etc.

One person took offense at my terms, essentially arguing that it was divisive. And no, it wasn't a librarian. In retrospect, I would have used the terms "classroom faculty" and "library faculty". But I would definitely do the exercise again as I do believe that we all bring a little something different to the educational table, and that can make for an exciting collaborative environment and educational opportunities for our students. Any thoughts on this?

LISNews.com | Why Do I Need So Much School When I Have Google?

2005-02-24T16:55:00.000-05:00

LISNews points out today's Baldo comic strip. And, yes it is info lit related!

LISNews.com | Why Do I Need So Much School When I Have Google?

Instruction Session Fun!

2005-02-23T17:24:00.000-05:00

In a completely unrelated meeting today Jennifer, Pete and I got to talking about fun or goofy stuff that we do during (or before) instruction sessions to try to get and keep the students attention. I said I would post a link to the Pre-Show Entertainment that I loop before some sessions. It's a timed PowerPoint with stuff, about the library, campus activities etc.

Pre-Show Entertainment (PPT)

The timings work if it opens in a browser window, just let it sit there.

Anyone wanna share any other fun stuff they do?

Ideas For Library/ Information Assignments

2005-02-21T16:58:00.000-05:00

Michael Lorenzen at the Information Literacy Land of Confusion posted about this web page from the Libraries of the Memorial University of Newfoundland. It is a great guide designed to assist faculty in creating research assignments and provides suggestions about types of assignments other than the traditional research paper. Very nice!

In poking around their web site out of my love of all things Canadian (including curling and The Sadies from Toronto, Ontario Canada) I saw that the Queen Elizabeth II Library has a cool pilot program called "Roaming Librarians" where some of their reference librarians provide reference services at regularly schedule times around campus using wireless technology. It will be interesting to see if it works out and gets extended. Any thoughts about providing wireless reference services outside the traditional library setting?

Wilder Article Update

2005-02-14T10:23:00.000-05:00

In case anyone hasn't read it yet, the Stanley Wilder article "Information Literacy Literacy Makes All The Wrong Assumptions"* from the Chronicle of Higher Education has been released from embargo purgatory and is now available in FT from Research Library.

*Link works for authenticated GPC users only.

Teaching Students to Swim in the Online Sea

2005-02-14T10:05:00.000-05:00

This is an interesting article* from yesterday's New York Times by Geoffery Nunberg that hits on the need for some sort of information literacy instruction, especially in relation to evaluating Internet sources. He references a couple of the Pew Project surveys that Jennifer posted a couple of weeks ago.

A couple of interesting points for discussion: he mentions the "paradox" of librarians taking the lead in Info Lit instruction since most people assumed that there wouldn't be a need for libraries in the "digital age". And this intersting quote:

"More important,leaving information literacy to librarians alone suggests a failure to understand the scope of the problem. Part of it lies in the word ''literacy'' itself. No other language has a word that covers such a broad swath of territory, from reading and writing skills, to a familiarity with culture, to elementary competence in subjects like math or geography. To many, ''information literacy'' suggests a set of basic ABC's that can be consigned to Information 101."

It is kind of a loaded statement but I really do think that including the word "literacy" in describing our efforts in these areas is a misnomer. I can't remember the source, but someone suggested the term "information fluency" in an article a while back. I like that one better. But you can really call it "Fred" as long as the points get across.

*Registration required or article available through LexisNexis Academic.

Salon.com Technology | From ivory tower to academic sweatshop

2005-01-26T16:58:00.000-05:00

I just perused this interesting article from salon.com calledFrom ivory tower to academic sweatshop* by Alex Wright. It gives a very interesting overview of the resurgence of distance learning and its effect of academia in general. Not specifically info lit, but very interesting as we move towards more and more online delivery of library services.

*Subscription or "day pass" (look at an ad for a minute or less) required to view article.

Evidence of the Need for Info Lit

2005-01-25T09:43:00.000-05:00

A new report released by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, Search Engine Users, reveals (among many other details) that 62% of Web searchers are unaware of a distinction between paid and unpaid search results. An excerpt:

“While most consumers could easily identify the difference between TV’s regular programming and its infomercials, or newspapers’ or magazines’ reported stories and their advertorials, only a little more than a third of search engine users are aware of the analogous sets of content commonly presented by search engines, the paid or sponsored results and the unpaid or “organic” results. Overall, only about 1 in 6 searchers say they can consistently distinguish between paid and unpaid results.”

Related information and a link to the questionnaire are available.

Georgia Conference On Information Literacy

2005-01-21T15:33:00.000-05:00

Blogger ate this the first time so let's try it again!

The website for the 2005 Georgia Conference on Information Literacy is now online. The conference will be held from September 30 - October 1 in Statesboro and was quite good last year. The deadline for program proposals is April 1. The registration link appears to already be active as well.

And for the trouble of posting this 2x here's your obligatory Blind Willie McTell reference! And a link to a (legally posted) live mp3 of the White Stripes playing Blind Willie's "Lord, Send Me An Angel" in Minneapolis. Minneapolis is home of the 2005 ACRL Conference, which should also feature many interesting Info Lit presentations.

Measuring Literacy in a World Gone Digital

2005-01-21T09:37:00.000-05:00

Interesting article* by Tom Zeller Jr. from the January 17 New York Times. Apparently ETS is about to start administering a test at selected colleges to try to measure information and technological literacy. The article has a quote from our friend Stanley Wilder, who is predictably skeptical.

Excerpt:
"The Information and Communications Technology literacy assessment, which will be introduced at about two dozen colleges and universities later this month, is intended to measure students' ability to manage exercises like sorting e-mail messages or manipulating tables and charts, and to assess how well they organize and interpret information from many sources and in myriad forms. About 10,000 undergraduates at schools from the University of California, Los Angeles to Bronx Community College are expected to take the test during the first offering period, which ends March 31."

I'll definitely be interested in seeing the results!

*Registration required for NYT or available in FT in Lexis-Nexis Academic.

Search For The Skunk Ape: An Information Literacy Quest

2005-01-13T10:12:00.000-05:00

Michael Lorenzen posted a link to this cool information literacy/ library skills tutorial from Florida Gulf Coast University. I went through some of it very quickly and it looks very comprehensive and fun. You can't beat looking for bigfoot!

You need to create a username/ password to look at the tutorial but it worked fine.

Happy New Year!

2005-01-05T09:33:00.000-05:00

Happy New Year to all our readers by the way! I'd like to take this opportunity to encourage folks to post to the blog or comment on the stuff we post. Jennifer and I will be glad to give any assistance you'd like!

Information Literacy Makes All the Wrong Assumptions

2005-01-05T09:24:00.000-05:00

Thought provoking article by Stanley Wilder of the University of Rochester from this week's Chronicle of Higher Education . I'm sure there will be lots of discussion making the rounds.

Excerpt:
"...information literacy remains the wrong solution to the wrong problem facing librarianship. It mistakes the nature of the Internet threat, and it offers a response at odds with higher education's traditional mission. Information literacy does nothing to help libraries compete with the Internet, and it should be discarded."

The above link for the article might be temporary but all campuses should have the Chronicle and it is available in FT from Academic Search Premier and Research Library with a one month embargo.

Update 1/12/05: The temporary link to the article is indeed dead. But it is in the issue of the Chronicle dated 1/7/05. I'll update again when it has served it's time in FT purgatory.

Google Goes Primetime

2005-01-04T09:51:00.000-05:00

There was an interesting Google segment on the 1/2/05 "60 Minutes." Read the transcript at http://tinyurl.com/3lsdg.

(It isn't IL-specific, by the way.)

Google "Library"

2004-12-14T09:29:00.000-05:00

More news on the Google front - according to Searchblog, the search engine company is embarking on a project to digitize public domain works in the collections of several major university libraries and make them available and searchable online. Kind of like a larger version of Project Gutenberg, but with Google searching.

Informative posts here and here from Searchblog. There's also an article in today's New York Times (I could access online w/o password 12/14 in am or get it off the shelf!).

Students Shun Search For Information Offline

2004-12-10T11:20:00.000-05:00

I saw this article on cnn.com last night. It's a nice summary of what we try to overcome on daily basis.

The Information Literacy Land of Confusion

Cleaning The Closet

2004-12-09T15:38:00.000-05:00

Here are a couple of interesting not quite so information literacy related things I've been meaning to post for a while. There was one more too, but I really can't remember what it was.

The Long Tail - Very interesting article from the October Wired (told you these had been simmering for a while). It has been blogged a million times but is still worth pointing out. Essentially it says that the "items" in the bottom 80% of sales/ streaming/rental from online sources like Netflix get used/ bought as much as the top 20%. It would be really cool for someone to do a study like this in libraries (if it hasn't been done already)since we hear so much about the 80/20 rule in relation to collections. And essentially libraries are the ultimate "long tail" collectors.

Digital Generations - This was a very interesting series of reports from NPR's Morning Edition last week about how the Internet effects regular folks lives. The one called Growing Up in a High-Tech World is especially interesting since these are our current/ future students. All of the stories are available to stream.

Articles!

2004-12-09T15:23:00.000-05:00

I was just scanning the newest edition of Community & Junior College Libraries and ran across a few interesting looking info lit articles. Haven't had a chance to read them in full but they sound good from the abstracts, which you can see by following the handy links.

Situating the Library in the First Year Experience Course by Susan J.C. Bissett

Positive Faculty/ Librarian Relationships for Productive Library Assignments by Alicia B. Ellison (This one sounds especially pertinent!)

The Ups and Downs of Information Literacy at California Community Colleges by Friedrich (Fred) Brose

Unfortunately, there's no free FT for this journal that I can find anywhere. But hopefully it is available at all campuses.

Winning With Information Literacy

2004-12-03T09:09:00.000-05:00

I was just scanning an article called Winning With Information Literacy by Jamie McKenzie that Michael Lorenzen posted yesterday. While it focuses more on the use of technology in learning in the K-12 world, it does sort of fit in with the issue of computer literacy v. information literacy that Jennifer raised a couple of weeks ago.

Excerpt: "Literacy may be the unifying theme most capable of enlisting broad-based support for the use of new technologies in schools. Literacy refers to the cluster of skills that are required to make meaning of one’s world across a mix of media — everything from text, graphics and art to numbers, body language and cultural cues.

The reason literacy can prove unifying is its dramatic relevance to many of the most challenging portions of the new state curriculum standards. Students possessing powerful information literacy skills are more likely to perform well on tasks requiring inference and interpretation, on items where the answer must be built rather than found." (emphasis mine)

It seems like this definition of literacy can encompass both computer literacy and information literacy. The computer or web becomes another tool to provide information that must be interpreted to be used properly.

Tame the Web: Libraries and Technology: Twelve Things I Learned at Internet Librarian 2004

2004-12-01T17:26:00.000-05:00

This is a very good wrap-up post from the 2004 Internet Librarian conference.

Excerpt:
"As evidenced by the great group of people in our Make Learning Stick: Creating 5-Star, User-Centered Training & Instruction workshop, library folk are embracing their new roles as trainers and teachers.They had great questions and all participated. Scott Brandt gets this stuff and can explain it well. Instructional design for librarians is HOT right now. Are you developing classes? Are you teaching colleagues? You soon could be!"

No matter what new tools and gadgets and search things (like Google Scholar) come along we will always be needed to teach and train our users and colleagues. Working to design instructional sessions and presenting them is something that isn't going to go away.

There's a cool page of presentation links on the Internet Librarian site as well.

Tame the Web: Libraries and Technology: Twelve Things I Learned at Internet Librarian 2004

Google Scholar Blog

2004-11-23T11:59:00.000-05:00

From Open Access News: check out this new blog about Google Scholar. It's called On Google Scholar and should be a good repository of schoogle info.

I promise this is the last thing I'm going to post about Google Scholar until at least Monday! Happy Thanksgiving!

Another Google-Related Item

2004-11-19T13:36:00.000-05:00

In fall 2003, Virginina Commonwealth University Libraries used Google as part of a 1.5 credit hour honors module called "Google: An Information Literacy Case Study." Check out an article about the class in the November 2004 issue of College & Research Libraries News: "There's an 800-pound gorilla in our stacks," by Jimmy Ghapery, p. 582. (Must be a subscriber to read it online.)

More Schoogle

2004-11-19T13:29:00.000-05:00

It certianly didn't take long for Google Scholar-ing to get a funny name! More interesting discussion from Metafilter,Web4Lib Archives and Digital Librarian. Also a free online article from the Chronicle. There's really too much out there to link to anymore!

One interesting thing in some of the non-librarian discussions is the less than thinly veiled contempt many folks have for the non-user-friendliness of our databases and catalogs. And I can definitely see their point: it is pretty cumbersome to search across DBs and retrieving articles takes lots on often non-intuitive clicking. I don't think we need to start posting out resumes or considering a career change but GS will probably push some of these technology issues to the forefront.

I also think GS can be an important tool for Open Access retrieval (Open Access News has lots of GS related posts) and in helping to possibly break some of the stanglehold that journal publishers have over information, especially in the sciences.

Google Scholar

2004-11-18T17:34:00.000-05:00

There's been a flurry of blogging activity today about the new Google Scholar service which went live yesterday. I read a little bit about GS before it went into production but haven't really had a change to take a look today so I'll reserve judgment. But I think it does have implications for academic libraries and as Dennis Jerz notes in a very good review on his blog today, we will definitely need to knowledgeable about what it can and can't do.

Excerpt from About Google Scholar: "Google Scholar enables you to search specifically for scholarly literature, including peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts and technical reports from all broad areas of research. Use Google Scholar to find articles from a wide variety of academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories and universities, as well as scholarly articles available across the web."

Sample comments from LISNews, librarian.net, Resource Shelf, and It's All Good. I'm sure there will be a lot more news and discussions on blogs and in "traditional" library lit to come.

On a humorous note, the Blogger spell check utility suggests that I replace "blogging" with "flogging" for some reason. Interesting.