Over a year after attending a bookmaking workshop, I finally finished making a journal.
I had to cut and fold the pages to size (this was the most time-consuming part), and sew them together with a chain-stitch. The board covers I bought pre-cut, and covered them with blue paper. I didn’t have a board spine, so I used a piece of cardstock between the covers and the pages.
Voila! I haven’t begun using it yet, but I’m nearly done with my current journal, so I will soon.
This past summer, Amy Frazier wrote a post on the Hack Library School blog called “Librarian by Name, Geek by Nature.” The post itself deals with the idea of what is taught/learned in Library and Information Science (LIS) programs (a.k.a. library school), and what isn’t. Her article focused on what isn’t taught – what we don’t learn, and what we wish we did.
I rarely read the comments on any blog post or article, but the comments on this one are well worth reading; it’s a real conversation. People weigh in about the importance (or not) of coding skills and other IT skills; other “wishlist” items include more courses on project management, teaching, and customer service.
The desire to learn, not just in school but throughout life, is somewhat characteristic of librarians. One theme that is repeated throughout the comments is that library students and librarians would like to learn more technical skills and coding languages, but the course offerings in most programs are insufficient.
Like many of the participants in the discussion, I went to Simmons, where the only required technology course was Technology for Information Professionals. I lucked out (i.e., fought my way in) and took this class with Michael Leach, who gave us both a conceptual background and some hard skills. Linda Braun’s Web Development and Information Architecture course, though, was the one that made me excited about technology and coding and gave me confidence in the skills I had learned in her class, and in my ability to learn more.
However, I spend a lot of time with software developers – full-time coders – and the odd technology librarian, and my knowledge of HTML/CSS/PHP pales to nothing next to theirs. (They write in a variety of languages including PHP, JavaScript, C++, Python, Ruby on Rails, and others.) As Andromeda Yelton wrote, “We can always find people who make us feel inadequate as coders. Sometimes it’s genuinely because they’ve forgotten more code than we’re ever likely to know, but most of the time? They know things we don’t because code is big. No one knows all of it.”
Not every librarian needs to be a coding expert, but if the discussion over on Hack Library School is any indication, most want to learn more – or at least have enough of an understanding to communicate with those who do it full-time. At the very least, librarians should be a few steps ahead of patrons in terms of tech-savviness.
Professor Greg Downey at the University of Wisconsin-Madison created an amazing assignment for his digital native students: find information that’s not online. And where did most of them turn for help? Libraries!
In the User Instruction course I took last fall, we spent a lot of time discussing “one-shot” instruction: those 45-minute or hour-long sessions an instruction librarian might get with a freshman class to teach them everything they need to know about the library (hint: impossible. Remember, some people get Master’s degrees for this). Usually, librarians concentrate on the online catalog and one or two major databases, and that’s all they have time for.
Downey, however, clearly recognizes the importance of research, online and off, as well as all that libraries have to offer, in terms of physical materials as well as online databases and additional software and technology. This assignment reflects that recognition and respect for libraries and research; it’s also a great reminder that not everything is available on the Internet.
I’ve heard that “librarians like to seek; everyone else likes to find.” Finding is certainly satisfying, but it seems like Downey’s students got into the seeking aspect as well, and that’s what good research is about. Great assignment!
Two recent pieces in the New York Times – an article and an op-ed – address the issue of the publication of scientific research, and access to that research. The op-ed, “Research Bought, Then Paid For” by Michael Eisen, the founder of the non-profit, open-access Public Library of Science (PLoS), argues that research that was funded or subsidized by taxpayers ought to be available to those taxpayers free of charge. In a nutshell, “if taxpayers paid for it, they own it.” Eisen encourages scientists to publish their work in open-access journals instead of journals like Science, Nature, and Cell, which charge steep subscription fees – often to the same universities whose researchers submitted the papers and provided peer-review services for free.
The January 16 article “Cracking Open the Scientific Process” explains the issue in a slightly more balanced way (and reveals that some open-access journals, PLoS included, charge authors publication fees to authors). However, though of course the issue is more complicated than it appears at first glance, Eisen has a point about the principle of the thing: publicly funded research should be available to the public. Additionally, as the Jan. 16 article illustrates, many sites allow and encourage collaboration and networking, enhancing the scientific community and helping solve research questions more quickly.
I am reminded of the TED Talk on Open-source cancer research, wherein researcher Jay Bradner published and shared research instead of patenting it – the opposite, he pointed out, of what a pharmaceutical company would do – based on the principles of open-source and crowdsourcing.
A January 20 article in The Atlantic (“Locked in the Ivory Tower: Why JSTOR imprisons academic research”) also addresses the issue of the “broken economics of academic publishing.” The author summarizes, “Step back and think about this picture. Universities that created this academic content for free must pay to read it. Step back even further. The public – which has indirectly funded this research with federal and state taxes that support our higher education system – has virtually no access to this material, since neighborhood libraries cannot afford to pay those subscription costs.” She suggests circumventing the publishers, eliminating the print journal, and putting the content online.
Whether or not that’s the solution that enough people, organizations, and institutions eventually coalesce around, it’s clear that something must be done about the current state of academic research and publication – and it will probably happen sooner rather than later.
Edited to add (2/4/12): Some researchers, inspired by open-access champion Peter Suber and British mathematician and Fields medalist Tim Gowers, are boycotting the journal publisher Elsevier.
Earlier this month, there was an op-ed in the New York Times titled “Internet Access Is Not a Human Right.” One of the main points of the piece was that internet access is always a means to an end – the “end” being some kind of content or service or tool.
It’s not an exact parallel, but this reminded me of the difference between information literacy – the ability to recognize the need for information, and to locate, evaluate, and use that information effectively – and information technology skills. Likely, you’ll need certain technology skills in order to locate information, but just because you know how to use search engines, databases, or online catalogs does not mean you have all the other skills as well.
As the Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL) states, “Information literacy, while showing significant overlap with information technology skills, is a distinct and broader area of competence. Increasingly, information technology skills are interwoven with, and support, information literacy.” However, they aren’t the same thing. The means to access information has changed, is changing, and will continue to change in the future; ensuring that everyone has the right to access and the skills to do so is the important thing.
I was going to call this “Nice Guys Finnish First,” but (a) it’s a bad pun, and (b) for those who don’t get the pun, it just looks like I’ve misspelled “finish.”
However, it seems to be true about nice guys, or at least nice countries: the Finnish education system (entirely public, by the way; there are no private schools in Finland) is overwhelmingly more successful than the U.S. one, primarily because it values cooperation over competition, responsibility rather than accountability, and equality over all. This excellent article in The Atlantic goes into detail: “What Americans Keep Ignoring About Finland’s School Success.”
By valuing equality in practice rather than just in speech, Finland has done what America says it wants to do: leave no child behind.
Yesterday I attended Alison Head’s lecture “Searching for Context: Modeling the Information-Seeking Process of College Students” at the Berkman Center at Harvard. Head is affiliated with Project Information Literacy, and what she said about her research findings largely agreed with what I’d found through my User Instruction course last semester (though consulting the PIL reports would have been helpful at the time!).
Project Information Literacy (PIL) is an ongoing national study, including (so far) 11,000 students across 41 college campuses – community colleges as well as private and public four-year undergraduate institutions. Findings are not generalizable as the samples are voluntary, not random, but the methodology is sound (focus groups, surveys, content analysis, interviews) and the findings are certainly interesting.
Head’s presentation yesterday included four “takeaway points” from the PIL studies:
1. Students say research is more difficult for them now than ever before. Research – course-related and “everyday” – is a stressful process. Students must grasp the big picture, gather information, use appropriate language (search terms), and measure the information they find against their expectations. Unexpectedly, the PIL studies found that students were most likely to consult a librarian for help with search terms, rather than gathering information; also, the studies found that everyday, open-ended research questions were harder than research assignments.
2. Students turn to the same “tried and true” sources over and over again. Students use the same sources no matter what their contextual need is – whether it’s for an assignment or an everyday question, whether it’s for a science class or a literature class. Students reply on course readings first, then search engines, library databases, instructors, and Wikipedia; farther down the list is librarians. However, contrary to expectations, students use a hybrid model – they don’t search exclusively online, but also consult printed matter, teachers, and family and friends.
3. Students use a strategy of predictability and efficiency…as opposed to the librarian model of scholarly thoroughness. Students are risk-averse, preferring familiar resources, and placing a high value on currency (above other measures of quality, such as the publication, the author, etc.). Students say the most difficult step is getting started, then defining a topic, narrowing the topic, and sorting through irrelevant results. Seven out of ten students consulted Wikipedia, often as a “presearch” tool – to help with the big picture before really starting to research.
4. “Research and finding and using information is different than when you were in college.” Perhaps this was aimed at audience members who are no longer in their 20s; most everything Head described about PIL’s findings was relatively familiar to me. However, there has no doubt been rapid change: the amount of information available today is “staggering,” the level of connectivity is higher, there is a Web 2.0 culture of sharing, and expectations about information have changed. Group projects, for example, used to be objectionable to students because they did not want to share their work with others; today, group projects are still objectionable, but for different reasons – scheduling issues, personality conflicts, unequal contributions (not that these weren’t problems before as well).
To revisit takeaway #3 – this was much discussed in my User Instruction class last fall – librarians and faculty both can help alleviate student anxiety about research and improve their research strategies by providing clearer and more detailed guidelines in syllabi, assignment descriptions, and handouts. Head admitted that when she taught, she designed her syllabus largely based on that of her favorite professor at UC Berkeley; there is no class in a Ph.D. program where future professors learn how to craft syllabi and assignments.
On top of this, faculty tend to assume that students possess research skills already, when this is often not the case. High school research is different than college research, and students cannot learn all they need to know in one class session with a librarian during freshman year (some don’t even have the benefit of this). Ideally, professors’ assignment guidelines would include a description of what research means, how to do it, and what resources are available; they should point not just to library resources, but also to librarians. They should also discuss plagiarism – not just the standard warning that plagiarism is a punishable offense, but a description of what it is (it might seem obvious, but there are different levels – word-for-word copying, paraphrasing too closely, lack of attribution for others’ ideas).
Research does not have to be as stressful for students as it is. (Head gave an example of a professor who likened the research process to solving a mystery, complete with Sherlock Holmes analogy.) Librarians can reach out to both faculty and students; faculty can reevaluate their expectations of students’ research skills and craft their assignments accordingly; and of course, students can be more proactive in seeking help. But they’ll have to have a good reason to trade in their strategy of predictability and efficiency for a model of scholarly thoroughness.
Edited to add: There was an article on this topic in Inside Higher Ed in July 2010: “Assignments: Being Clear About What Matters,” by Barbara Fister.
An article in today’s Boston Globe covered a renewed interest in spelling; apparently, spelling has become “popular” again. Though many rely on spellcheck functions within word processing programs or e-mail, those can’t catch everything (and they often miss words that are spelled correctly but used in the wrong context – see The Oatmeal’s list of “10 Words You Need to Stop Misspelling”). Correct spelling may not be crucial in instant messages or texts, but it is still important in academic and professional contexts – and according to the Globe article, kids are eager to learn words in order to compete in spelling bees.
One interesting point the article raised was that maybe spelling hasn’t deteriorated; maybe it was always this bad, but it was less public. UC Berkeley professor and linguist Geoffrey Nunberg said, “People never knew how to spell…They kept it a secret unless you saw their shopping lists or Christmas letter. You didn’t see the comments they wrote on other people’s blogs. You didn’t see their own blogs. I think a lot of what is perceived as the decline of spelling is just that we see a lot more spelling by a much wider range of people than we used to.’’
Yes, I borrowed the title of a Kate Atkinson book for this post (although if you’re going to read her, I highly recommend Case Histories instead). It is now a full week into the new year (happy 2012!) and this is my first post; I have written others but they did not seem like the right ones with which to begin the year.
This morning, however, I read an article in the Boston Globe about a 13-year-old Massachusetts boy who contacted artists to create trees, which he would then donate the the nonprofit Reach Out and Read; the organization could auction off the artists’ trees at their annual fundraiser to raise money for early literacy.
Not only is this a cool idea, and an admirable (and successful) effort on the part of a teenage boy, but what really got to me was his quote at the end of the article: “Sometimes when people say they don’t like to read, the truth is they just haven’t found a book they like.’’ Sounds like a future librarian to me…
Recently I have read several articles about various aspects of the education system in the U.S. Most people agree that our educational system is not wholly successful. However, that’s where the discussion about how to improve the system begins – and where the agreement ends. Everyone has a different idea about what success looks like and how to measure it.
Two recent articles in The Washington Post were critical of standardized testing. One describes the results (and implications) when an adult – a school board member – took the 10th grade standardized math and reading tests. The adult, to put it mildly, did not do well on the tests, and said, “It makes no sense to me that a test with the potential for shaping a student’s entire future has so little apparent relevance to adult, real-world functioning.” (Apparently this issue persists through higher education as well; employers are finding that college grads lack job skills.)
Another article cited the revolt of New York state school principals against students’ test scores being used to evaluate teachers. The most problematic part of this plan is that there has been no pilot testing. In an “open letter of concern,” the principals wrote, “We are very concerned…that at the state level, change is being imposed in a rapid manner and without high-quality evidentiary support. Our students, teachers and communities deserve better. They deserve thoughtful reforms that will improve teaching and learning for all students.”
After giving background and articulating specific concerns, they offer recommendations, one of which is, “Pilot and adjust the evaluation system before implementing it on a large scale. Any annual evaluation system should be piloted and adjusted as necessary based on field feedback before being put in place state-wide. In other words, the state should pilot models and then use measures of student learning to evaluate the model.”
Tests are an instrument of measurement; pilot tests are essential to ensure that the tests are measuring what they are supposed to be measuring. Furthermore, in the evaluation and assessment part of the research process, testing is only the “gathering data” step – but there’s no point doing assessment at all if you aren’t going to act on the results. Testing, in large part, confirms what we already know; what are we going to do about it?
An op-ed by Duke professor Helen Ladd and author of the Fiske Guide to Colleges Edward Fiske in The New York Times earlier this month cited the acknowledged and proven correlation between economic advantage and student performance. Federal education policy, they write, does not take this into account. Setting testing requirements will not help; supporting high-quality early childhood and preschool education programs will, they suggest.
There are a few takeaway points from all this. One: Standardized tests must be tested themselves before being used state- and nation-wide to assess student learning and achievement, or to assess teachers and principals. Two: There is little purpose in testing at all if the true problems are not going to be addressed, and if insufficient support is going to be given to solve these problems. And lastly: Education ought to prepare students for their adult life; it ought to arm them with higher-order thinking skills (i.e. application, analysis, synthesis, evaluation).
it just burns up all your carbs.
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