Milne Library Reference and Instruction

Dealing with Email overload

2008-03-24T12:36:00.003-04:00

Alright, I'm going to post to our almost-defunct blog and see if we can get it started again. For a while, I kind of took over with assessment stuff, but it seems as though there is a lot going on in reference and instruction and perhaps this could be of use.

I wanted to share an article I found that presents 5 methods of dealing with email overload. When I got back from my mini vacation, I had 71 email messages. I said "Eeek!" and started going through it, then this article came across my desk.

The methods include strategies from some well-known productivity books, including Getting Things Done, by David Allen, and The Four Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss. One method advocates replying to everything in just a few sentences. Another encourages you to do anything that needs to be done immediately, then move the message out of your inbox. The most drastic method is called "The email bankruptcy method" and involves abandoning your email altogether.

Get updates to the Reference and Instruction Blog via Email

2007-09-24T13:41:00.000-04:00

You can now get updates to this blog delivered to your email inbox. Simply click on the link in the right hand column, and enter your email in the form. Every time this blog is updated, you will receive and email telling you what the update is.

Sign up now!!

EDUCAUSE releases study on students and technology

2007-09-20T14:51:00.000-04:00

EDUCAUSE Centre for Applied Research has released a longitudinal study of undergraduates and information technology:

This 2007 ECAR research study is a longitudinal extension of the 2004, 2005, and 2006 ECAR studies of students and information technology. The study, which reports noticeable changes from previous years, is based on quantitative data from a spring 2007 survey and interviews with 27,846 freshman, senior, and community college students at 103 higher education institutions. It focuses on what kinds of information technologies these students use, own, and experience; their technology behaviors, preferences, and skills; how IT impacts their experiences in their courses; and their perceptions of the role of IT in the academic experience.

Read the study at: http://connect.educause.edu/library/abstract/TheECARStudyofUnderg/45075

Some Assessment Results: What do you think?

2007-08-16T14:25:00.000-04:00

Hello folks. I am in the process of writing up a report about our assessment results. I have created some graphs that document our results, and I would like to get your impressions of what they are telling us. What do you think of these results? Do you have explanations or questions?

The error bars on the Graphs represent a combination of the standard error and the sampling error.

The images can be enlarged to a legible size by clicked on them.

Please comment about this, I need your opinions! I hope to have a report finished by September 1st.

New classroom spaces in the library

2007-08-13T12:32:00.000-04:00

I believe that I am long overdue with providing you an update about the classroom renovations that are happening this summer. So, here are some details below.

Room 104

The main changes to this room will be subtle to most users. We have replaced most of the gray tables with copper-colored tables on wheels. These new tables will allow the CPUs and the keyboard trays to be stored beneath the desktop. The only thing on the desktop will be the monitor and the keyboard. Each table will also have a "pop-up" outlet for students to plug in their laptop computers. We will still have 40 computers in this room.

We are also adding a center aisle, to make moving between the rows easier. The conference set up that was on the left hand side of the room (when looking from the instructors' station) will be moved to the right hand side of the room (there is a bit more space over there. At some point, comfortable furniture will be added to the left hand side of the room.

The tables will be on wheels so that we can move them all out of the way for large events like the Hubble Display events or Friends of Milne Library events.

Room 109

The old cataloging office is now classroom 109. It is still in progress. When it is complete, it will be a classroom that can hold up to 30 students, with 28 laptops (20 of them will be brand new). It will have an instructors station with a PC, Elmo, DVD/VCR and a connection for a personal laptop. The room will be carpeted and we will have white-boards on three walls. We are already starting to schedule classes in this room, and I think it will be a nice space.

Room 208

At the request of Cristina Geiger, we will severely cutting back on the use of Room 208 this semester. We will be moving the laptops from Room 208 into Room 109, as well as moving the Elmo into Room 109. The computer and laptop connection will remain. Cristina will be increasing the number of TLC events in Room 208 and wants to leave the room open during the day for faculty use. If you have a class that really, really needs to use 208, I will talk to Cristina. This room may still be available for meetings, but I probably won't be able to schedule them in this room too far in advance (we want to give the TLC first dibs).

Room 121 (Tutoring Center) and Room 108 (ESL)

Both of these rooms will have a conference like set up for small groups. They will share a portable cart with a laptop computer and a projector. These rooms may be available for meetings or small classes, but I will need to get the "OK" from Jeanette, the ESL director or from AOP.

Create a "Group" in Angel

2007-08-01T15:29:00.000-04:00

CIT has opened up Angel (myCourses) to groups. All regular classes have an automatic spot on myCourses, but clubs, organizations or other groups need to fill out the form available on the myCourses website.

Great looking OPAC , but does it work great??

2007-07-27T14:17:00.000-04:00

Jenny Levine posted the Phoenix Public Library's "way cool" OPAC to her blog and made some interesting comments:
1. First, she mentions, "The home page IS the catalog and vice versa".
2. Phoenix is using the same Endeca product that NCSU uses for their catalog and it results in a library catalog and website which are decidedly "unlibrary-like".
3. Faceted browsing is used, which gives it a bookstore feel.
4. The library website is just darn cool-looking!

Take a look and see what you think...

Additional questions: summary of multiple choice questions

2007-05-09T15:53:00.000-04:00

We have not had a chance to look at the answers for the question,

Locate one scholarly journal article about school desegregation in America.

A summary of the multiple choice questions is below. You can access the complete results here. The password is "summer".

Does Milne Library have access to the Journal of Latin American Studies (either online or in print)?

248	(90%)	Yes
29	(10%)	No
0	( 0%)	no answer

To what extent did your library instruction session help you find books and articles?

22	( 8%)	Completely.
87	(31%)	A great deal.
125	(45%)	Some.
30	(11%)	Not much.
12	( 4%)	Not at all.
1	( 0%)	no answer

To what extent did the library instruction session help you to distinguish between scholarly articles and popular media articles?

25	( 9%)	Completely.
98	(35%)	A great deal.
113	(41%)	Some.
26	( 9%)	Not much.
15	( 5%)	Not at all.
0	( 0%)	no answer

Summary of the demographic data for the INTD 105 SAILS assessment

2007-05-09T15:47:00.000-04:00

We had 266 test takers for the SAILS, and 277 responses for the additional questions. Some students had already taken the SAILS assessment.

Demographic	Count (percentage) that completed SAILS
Total Student Count:	266
Class Standing
Freshman:	247 (92.9%)
Sophomore:	17 (6.4%)
Junior:	2 (0.8%)
Senior:	0 (0.0%)
Other:	0 (0.0%)
Majors
Agriculture/Environmental Studies:	1 (0.4%)
Architecture:	0 (0.0%)
Business:	42 (15.8%)
Communications/Journalism:	16 (6.0%)
Education:	25 (9.4%)
Engineering/Computer Science:	1 (0.4%)
General Studies:	0 (0.0%)
Health Sciences:	6 (2.3%)
History:	15 (5.6%)
Humanities:	1 (0.4%)
Law:	0 (0.0%)
Military/Naval Science:	0 (0.0%)
Performing & Fine Arts:	6 (2.3%)
Science/Math:	68 (25.6%)
Social Sciences/Psychology:	24 (9.0%)
Other:	31 (11.7%)
Undecided:	30 (11.3%)
How often have you participated in a Student Research Consultation?
Never:	218 (82.0%)
One time:	33 (12.4%)
More than one time:	15 (5.6%)
How many library instruction sessions did your INTD 105 class have? (see proctor.)
One:	163 (61.3%)
Two:	76 (28.6%)
Three:	1 (0.4%)
Four:	24 (9.0%)
More than four:	2 (0.8%)

Summary of the demographic data for the General Sails Test

2007-05-09T14:42:00.000-04:00

Overall, we had 200 test takers. Demographic details of the regular assessment are listed below:

Demographic	Count (percentage) that completed SAILS
Total Student Count:	200
Class Standing
Freshman:	47 (23.5%)
Sophomore:	53 (26.5%)
Junior:	57 (28.5%)
Senior:	41 (20.5%)
Other:	2 (1.0%)
Majors
Agriculture/Environmental Studies:	0 (0.0%)
Architecture:	0 (0.0%)
Business:	18 (9.0%)
Communications/Journalism:	8 (4.0%)
Education:	48 (24.0%)
Engineering/Computer Science:	2 (1.0%)
General Studies:	0 (0.0%)
Health Sciences:	3 (1.5%)
History:	6 (3.0%)
Humanities:	8 (4.0%)
Law:	2 (1.0%)
Military/Naval Science:	0 (0.0%)
Performing & Fine Arts:	1 (0.5%)
Science/Math:	43 (21.5%)
Social Sciences/Psychology:	22 (11.0%)
Other:	28 (14.0%)
Undecided:	11 (5.5%)
How often have you participated in a Student Research Consultation?
Never:	167 (83.5%)
One time:	16 (8.0%)
More than one time:	17 (8.5%)
Have you taken any of the classes listed on the screen at the front of the room?
Yes:	20 (10.0%)
No:	180 (90.0%)

Some additional changes...

2007-04-24T21:07:00.000-04:00

Some additional changes based on comments...

Spring 2007 INTD 105 Assessment
What is the name of your INTD 105 Instructor?
Bingley
Bradford
Derne
Easton
Everett
Farbabd
Faurot
Frahm
Garrity
Granger
Herzman
Krumrine
Lima
McCoy
Okada
Perri
Scipione
Stubblefield
Tomczak
Van Munster
Williams
Other:

Click here to open the Milne Library homepage in a second browser window. Use any of the resources available there to answer the questions below.

Do not navigate from this page or your answers will be lost!

Locate one scholarly journal article about school desegregation in America. Enter the Article Title and the Journal Name of your chosen source in the spaces provided below.
Article Title:
Journal Name:

Does Milne Library have access to the Journal of Latin American Studies (either online or in print)?
Yes
No

To what extent did your library instruction session help you find books and articles?
Completely.
A great deal.
Some.
Not much.
Not at all.

To what extent did the library instruction session help you to distinguish between scholarly articles and popular media articles?
Completely.
A great deal.
Some.
Not much.
Not at all.

We now have 200 students who have taken SAILS!

2007-04-24T08:03:00.000-04:00

One more and we can say "over two hundred students..."!

The additional survey questions

2007-04-23T09:12:00.000-04:00

This is my first stab at the survey questions.

Spring 2007 INTD 105 Assessment
Please open the Milne Library homepage in a second browser window. Use any of the resources available there to answer the questions below.

What is the name of your INTD 105 Instructor?
Bingley
Bradford
Derne
Easton
Everett
Farbabd
Faurot
Frahm
Garrity
Granger
Herzman
Krumrine
Lima
McCoy
Okada
Perri
Scipione
Stubblefield
Tomczak
Van Munster
Williams
Other:

Locate one scholarly journal article about school desegregation in America. Enter the Article Title and the Journal Name in the spaces provided below.
Article Title:
Journal Name:

Does Milne Library have access to the Journal of Latin American Studies (either online or in print)?
Yes
No

To what extent did your library instruction session help you find books and articles?
Completely.
A great deal.
Some.
Not much.
Not at all.

To what extent did the library instruction session help you to distinguish between scholarly articles and popular media articles?
Completely.
A great deal.
Some.
Not much.
Not at all.

Please have a look and let me know if I need to make any changes.

4/24 - Edited to make the changes submitted by Kim and Sue Ann below. What do you think?

Notes and Decisions from the 4/19 assessment meeting

2007-04-20T09:55:00.000-04:00

Present: B. Swoger, M. Boynton, B. Clarke, T. Ottaviano, J. Elmore, K. Davies Hoffman, S. Brainard, R. Dreifuss

1. INTD 105 assessment. Since we decided that we were no longer getting useful information from the usual INTD 105 assessment, Marylou and Bonnie suggested asking the freshman classes to take the SAILS assessment during their assessment period. Those present agreed. Bonnie will continue with the preparations for this assessment.

2. SAILS demographic questions. We can ask 2 demographic questions on the SAILS. We need to be able to figure out how many library instruction sessions each class had. As a result, we decided to ask for their Instructor's name. This creates a problem: we can only have 9 choices for the demographic questions. So, how can we do this. Options:

Group some of the instructors together by number of sessions. This creates problems if two different instructors in two classes taught completely different things in the one 50 minute session.
Assign each class a code and have the students enter what is written on the board (01, 02, 03, etc. to stand for the number of sessions.) This still doesn't get around the fact that different classes were taught different things.
Any ideas? Please add to the comments or email me with ideas.

3. Additional questions. It was suggested that we also ask the students the same attitudinal questions that we asked Dan Repinski's INTD 105 class last semester (questions 14 to 23).

There was some concern that because Sue Ann worked with Dan Repinski's class for three sessions, asking the same questions of students who had only one session would not be useful. After some discussion of the goals and learning objectives for INTD 105 (something that may need more discussion later?) we decided to ask two performance questions and two attitudinal questions:

"To what extent did your library instruction session help you find books and articles?"
"To what extent did the library instruction session help you to distinguish between scholarly articles and popular media articles?"

"Find a scholarly journal article about school desegregation in America. Write the TITLE OF THE ARTICLE and the NAME OF THE JOURNAL in the spaces provided below."
"Does Milne Library have access to the Journal of Latin American Studies (either online or in print)?"

We can develop a rubric to insure appropriate assessment of the journal article question. Bonnie will work on putting up a survey. Let her know if you have a survey account and want to be made an administrator.

Please let me know if you have any questions, and please add your comments below.

From the Chronicle: ETS changes the name of the ICT exam

2007-04-18T20:04:00.000-04:00

In case you're interested:

April 18, 2007
Information-Literacy Test Gets New Name

The Educational Testing Service announced today that it has changed the name of its test meant to measure skills in retrieving, analyzing, and communicating online data. The ICT literacy test -- ICT stands for "information and communication technology" -- will now be called iSkills assessment.

"We selected iSkills because it is catchy, contemporary, and relevant," says Mary Ann Zaborowski, director of product management for the test. "The new name is more spirited."

The Educational Testing Service also said educational institutions can now receive test scores in a way will allow them to compare their students' performance with those of students from similar institutions.--Andrea L. Foster

The latest on the SAILS Assessment

2007-04-10T18:42:00.000-04:00

The scheduled assessment sessions have finished for the semester. We currently have a total of 197 students who have taken the assessment. We may have a few additional survey-takers if any of the SRC folks have some time after their SRC to take the assessment. Can we push for an even 200?

Of the 197 students, we have 20 students (10.2%) who have taken one of the library instruction "intensive" courses. We also have 16 (8.1%) students who have done one SRC and 15 (7.6%) who have participated in more than one. If you sign up for an account at the Project SAILS website I can give you complete access to the demographic data.

The assessment test period runs through the end of May. Because SAILS compares students against other students in other institutions, we will not receive results of the test until this summer. Once we do, we will be able to see how our students compare against other students, and how our different groups compare to one another.

I spoke with someone at the ACRL conference who had received their data report. One of the interesting results is the clarity with which you can see which questions (concepts) your students completed with ease and which gave them difficulty.

So what's next?

At the end of last semester, the librarians looked at the data compiled from the INTD 105 assessment. After some discussion, it was decided to discontinue the survey-tool assessment of library instruction.

At some point, someone suggested that the INTD 105 students take the SAILS assessment at the end of this semester instead of the usual survey-tool assessment. Forgive me, I can't remember if this idea was discussed in a meeting somewhere. Marylou also suggested asking all the INTD 105 classes to take the extended version of the survey that Dan Repinski's INTD 105 class took last semester (questions 14 to 23).

The INTD 105 classes have been asked to come in for assessment at the end of the semester - they are already starting to request classrooms and proctors.

We can administer this assessment separately from the initial assessment - this way we won't weight our results too much toward the freshman.

If we decide to administer the SAILS, we need to think about what two additional questions we want to ask the students. Do we ask the same questions as the initial survey? Different questions?

Please think about some of these items and questions - we will talk about them at the assessment meeting next Thursday (4/19/07, 11:30am, Location TBD).

Proctoring the SAILS Assessments

2007-02-26T09:08:00.000-05:00

While Marylou and I will be proctoring most of the scheduled SAILS sessions, I wanted to provide you with information on how to have students take the test so that if the opportunity arises, additional students can take the assessment.

First, students will need to fill out a paper form before starting the test. They will turn the paper form in to the proctor. Without it, they will not be entered in the grand prize drawing nor will they receive any extra credit (if they are being offered extra credit). These forms cannot be photocopied since each page has a different student identifier number. These forms can be found on the corner of my desk. Please take as many as you need and return any unused forms.

Students who will get extra credit will need to write down the name of the faculty member that will need to be informed. We will compile the information and let professors know which of their students took the assessment
We have reached out to the Greek organizations in an attempt to reach out to a wide range of students. They will be taking the assessment as a community service project. Instead of giving them Books 'n' Bytes gift cards, they will earn $3 towards their selected charity. They will need to indicate which organization they are a member of on the form.

Second, students will need to go to http://www.projectsails.org

At that page, students need to enter an administration code and a student identifier. Our administration code is EBB-OMO. Each student is given a unique student identifier - these can be found on each individual form found on the corner of my desk.

Once students start the assessment, they will need to answer 4 quick demographic questions before starting the actual assessment. Two of these questions are questions that we developed.

How often have you participated in a Student Research Consultation?
- Never
- One time
- More than one time
Have you taken any of the classes listed on the screen at the front of the room?
- Yes
- No

In order to allow students to answer the second question, you will need turn on the computer and projectors and pull up this web page:
http://library.geneseo.edu/assessment/question

This site has the list of "library intensive" classes that we are looking for. Please look at this list to make sure that everything looks correct.

After the final assessments have been given, we will randomly draw students to receive the grand prizes. Students will be contacted via phone or email to alert them of the drawing.

At the moment, I am planning to pass out the Books 'n' Bytes gift cards once they finish the exam. However, I don't have these in my hand yet and we may have to leave a list at circulation for the students who take the assessment today, so that they can pick up the cards once we get them.

Please let me know if you have any questions.

The call went out for student participants in the assessment project...

2007-02-22T17:20:00.000-05:00

As most of you probably noticed, an email was recently sent to faculty-l and library-l announcing the SAILS portion of the program assessment and asking for student participants.

I have already received a couple of items of positive feedback from faculty willing to give extra credit or otherwise strongly encourage their students to take the assessment.

Our goal is to have 250-300 students take the assessment, but more would be very welcome.

Because we did not get information out to faculty and staff as soon as we wanted, we will be holding assessment sessions into the week before spring break, and some additional sessions after spring break.

What have I left out? I am sure that I haven't told you everything but my mind is a complete blank. Please ask any questions if you have some.

Program Assessment Update

2007-02-20T09:28:00.000-05:00

I thought I would update you about the assessment project. At the moment, we are busily making preparations to give the assessment next week, although many of the final details are still being worked out.

At some point, I may be asking you to proctor a session, although I think that Marylou and I will be proctoring most of the sessions.

I am in the process of writing up some text that can be distributed to faculty (via email or otherwise) about the nature of the test and what we are asking them for. I will also be contacting many faculty members to individually ask for their support. I may also ask that you talk to any faculty that you normally chat with about the assessment. I will be providing more details about that as soon as possible.

In other assessment news, Marylou, Kim, Ellen Kintz and I have been working with some of the detailed surveys that Kim has done for the Anthropology classes and we are starting to articulate some interesting (although not surprising) results. For example, after a library intensive class many students report that they are more efficient at finding information but that they also realize the process will take longer than they originally thought.

How do we define "intensive library instruction"?

2007-02-05T11:49:00.000-05:00

In order to effectively target the right groups of students to take our SAILS assessment, we need to be able to pick classes that have had extensive library instruction. Marylou and I briefly discussed a starting point for a definition of "intensive" and we will need your input at the meeting on Wednesday to finalize it.

First, this is a program assessment: we don't want to target individual librarians or instructors. We would like to come up with a definition of "intensive library instruction" that will reach out to the work of at least three librarians. We would like to see a definition that includes a range of majors but that doesn't include INTD 105 classes.

We thought that library "intensive" classes would be those where the librarian worked extensively with students on one major assignment. The librarian would have assisted them at several stages of the research process including refining their thesis statement, identifying sources, critiquing sources and citing their sources.

Is this definition too broad? too narrow? How can we refine this definition to target the right students to take this assessment? We will be discussing this question at the meeting on Wednesday. Feel free to leave your comments on the blog or just bring your ideas to our meeting.

Changes to web page search

2007-02-02T13:20:00.000-05:00

At a web-content committee meeting a while ago, we noted that the library search didn't search any pages on the ERes server. As a result, students were missing a wide variety of available resources: none of the resources by subject pages or submission forms were searched.

I was recently able to make this change, but it had one unintended consequence. The search box at the top of the page now has faint lettering reading "Google custom search."

Will this cause confusion? Do we need to add text making it clear that the search is for the library web site and not all of Google?

I can't make the "Google custom search" text go away.

Please let me know what you think about this new change and if you encounter any problems.

Future assessment ideas

2007-01-31T09:41:00.000-05:00

While our primary focus at the moment is on this semester, the assessment process should be continuous. While our future plans are still very ambiguous, one idea was brought forward after the ETS exam that seemed to meet with approval from several people.

We would like to examine what students are actually "doing", not just what they say they know. One possibility would be to design a series of tasks where we could record the students actions using software like Camtasia. We could develop these tasks and a rubric for assessing them over the summer. It was suggested that we then offer both the SAILS and the in-house assessment in the same year to see how the two assessments compare.

This is just a tentative idea, but it may be useful to start thinking about how we will continue the assessment process.

Possible incentives to encourage participation

2007-01-31T09:20:00.000-05:00

What can we offer as an incentive to students who come in to take the assessment?

Some ideas I had:

Flash drive
iPod
MP3 player
Gift certificate to Sundance books
Wegmans or Walmart gift cards
Tickets to a concert

Comments about these ideas? Other ideas?

Assessment for this semester

2007-01-31T09:04:00.000-05:00

Based on the discussions about the ETS exam, we are starting to form a plan of how to proceed with assessment for this semester.

We need to do some kind of program assessment during this semester. In order to get maximum participation we need to administer the assessment before Spring break. As a result, we don't have the time to create our own assessment tool, even if we have the will. Our best option at this point seems to be the SAILS assessment.

While several librarians have expressed some concerns about some of the questions offered on SAILS (see Bonnie for a list of SAILS questions), this exam will provide us with a general picture of the information literacy of the group we assess. Administering the SAILS assessment during this semester will also give us an opportunity to assess the SAILS exam itself.

With SAILS, we can test a wider group of students and focus on several groups.

Students with extensive library instruction experience.
Students with little library instruction experience.
A control group selected to approximate the college as a whole.

We may be able to recruit students for the third group by taking advantage of the Greek students who use Room 104 in the evenings.

The second group may comprise a group of science majors, giving us a glimpse into their needs and skills.

The first group would be pulled from students who have been involved in one of the more library instruction "intensive" classes that several of our librarians are involved with.

This brings us to the question: which classes will count as library instruction "intensive". Think about the classes that you have taught, what defines these type of classes?

Summary of opinions about the ETS exam

2007-01-30T09:19:00.000-05:00

First, to summarize the views expressed in the meeting, the blog and elsewhere.

It seems as though the ETS assessment isn't what we are looking for. It is not focused enough on information literacy to make it a worthwhile assessment of our program. It seems to test critical thinking skills but the tasks often are too bogged down by extensive reading and fine details. While the results of the database related questions would be interesting, there is too much extraneous material to make the test worthwhile.

Is this an accurate summary of our thoughts about the ETS exam?