SJSU’s 2011 SLIS lecture: Stephen Abram
Although I am an alum of SJSU’s SLIS program, I mostly filter out the plethora of on-going emails I still receive from the school about courses, talks, and student groups, but one message caught my eye -
[slisadmin] 2011 SLIS Lecture Webcast: Stephen Abram on the Future of Social Libraries & Learning (aka The Future: Frankenbooks, Social Libraries and Learning)
Abram, a rather prolific figure in the library world, had popped up across my research and news radar several times but I’ve lacked the follow through to consistently read his blog, New Stephen’s Lighthouse. However, watching his recorded talk was truly one of the most interesting and engaging presentations I’ve seen on libraries (all types) in very possibly forever (so far). Abram presents great content, applicable situations, and sassy humor to illustrate some of our profession’s foibles and areas for improvement. If you don’t want to spend an hour watching the talk, here are my main takeaways:
- Geotagging (changing the answers based on the space/audience) – why aren’t we doing this? His example – public consumer health data. Do teens need the same information as senior citizens about HIV/AIDS? No, so why do we keep helping them in the same, uniform way?
- We need to inform our users that they are being manipulated by geotagging, search engine optimization, and content farms like AOL
- Our future for reference service is in providing transformational (learning) interactions, not transactional (end-product search results list only) interactions
- The value of reading – do we really need to be persnickety about how people read? Nah. Instead, focus on the fact that they are reading at all. Plus, learn about some other eReading apps: 24symbols and Bookish
- So that manipulation factor? It’s not just search engine results. In short, Apple seems to take a very narrow view of the Protection for Private Blocking and Screening of Offensive Material US legal code 230.c.2.A. The Apple iStore’s iPhone Developer Program License Agreement allows Apple to determine what is or isn’t acceptable for you to buy with your own money. This isn’t just an issue of obscene or pornographic materials, but things interpreted as defamous. For example, Mark Fiore, Pulitzer-prize winning satirist, had his NewsToons political cartoon app rejected since it was “making fun of the Balloon Boy hoax and the pair that famously crashed a White House party.”
- Things we can do to get back in touch with our community’s needs, not our own navel gazing.
- Act Like a User Day (ex: ADA sort of way). Can people use a wheelchair through the library well? Do the websites we design actually make sense when used with a screen reader? In my one-armed state, I’ve become acutely aware of the limitations to do things like use pump soap dispensers, cut food with fork and knife, or get a fair score on xBox Kinect games (penalties for missing arm are bogus).
- Digital Download day – a petting zone of different technologies+showing users how to download their content to any device (pushes staff training+comfort).
EBM & The Medical Librarian
In an attempt to blog my Mid-Atlantic Chapter Medical Library Association continuing education experience, I wrote the following post. With the event having occurred over 2 months ago, I thought submitting to the public here would be better than leaving the item in the “pending review” category of the MAC-MLA WordPress blog, especially since I still refer to these notes when talking with my students. Enjoy.
EMB? PICO(TT)? FRISBE? What the frank? As a new health sciences and nursing librarian, I’ve found myself encountering this new alphabet soup without a lot of context or deeper understanding of how to 1) identify meaning from these letter scrambles and 2) help my students, researchers, and clinicians with applying these concepts to their studies and practice. Perhaps lacking all but the cape, Connie Schardt, Evidence Based Medicine Superhero, taught a great two-part session today on “Evidence Based Medicine and the Medical Librarian.” While packets of close to 100 pages appear to overwhelm, they greatly helped support the session by providing hands on activities, such as how to identify a study or question from the abstract. Patient problems, Intervention of a hypothetical test item, Comparison to other intervention options or placebos, Outcome review, and understanding the Type of question and the Type of study is a series of ideas that need a bit of mental unpacking that the activities definitely provided. End of session Jeopardy rounds were also great ways to test our understanding in a more fast, fluid form way. However, despite the traction gained in the first half, I personally found the evaluation component the most helpful and substantial to my ability to teach health information literacy. FRISBE, not frisbee like the non-traditional golf game, provides a good checklist to help evaluate tests for bias. From my own work, the search is never the hardest part of research. For the bullet point friendly, FRISBE stands for
- F – Follow up (no missing persons, please)
- R – Randomized population assignments and concealed allocation of people to different groups
- I – Intention to treat
- S – Similar baseline between the randomized groups
- B – Blinded service and treatment within the populations
- E – Equal treatment of both populations
When we applied this scheme to an article, we could start fleshing out and justifying why an article was strong or weak in concrete terms. Now, after sharing my comments from the afternoon, does anyone else have any advice, tips, or tricks for a new librarian to the field?
Adventures in recording and captioning
As part of a project to provide additional resources to our student workers about how to identify peer-reviewed resources (since EBSCO is a bit of a crap shoot), I decided to create a short tutorial about defining the terminology, show how search results may or may not identify peer-review-age, and how to navigate the peer-review identification authority, Ulrichs. With the help of our amazing Center for Information Technology (CIT), I got a rundown on Camtasia vs Captivate recording options, equipment, and systems. Thinking this would be on the shorter side (>10 minutes), I decided to test out Camtasia since I was already familiar with Jing. Plus, our Camtasia setup allowed submission of videos to a Relay server for automatic captioning instead of manually editing the captions in Captivate….or so I thought. Being the responsible person I am, I drafted up the script ahead of time (apart from some minor tweaks) and thought it would be great. However, here are some of the captions
My text: ”…about the types of resources students use for their research.”
Relay-suggested caption: “…every horse themed use for their research.”
My text: “In particular, professors are requiring students to use peer-reviewed articles for their research resources.”
Relay-suggested caption: “the killer perfect and I are requiring didn’t eat Peer Reviewed articles for their Easter treat”
And that’s just within the first 10 seconds. Other gems include
My text: “so use the dropdown box in QuickSearch to limit your search to Just Scholarly Articles”
Relay-suggested caption: “the is the goddamn boxing cricket to many a six contests scholarly article”
So for a >5 min video, I probably spent about another hour fixing the captions. To view the final product (at least of this round), go to JMUtube and check out “How to Identify Peer-Reviewed or Refereed Resources.”
Welcome to Virginia!
For the followers for a rather infrequent blog, my summers’ absence may have gone unnoticed, but I tell you, this year, the blog posts will be quite different because……I GOT A JOB! Yes, a real, single-location, job as the Health Sciences and Nursing Librarian at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia. Obviously, there are a lot of new things to adjust to and learn about and I look forward to documenting my adventures here. To help introduce you to my new environment, I recommend perusing the demographics for the incoming freshman class that are somewhat indicative of the larger student body composition; Jena Thiegles from the student newspaper, The Breeze, did a great infographic on it.
So, this isn’t exactly a Berkeley of sorts and that’s fine with me, as I
- Get the benefit of being a faculty member
- Am on a tenure-track trajectory
- Have a lot of direct student contact in the classroom and as a reference resource
Some additional departmental perks
- Under Health Sciences falls the Nutrition and Dietetics department meaning my students (and I like to imagine myself) have access to top-notch kitchen facilities
- Also under Health Sciences is the Athletic Training department, so when they need volunteers to help Kinesiology students practice being trainers, I get to workout while doing outreach as part of my job in our awesome UREC facility
- Our Nursing program and Health Sciences departments are highly involved in the community through faculty-clinic and faculty-hospital collaborations; if I didn’t feel enough purpose with my regular position, I have even more ways to contribute back to my community
All bragging aside, the change is a lot of “new” to absorb and I have a lot of work to get up to speed, but I can’t wait to report back more about the East Coast adventures of real, full-time librarian.
2011 California Conference of Library Instruction notes
Are you feeling tired? Worn down by grading too many papers? More inspired by the end of Spring semester/quarter? Then, you feel just like me. The cure: CCLI. In one day, I’ve been not only inspired to better structure my outreach for effective acceptance by students, but also got to explore new online learning tools and consider hope for my academic librarian future.
The morning started out with cocktail umbrellas and Mad Men as Emily Missner asked us to reconsider what we think of as library resource advertising. With her real world, ad agency experience, Emily began the morning with some basic concepts to reach our student population sweet spot (18-34 year olds). First, develop a unique personality that fits self images. Second, evoke sn emotional response. Finally, create a stimulating experience. As a model of how this works, the attendees brainstormed ideas of successful ads and marketing camaigns, such as Apple. Often times, libraries advertise new resources like how vendors pitch to us – but do students really care about how many thousands of publication titles are in a database? NO. So why do we keep telling them this?
Next, she shared her own approach of a listserv. I know, I know, listservs are not Web 2.0 chic but, like Draper and the Kodak Carosel, she knows how to sell it to students, faculty, and alumni (about 2,000 to be exact). Mood (like major holidays), nostaglia or pop culture, analogy, and anthropomorphism are her ingredients for success. I would also state that her prudent use of once or twice a quarter in key weeks 3, 7, and/or 8 makes timing a sixth unnamed ingredient.
After a lovely lunch, Debbie Faires dove into the nuts and bolts of online education, methods, and a wide array of resources. Now, first of all, online education in a purely-online-no-in-person-meeting-EVER has grown 21%. Learning management system usage (the Moodle, Blackboards, etc of the world) is estimsted to be 1 in 3 students. Therefore, Debbie tooj a broad approach first identifying the various types of interaction between students and faculty, students and content, and student to student. To minimize the isolation effect, all of these have to be in place. Discussions across asynchronous, sychronous, and in between communication styles and tools encouraged good conversation from many of the other attendees.
As our final keynote speakers, Dr. Dale Jacobs and Dr. Heidi Jacobs reminded us not just what we do as being good enough, but also to “hope, a way to think things through as a group to make things better.” As the extended metaphor of this reflective librarianship, they referred back to the isolated island also being a complex ecosystem. The rare species found in the Galapagos might be isolated from larger continents with better documentariand but it doesn’t mean that the vegetative life and animal life on the island don’t have to find a mutual cooperation for their shared survival. With budgets and institutions needing to make use of what we have and better, librarians cannot just consider themselves as isolated entities in the sea of academia. So, the Jacobs asked the hard questions and made us think about what we might start answering. For example, what do you want from your info lit program? Who do you need to talk with? What do you need to do to make yourself avaliable to listening to other peoples’ responses? I have some notes of names and ideas but I’ll save my actions and findings for another post….
Make ‘em laugh
One of the benefits of being on summer break is the reintroduction to normal society aka Daily Show and The Colbert Report. Through their analysis, I get some great info lit pieces. If you haven’t been watching lately, I recommend the following viral items:
- Jon Stewart’s “We’re Here, We’re Queer, Get Newsed to It” – about 1:30 into the clip, Jon covers the issue of authority (or lack of) for certain websites
- Stephen Colbert’s review of the Wikipedia impact of Sarah Palin’s retelling of Paul Revere’s midnight ride, as summarized by funnyordie.com
For more info lit centric pieces, enjoy classic Colbert:
- Wikiality – the Wikipedia defined factual reality
- Wikilobbying – to agree upon what we just agreed upon, we can also
- Great News – what’s the value of a journalism degree?
Perhaps, I have found a new approach for sparking web evaluation discussions…..
Who you gonna call? GHOSTBUSTERS!
With a rare formula of energy, time, and motivation, I was assigned a brief orientation for a Humanities class with the focus to introduce students to the library, the catalog, and the databases in about 30 minutes. So, I wanted to get creative. I know my content but selling the first minute or two is my usual stumbling point and it also happens to be the small window I get to actually have students get interested or mentally checkout. Being the pop culture diva I am, I wanted something funny and relatable for my community college students, so nothing too age specific. In my YouTube search, I started with general library clips but quickly made my way to the iconic Ghostbusters. Scenes from the original and the more recent NYPL re-enactment quickly got added to the list but the real key, I believe, was knowing how to integrate these effectively.
So this is how the sequence went:
While students enter class, play this in the background to set the tone, get them curious about what is going on in the front of the room, etc.
Next, at the beginning of the class, start playing the first 20 seconds of this video on mute, noting how the library used to be with books, card catalogs, and the scary thought of doing research (timing is key to get the scream/scary research effect)
Next, launch into library intro
- hours
- facilities (printing, copying, computers, study rooms)
- website
Catalog (Bloomsday related examples since it was June 16th)
- Subject v keyword
- demo search (Ulysses) – more refined resource lists/name disambiguation from the general and the mythological character
- Review a record (location, call #, status)
- Save record–>view saved–>Print/Email/Request/Hold
- Request/hold individual books
- ELECTRONIC BOOK EXAMPLE (under keyword results)
- how to access in library & at home
Databases
- Academic Search Elite
- SIRS Researcher
- Boolean operators
- AND, OR, NOT – human example
- Full-text, peer-reviewed, date range, source type, etc.
- Show article
- Email/print/save functions
Conclude with the note that Reference Librarians are there to help you and not do this…..
The giggles and lots of mid-presentation questions told me that the research and listening to the Ghostbusters’ theme song at least 25 times paid off. Now, I must channel my 1980s childhood and finally dance like I wanna to the theme song. Now, if I could just find my slap bracelet and blue Reebok hightops…..
My first two years…
In late August 2009 while visiting with friends in San Jose, I received a desperate call asking “Would you teach one of the Library Studies courses this semester?” Little did I know just how addicting teaching, assessment, and working with students and faculty to be. My Italian professor used to dance in front of the class singing that he would be the Candyman, the Easter Bunny, and Santa Claus for what he would teach you with Italian. So far, I have restrained myself from doing the same, but I make no promises for future classes.
In these 2 years, I’ve managed to teach 10 different classes in both the community college and four-year university setting. Mishaps and pitfalls, breakthroughs and new explorations all characterize who I am and how I teach today. While waxing poetic about myself would be great for the job market, it just wouldn’t be me. Instead, I’d like to share some of my *preliminary* musings and findings about teaching in these communities.
There is something to said about maturity
While teaching for my first year was only in the community college setting, I became accustomed to having a majority of students 1) who had dealt with libraries and research in some form in their other classes and 2) were taking this in their last semester before graduation. In my first session at the four-year institution, I found that the same teaching strategies DO NOT WORK ON FRESHMEN. Granted many different factors come into play, such as previous library exposure, what quality of high school education they received, and general academic maturity, but never again will I assume students want to learn like I do/did. This maturity/motivation/generation factor also played out in other ways such as email usage (or notsomuch…).
Just because you use Facebook/MySpace/Twitter doesn’t mean you’re tech saavy
Based on the stereotypes, digital natives (Gen X & especially Gen Y/Millennials) are natural technology savants and other generations are a bit more hit/miss as digital immigrants. However, my returning adult students who swore up and down that they were “not good with computers” perservered and, occassionally, got very creative with ensuring their academic success despite tech failing beyond their control. At the same time, I had some of those Millennials get stuck using Google Docs; having the assignment worth 20% of their grade wasn’t motivation enough to try and troubleshoot it. In short, stereotypes and assumptions still, in the words of Samuel L. Jackson, make an ass out of you and umption. Nevertheless, technology will impact their motivation do complete citations. Freshmen LOVE using citation builders while some adult students REFUSE to use them. When I say LOVE, I mean I couldn’t get anything resembling a proper citation in any format out of 90% of my freshmen until I had them use Noodletools Bib Express or other builders. When I say REFUSE, I mean that even though the school paid for a subscription for all students to have and use a Noodletools account during their entire academic career, were taught in class how to use it, and were required to use Noodletools to complete course assignments, they would actively tell me in person that they would not use it.
For now, I’ll leave my thoughts to this, but I’ll be reviewing my past work a lot this summer to explore core information literacy trends and behaviors. If there’s something you’d be interested in getting data/analysis on, don’t hesitate to ask.
Book Review: Unbroken
Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
While the first 75pgs move a bit slow and seem a bit unwieldy with historical information, the book takes off and engages you through the end. While the atrocities in Europe are astounding, this book addresses the exponentially more horrifying realities of POWs in Japan during World War II. I wish US history had this when I was in high school to read.
Social media+students=success?
So, is social media (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc.) ruining students? Perhaps, but there’s a lot more to examine here.
I, too, have suffered from the let-me-procrastinate-on-my-paper-by-playing-hours-of-Bejeweled but is that really social media’s fault? Was it any different from vegging out in front of the TV?
At the same time, isn’t social media the new way to connect and inform students of updates. In a recent poll by AP-Viacom, students stated that “laptop computers were the top item they use in the classroom for note-taking, followed by smart phones, cameras, audio recorders, tablet computers and camcorders.” Social media is the way to reach students where they already are (their computers and phones). Smart codes in advertising utilize this tech-focus to expand the experience. Why should students considering stopping this?
Another issue, is that different social media attract different followers. In Joel Comm’s book, Twitter Power, he notes that there are socioeconomic and educational differences between Facebook and Twitter users. While Joel’s book first came out a few years ago and Twitter has mainstreamed itself a lot more, the 2010 infographic below still highlights some variations in user-type that may attribute more to why Twitter users work a bit better than Facebook users.
Facebook vs Twitter Infographic – DigitalSurgeons.com.
While I still struggle to get my students to use their school email and built-in Google Docs, what have people’s experiences been with Twitter/Facebook in the classroom?
