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.

Notes from 3/6 ARC Meeting at Mount Wachusett Community College: Next Generation Research Guides

Attendees: Christine Drew, Jeannette Lundgren, Tina McAndrew, Pamela McKay, Corinne Smith, Sara Marks, Heidi McCann, Louise Collins, Ellen Madigan Pratt, Jess Mynes, Nancy Boucher, Dale Labonte

Sara Marks, Instruction Services Librarian discussed Fitchburg State Library's use of libguides.

Their library web site has many links, not search boxes, and few staff could edit the web site. Libguides provides them with an easy way to create web-based research guides, course research pages, and many staff can edit them. Sara teaches from a libguide when doing library instruction session.

Features they use include: tabs for organizing their libguides pages, polls, embedded YouTube videos, meebo chat, options for end users to rate links and leave comments. Sara look at the usage statistics & their citation page receives a lot of hits. A great feature is the link checker.

Sara created a short video for faculty on how to post libguides links within their Blackboard course site. She is also working on updating many screencasts which she plans to post into YouTube and post within libguides. Caveat Emptor: IE browser has trouble displaying embedded videos wthin libguides, she demonstrated using Firefox.

Sara also creates a libguide for programs, speakers and events they have at their library, which can include linkes to books, a biography of the speaker, and a calendar.

FSC Archives staff are using it to post some information, photos on their special collections, including a page on Robert Cormier, the author.

Heidi McCann, Reference and Instructional Services Librarian, shared information on their libguides implementation at Mount Wachusett Community College

Heidi serves as webmaster for the library and despite initial aversion to libguides, wanted to give staff more control. They paid extra for their custom URL (subjectguides).

She does not teach using libguides, but creates a guide to send to the faculty to distribute to their students after the library instruction session. The libguide serves as a summary for the students.

Faculty are enthused about libguides & impressed with it - so watch out, you don't want to become only a "libguides creator."

Libguides has great tech support but there are some minor annoyances she's found including:
-pop up not default for links
- privacy settings and google indexing or no indexing not easy to figure out, but tech support helped with this.

There's a lot of potential they haven't yet converted all guides since they just got access to it last year

Alternatives to libguides

• open source software created by Oregon State: Library a la carte - must have good relation with your IT department or control of your web site
• Microsoft Sharepoint - required university login at most schools
• Blogs or wikis (see BizWiki at Ohio State )
• Improving library web site and/or use of Content Management System (CMS) such as drupal
• Google sites - if you don't have control over your library site
• Blackboard or course management system: create guides within course shell

ARC Business

Leadership 2009-2010
- Sara Marks will be Chair
- Ellen Madigan Pratt will be secretary

Ideas for future meetings
- k-12 librarians, teachers & how they teach information literacy
- use of federated search in teaching information literacy
- future of the reference collection & weeding (talk with CMRLS staff for speaker ideas since they have a workshop on this topic)

Spring 2009 Meeting: Next Generation Research Guides

The spring meeting will be held at Mount Wachusett Community College Library.
Date Friday 3/6 2:00-4:00

Topic: Next Generation Research Guides
Heidi McCann will share information on their libguides implementation at MWCC and Sara Marks will discuss the Fitchburg State Library's use of libguides.

• Directions to MWCC
  
• More maps and campus locations
  
• A map of the campus showing the layout and library location (PDF)

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 pointing towards the library. We’ll be in the Library Instruction and Research Lab, Room 071 on the lower level of the library. If people are lost en route, call 978-630-9338.