by A CNN newsreport makes mention of a survey of 1200 college students that was taken to find out what they consider to be the "in" by undergrads. Tops on the list: iPod. Second Place: Tie between Facebook and Beer. Pretty telling as to what the students are into at the moment. The survey also provides support for those who want to see the library have a presence on Facebook (the students are obviously there) or introduce podcasting to the library. Oh, and the last time the 18 year survey saw beer dethroned from the top spot: 1997, by the Internet.
library 2.0
Info Lit 2.0
A recent post on the blog Alt Ref has gotten me thinking about information literacy in the 2.0 world. In his post, Brian stats that info lit is "very Un-Library 2.0 (the 'proper way vs. your way)". Why is this and how can it be changed?
The IL standards are broadly: Know, Access, Evaluate, Use and Ethics. IL should ideally help the students recognize when they need information, how to get that information, how to use it and do so ethically. The clash comes in the access/retrieval part of the process. Part of the problem is that the resources that we are trying to teach students to use in academic libraries are not library 2.0 oriented themselves. The 2.0 world is very social and database creators and vendors are not following suite with the library 2.0 trends that we see elsewhere (ie. they don't allow tagging, etc). In order to get half decent results, students need to be taught how to use the product. But does this mean that information literacy is un-library 2.0?
Web searching using Google and the like is not necessarily a bad thing. However, we do need to teach students how they can get the most out of the search engines and especially how to evaluate the sites they find. Many students don't look past the first page of returned results. I don't think it's not a bad thing to teach them how to search better. The proper way does not necessarily mean that their way of searching is wrong. Often times, their way of searching leaves them frustrated and in need of help. By teaching them how to search better, or perhaps properly, we are saving them time, frustration, and hopefully they can produce better papers. Furthermore, evaluation skills are incredibly important in the 2.0 world and information literacy is essential in forming this skill.
So how can we reconcile the two (library 2.0 vs. info lit; 'proper' way vs. your way)? Perhaps we can try creating wikis instead of pathfinders, which will help the students identify appropriate resources. Students can add to the wikis and tags can be implemented. We need to let vendors and database creators know that there products are not serving our patrons as well as they possibly could.
These are just some quick thoughts on the topic. I plan to do some more thinking on this. I've got lots of questions, such as: does information literacy need to be 2.0 and if not, is that a bad thing, if so, how can we achieve it? Look for more to come.
My Librarian
Here are a couple of things that have caught my eye in the world of librarianship.
A decision will soon be made regarding the opening of a Nazi archive. Previously, the archive was only open to survivors of the Holocaust, to allow them to track survivors. A panel of 11 international legal experts will be deciding whether or not the archive should be open to the general public. A wealth of information could be opened to historians and other researchers of the Holocaust.
The library marketing blog The "M" Word has a post about personal branding. More companies are pushing the "my" aspect (my card, my Coke). Libraries have often used the copyrighted phrase "@ your library". Perhaps in the age of library 2.0 we should be using the "my library" approach. Some libraries already allow customizable features. Many services that our patrons use now offer such features. Yahoo has joined the bandwagon and is allowing users to customize their page. Customization and self-centeredness are becoming the norm.
An idea I really like is the "my librarian" idea. This sounds very close to the notions of a liaison librarian found in academic libraries. The liaison librarian is associated with a department and the faculty often think of the librarian as "my librarian". Why not promote this notion? It helps promote an idea of personal service. Students of that department or faculty will know who to turn to for assistance. In some universities, librarians are assigned to a particular year of students (ie. all first years). By promoting the My Librarian idea that The "M" Word suggests, we may create a more intimate atmosphere and who knows, we may reach patrons who previously felt intimidated by the library and librarians. Definitely an idea I'd like to pursue.
Podcasting 101
I thought I would pass this along for all those podcasters or future podcasters. Here's a link to a Podcasting Legal Guide from Creative Commons. I haven't done any podcasting yet but I'll definitely be looking at this more closely before I do, even though the guide is directed towards US law. Even those who don't know what podcasting is may want to look at this, as it does provide a section on what podcasting is and provides further resources for those with extra questions.
Stuff to play with
Just thought I'd pass along a couple of interesting library 2.0 stuff to play with. There is now a library 2.0 wiki. Firefox also has an extension for libraries: LibX. I haven't played with it yet, so no comments at this time. Have fun playing!
Update: I should really wait until I read all my rss feeds before posting. Here's another good resource to check out for Library 2.0 stuff.
Review
Well, it's that time of year here. I'm getting ready for my annual review. It's a great way to look back at the year, examine what was accomplished and what has yet to happen. I've managed to accomplish quite a bit this year but it's rather overwhelming when I consider the number of things I still want to accomplish.
Not only are there a number of things to actually get done, there's lots to contemplate in the ever changing world of librarianship. Top on my list of considerations:
The state of government information – There are so many issues when it comes to government publications, especially electronic gov pubs. We're creating an e-gov pubs working group to try to get a handle on some of the issues.
Library 2.0 – yes, more library 2.0. I'll definitely keep following this and consider how we can apply it here. Luckily, we've got a couple of experts in this area already.
Information Literacy – this almost goes hand-in-hand with another concern of mine, liaison work. I think it's incredibly important to reach out to both faculty and students in the form of liaison work. This year the library's trying to get more involved with student orientation and I'm playing a role in it. Hopefully our relationship with both students and faculty will become stronger over the next year.
The year ahead holds many challenges and opportunities. Bring it on!
Free Information
There has been a lot of free information lately. ArchiveGrid has been discussed in a number of library blogs. This site allows free access to historical documetns from around the world.
Statistics Canada has announced that they will make all electronic publications found on their website (http://www.statcan.ca) free as of April 24th.
Exciting news from my library. We’ve hired Jeffery Trzeciak as our new UL. His presentation was Library 2.0 oriented. Can’t wait to see what we do!
Milestones
Well, it’s been recent period of milestones. Wikipedia English just entered its millionth entry. iTunes has had 1 billion songs downloaded.
What do these milestones mean for libraries? Obviously, these are technologies that libraries should be thinking about. Our patrons use them, so what can we do with them? This is where the whole library 2.0 debate or discussion comes into play. There are some great blogs out there discussing the 2.0 issues. Be sure to check out Stephen Abram’s Stephen’s Lighthouse and Micheal Stephen’s Tame the Web among the numerous great blogs out there (links on sidebar). More on Library 2.0 to come.