Feral Librarian » teaching

What academic librarians need to know about academia

Chris — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 21:23:47 +0000

The world of academia is a strange and complex place, and I have found that understanding certain key aspects of its culture and norms has served me well in my current work and in contributing to conversations about the future of academic libraries.
Here are a few things that I find helpful to know/understand:

A faculty members’ peers are NOT necessarily the other faculty in their own department or their own institution. A scholar’s peers are other scholars who do similar work. This is literally true for activities such as peer review, and tenure & promotion reviews. It is also true in terms of social identity and social networks. Knowing this, I might realize I can helpfully point out similar research happening on a scholar’s own campus; since they may reasonably not know about it. I also need to know this because when scholars talk about doing collaborative work, their collaborators are likely to be located all across the globe — and that has implications for how libraries support that work.
Publications serve many purposes for faculty, but the primary purpose for most is to support tenure and promotion cases. Given that, faculty will publish their research in whatever venue has the highest prestige value in their field and their department. Understanding whether books or journal articles are more highly valued for a given department is helpful. It is also good to further understand which publishers and which journals are most important for a given department. Note that there will be variation within disciplines–what makes a good publication record for a tenure-track Sociologist at one university might not be so impressive at another school.
For tenure-track faculty, virtually everything they do & every choice they make will be based on how it contributes to their chances of getting tenure. For example, if teaching plays an insignificant role in tenure decisions at my school, then I can’t expect tenure-track faculty to devote much time to innovative teaching. If I want to support tenure-track faculty, I need to offer services that help them do things that increase their chances of getting tenure. If I want to offer library support for their classes, I need to be willing to do so in a way that requires little to no extra effort on their part, and perhaps even provides them some free time.

I’m sure there are plenty of other norms from the world of academia that academic librarians ought to understand. What am I leaving out?

Discussing 3 Books

Chris — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 23:55:29 +0000

Stanford’s Three Books Authors’ Panel last night was a terrific experience. The authors were engaging and surprisingly honest and humble in responding to students. The students asked thoughtful questions, and were clearly excited that one of their initial Stanford experiences involved a panel of world-class authors speaking just to them, and answering their questions. I was worried that media darling Malcolm Gladwell would get the lion’s share of attention, but the conversation was pretty evenly split among Gladwell, Abraham Verghese, and Lan Samantha Chan. Verghese and Gladwell did get more direct questions, but Chang often chimed in anyway with her experiences and insight.

I had the privilege of co-facilitating one of the dorm discussions that followed the panel, and had a great time continuing the discussion of the books with the students of Soto, and my wonderful colleague and co-facilitator Kelly Myers from the Program in Writing and Rhetoric.

The students were especially eager to continue discussing the Gladwell book. They were nearly unanimous in their dislike of the book and their frustration with what they saw as Gladwell’s refusal to recognize the role of individual effort and merit in success. I have my own criticisms of Gladwell’s book and of including it in Stanford’s Three Books, but the students convinced me that the Gladwell book may not have been a great choice for an entirely different reason. Basically, the kids noted that they had spent the last 24 hours being told by everyone from the University President on down that they were special and should be very proud of their achievements and their selection for Stanford. Then they hear from Gladwell, whose main thesis is that successful people “are invariably the beneficiaries of hidden advantages and extraordinary opportunities and cultural legacies that allow them to learn and work hard and make sense of the world in ways others cannot.”

These kids felt like Gladwell was raining on their parade, and telling them that they didn’t really do much to earn their spot at Stanford– they were just lucky. Even I am willing to admit that Gladwell’s book is more nuanced than that, but I can certainly see why kids would be especially resistant to the ideas in Outliers during their first week at Stanford.

Another interesting observation was that the kids had the least to say about Lan Samantha Chang’s novella & short story collection Hunger, and that many of the kids who did comment on it said it was the hardest to relate to. I was surprised that it was harder for them to relate to than Verghese’s story of treating AIDs patients in Tennessee in the 1980s. Usually, Stanford picks three works of fiction for it’s Three Books program, but this year it was the two non-fiction books that drew the most comments and questions from students.

I was so impressed with the kids in Soto dorm. They were eager to discuss the books, thoughtful and diverse in their comments, and incredibly considerate and respectful of each other throughout the discussion.

Participating in this event has been the highlight of orientation week for me for the last 3 years. It is a great opportunity to not only meet some of the new students, but also to get a sense of how they think about what they read.

Tagged: reading, Stanford, teaching

Students tell other students “go to the library!”

Chris — Thu, 21 May 2009 21:56:58 +0000

The final question we asked in our end-of-quarter survey of Stanford freshmen was:

What advice would you give about conducting research to future Stanford freshmen?

The students gave a range of kinds of advice, but the most popular topic was the library, with 32% of students mentioning “library” or “librarians”:

“I would advise them that the library is a great place to find sources and that they should not only limit their research to online sources.”
“ask the librarians! they know everything there is to know.”
“Stanford’s libraries can be very overwhelming and intimidating to search as a freshman and librarians really make things simpler and clearer.”

30% of students mentioned “sources” or “resources” in their advice:

“Try to find varied sources in order to give your research more depth.”
“Look into many different resources, such as books, scientific journals, magazines, etc.”
“Don’t be afraid. All the resources are here for the students to use.”

Starting “early” was the advice that 19% of students had for future freshmen:

“Be specific in your topic, and start doing research early.”
“Do it early and often!!!!”

15% of students gave advice about “books”, and another 15% gave advice about “databases”:

“Look at the books next to the one you’re searching for in Stacks.”
“I would tell them to not be afraid to go deep in the stacks, because the books are very helpful.”
“borrow a lot of books from the library”
“I would advise the student to try different databases so they can get a range of analytical, psychological, societal, etc views on their topic.”

In addition to using these data as heart-warming evidence of the success of Our Information Literacy program, I try to actually pass the advice on to future students in 2 ways:

I weave quotes from the survey into my information literacy sessions (including in my Research is like cooking analogy); and
I periodically post a juicy quote from the survey on our Facebook page.

More results from these surveys at:
Library catalog and databases more useful than Google
What do students learn in Library workshops?

Tagged: information literacy, library users, research, Stanford, teaching

Library catalog and databases more useful than Google

Chris — Tue, 19 May 2009 23:36:51 +0000

In our end of quarter surveys of freshmen, we asked them:

How useful were the following tools for finding resources for your research paper assignment?
(0=did not use, 1=Not at all useful, 2=A little useful, 3=Useful, 4=Very useful)

Google

Wikipedia

Socrates (Library Catalog)

Library Databases

Google Scholar

Online Class Research Guide

The Results

Most Used resources:

Socrates (Library Catalog) 99%
Google 94%
Library Databases 92%
Wikipedia 71%
Online Class Research Guide 71%
Google Scholar 49%

Most Useful Resources (1-4 Scale: 4=Very useful, 3=useful, 2=A little useful, 1=Not very useful)

Socrates (Library Catalog) 3.37
Library Databases 3.36
Google 3.10
Google Scholar 2.91
Online Class Research Guide 2.67
Wikipedia 2.37

I am very pleased that 99% of students (335 out of 337) used the library catalog to find resources for their paper, and 92% used a library database. I have no problem with 94% of them using Google, but am happy to see that they rate the library catalog and the databases as more useful than Google.

I am disappointed in the low usefulness rating of the Online Research Guides, but wonder if that is due to the fact that the Research Guides are one step removed from actually getting to content.

I was also pleased to see that nearly 40% of students say they consulted a librarian about their research.

For results of some of our open-ended questions, see What do students learn in Library workshops?

Tagged: google, information literacy, library users, Stanford, teaching