Notes from April 2010 Meeting: Give a Man a Fish or Teach a Man To Fish?

Thanks to Christine Drew at WPI for submitting her notes.

Academic Research Collaborative - Reference & Instruction Special Interest Group
April 16, 2010 MWCC
Heidi McCann at Mt Wachusett CC offered future prof dev opportunity:
EBSCOhost training Pamela Ericson will be teaching their faculty 5 of the EBSCO databases throughout their “professional development day” on Tues 5/18 & Wed. 8/25 contact Heidi if you’d like to attend.
 
Give a Man a Fish or Teach A Man To Fish?
The 9 regional librarians in attendance discussed “teaching” vs. “giving answers.” Although at the reference desk this can be situational, all academic librarians present agreed we focus on teaching students, not handing information to them. We hope to ensure the students retain the “know how” vs. “know that.”

Questions that surfaced include: libguides, are we handing the info to the students in a “pre-fabricated way?” Do these simplified guides hinder student learning? Also, federated searching, is this making it too easy as well (serving info up on a silver platter)? Sara Marks discussed her use and success with Youtube videos for students at Fitchburg State. She feels they can save staff time at the reference desk and the videos prove to be popular. Some of the use however could be from other non-FSC users.

Phil Waterman mentioned “librarians shouldn’t be the only ones teaching students to fish.” He espouses the need for librarians to partner with faculty. Also, Phil mentioned the time constraints we have, often very limited time to teach students the competencies they need.

Matt Haggard mentioned a useful citation maker called KnightCite at Calvin College’s web site, similar to Bibme and other citation helpers.

In Other News:
Sara Marks has accepted a position at UMass Lowell and will no longer be chair of the IG.  Kelly Jo Woodside of Assumption College will be the chair for 2010-11.  Watch for details about upcoming meetings.

Spring 2010 Meeting: Give a Man a Fish or Teach A Man To Fish?

Date: April 16, 2010
Time: 2:00pm - 4:00pm
Location: Mount Wachusett Community College

Topic:  The next generation of library guides has opened up a huge debate: how much information should we be giving our students vs. how much we should teach our students to find information for themselves?  Databases now provide us with search box widgets to add to pages giving students easier access to their searches.  They not provide us with RSS feeds that can be embedded into services like LibGuides to provide students with articles on searches we design.  Vendors like Credo Reference are creating topic pages that provide us with Reference collection summaries and then allow us to push students directly to databases of our choice for the scholarly and popular articles.
Where do we draw the line between giving them the content and teaching them how to find it themselves?  This meeting will be an open discussion on this very issue.  Bring your examples of how you are addressing this issue at your library and in your instruction sessions.

RSVP to Sara Marks by Friday, April 9, 2010

Directions and map to Mount Wachusett Community College

Parking:
Park anywhere in “North Parking Lot C” (very few classes on Fridays so there should be plenty of parking close by). No permit needed. Enter the building, then look for signs.   I’ll post signs pointing towards the library. We’ll be in the Library Instruction and Research Lab, Room 071 on the lower level of the library.