from the other side of the river

This article was downloaded by: [Universitat Politècnica de València]On: 26 October 2014, At: 01:08Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH,UK

College & UndergraduateLibrariesPublication details, including instructions forauthors and subscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/wcul20

From the Other Side of theRiverBarbara Macadam AMLS aa University of Michigan Library , Ann Arbor, MI,48109-1185, USAPublished online: 11 Oct 2008.

To cite this article: Barbara Macadam AMLS (2000) From the Other Side of the River,College & Undergraduate Libraries, 6:2, 77-93, DOI: 10.1300/J106v06n02_07

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1300/J106v06n02_07

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all theinformation (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform.However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make norepresentations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness,or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and viewsexpressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, andare not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of theContent should not be relied upon and should be independently verified withprimary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for anylosses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages,and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly orindirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of theContent.

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes.Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan,sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is

expressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found athttp://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

itat P

olitè

From the Other Side of the River:Re-Conceptualizing the Educational Mission

of Libraries

Barbara MacAdam

SUMMARY. Loyal to long-held convictions of what undergraduatesneed intellectually, academic librarians ignore the critical signs that theymay be failing students and faculty. Unless librarians are willing to ques-tion assumptions about how students think, what they value, and how ex-ternal incentives shape their behavior in the information environment,they will find themselves increasingly at the margins of students’ aca-demic life. If there are important questions that beg for answers beforelibrarians can redefine the teaching role of libraries, librarians have prob-ably never been in a stronger position as a profession to engage in theresearch necessary for meaningful solutions. [Article copies available for afee from The Haworth Document Delivery Service: 1-800-342-9678. E-mailaddress: getinfo@haworthpressinc.com <Website: http://www.haworthpressinc.com>]

KEYWORDS. Library instruction, teaching library, college students,learning style, information literacy, critical thinking, digital libraries,networked information

Loyal to long-held convictions of what undergraduates need intel-lectually, academic librarians ignore the critical signs that they may befailing students and faculty. Without questioning assumptions about

Barbara MacAdam (AMLS, The University of Michigan) is Head of Educationaland Information Services, University of Michigan Library, Ann Arbor, MI48109-1185.

[Haworth co-indexing entry note]: ‘‘From the Other Side of the River: Re-Conceptualizing the Educa-tional Mission of Libraries.’’ MacAdam, Barbara. Co-published simultaneously in College & Undergradu-ate Libraries (The Haworth Press, Inc.) Vol. 6, No. 2, 2000, pp. 77-93; and: Future Teaching Roles forAcademic Librarians (ed: Alice Harrison Bahr) The Haworth Press, Inc., 2000, pp. 77-93. Single or multiplecopies of this article are available for a fee from The Haworth Document Delivery Service [1-800-342-9678,9:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m. (EST). E-mail address: getinfo@haworthpressinc.com].

itat P

olitè

FUTURE TEACHING ROLES FOR ACADEMIC LIBRARIANS78

how students think, what they value, and how external incentivesshape their behavior in the information environment, librarians willfind themselves increasingly at the margins of students’ academic life.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

Several years ago, the University of Michigan Library introduced aCore Journals project providing links from indexes in the on-linecatalog to many periodical articles in full text. The following scenarioensued.

Week 1. Students become aware that they can request a print ofsome journal articles rather than hunt down a volume in the library andphotocopy an item. The library is not charging for printing, and libraryprinters are soon printing articles non-stop as student requests mount.Staff scurry to keep the volume of printed items under some control.

Week 2. Increasingly unwilling to track down printed materials,students prefer to use only on-line full-text articles. The volume ofprinted items continues to increase. Students print indiscriminately,leaving rejected articles behind. Piles of unclaimed rejects build up,and staff scurry to recycle them after forty-eight hours.

Week 3. Students become aware of the stacks of ‘‘rejects’’ buildingup around library printers and begin rooting through them directly foritems on their topic. Appalled, staff redouble efforts in instruction, andat the reference desk, to guide students in appropriate research strategy.

Week 4. Staff explore mechanisms to charge for core journal print-ing. (Students authenticate with their campus network id and passwordwhen requesting a print of an article; the per page charges are loggedagainst their campus computing fund allocations, with fund transfersback to the library.) When instituted some months later, the page-charge dramatically reduces the printing volume, and students appearto become far more selective in print requests.

This scenario should seem familiar. Although details vary, everyacademic professional has noticed some common elements in studentbehavior in the networked digital environment. Initial reactions areprobably the same: shock, distress, and a reinforced view of studentignorance in the research process. As knowledge professionals,librarians know that students will never gather relevant and authorita-tive information on any topic based solely on instant availability. Thegoals of a liberal education include the willingness to engage in open-

itat P

olitè

Barbara MacAdam 79

minded inquiry, shaped by the ability to think critically and synthesizelogically and honestly. And although librarians may be amused, sym-pathetic, concerned, even galvanized to action by such dramatic evi-dence of student needs for information literacy, they know that theyare right and students are wrong. This complacence is reinforced byfrequently voiced faculty concerns about students’ approach to intel-lectual activity.

Academic librarians are caught in a double bind. They take justifi-able pride in the transformation of collections, services, and profession-al roles during the last decade. While this shift in roles may have begunas a necessary, and sometimes grudging, response to rapidly changingexternal events, librarians have become the leaders and catalysts oncampuses for the digitization of knowledge and electronic access. Ac-cordingly, they feel responsible for the environment in which studentsand faculty are trying to work. With decades of commitment as aprofession to the instructional role of libraries, librarians further feel aspecial burden as educators for student success in information retrieval.They are vulnerable to implied criticism when a faculty member reportsthat her students relied solely on Internet sources, even after experienc-ing library instruction designed to educate and motivate them other-wise. In direct dealings with students, they are encouraged when stu-dents occasionally perceive that the ways they persist in doing thingsare not really ‘‘good’’ for them. ‘‘I got this information off the Web,’’ astudent may still say hopefully but sheepishly, anticipating a good-na-tured, but firm steer toward the ‘‘right stuff.’’

Librarians’ knowledge base in instruction, emphasis on curriculumpartnerships, and national leadership role in information literacy anddigital libraries all conspire to hide the one question librarians should beasking. What if students are right and we are wrong? What if the instinc-tive way undergraduates do things is actually better suited than we thinkto successful work in the information environment of the future?

DISSECTING THE QUESTION

If librarians would examine long-held assumptions about studentcognition, behavior, and affect, they might agree on the following setof principles.

S Undergraduates are still learning that most things are complex,most things cannot be known absolutely, most issues have two

itat P

olitè

sides. Because they are still in intellectual transition, however,they want explicit answers and clear-cut processes (Perry, 1970).

S Undergraduates experience considerable anxiety doing researchand using the library. They go through fairly predictable phasesof affect during this process (Kuhlthau, 1994).

S Undergraduates are unfamiliar with the knowledge resourceswithin disciplines, and with the way that specific disciplines gen-erate information. They rarely understand the distinctions be-tween popular and scholarly literature.

S Undergraduates underestimate the time needed for research anddon’t anticipate adequately the practical setbacks they may en-counter. They often wait until the last minute to begin their li-brary work, and have unrealistic expectations that work willsomehow be already done for them.

S Undergraduates may know how to search the Web, but don’tknow how to evaluate Web resources critically. They lack the va-riety of skills and understanding to search various on-line sys-tems in the academic library successfully.

S Undergraduates do not like to read, are impatient, have increas-ingly short attention spans, lack respect for authority and a rever-ence for the book-dependent culture at the heart of true knowl-edge and a full life (MacAdam, 1995).

Those assumptions have strongly influenced the traditional strate-gies academic librarians use to reshape undergraduate thinking andbehavior. Typical instructional goals include helping students under-stand the need to gather multiple perspectives on an issue, to evaluatesources critically, to devise and execute a sound search strategy for atopic. Students are expected to recognize the need to allow adequatetime for research, to develop a familiarity with the basic structure ofinformation in a discipline, to know the difference between popularand scholarly literature. Librarians also want students to view thelibrary as a welcoming place and to gain basic navigation skills insearching library catalogs, other on-line systems, and the Web.

The assumptions and strategies outlined above rest upon a standard‘‘deficit model’’ approach, i.e., that undergraduates are somehow lack-ing, and need to have a compensating and corrective fix in thinking,feeling, and behavior before they will be able to use the library effec-tively. Librarians further believe that using the library effectively is

itat P

olitè

Barbara MacAdam 81

tantamount to doing academic work successfully, and students aremotivated to academic success. There is considerable logic to thedeficit model. After all, students come to college lacking a knowledgebase in organic chemistry, or social anthropology, or Northern Renais-sance art. Students may also lack the a priori desire to learn thesesubjects. It is a natural extension that if the role of higher education isto develop a knowledge base in students that was not there before andto instill the desire and ability to learn independently, then the educa-tional role of libraries should be the same.

But what if we de-couple for the moment the teaching role oflibraries and the educational role of the academic curriculum? Muchof the instruction done in academic library programs is based on thebelief that the library’s role is that of curriculum partner, in which thelibrarian and faculty member each supply an important, but not iden-tical, intellectual component to the process. Academic librarians mayfind that they can build upon the skills of the new undergraduate inunexpected ways. It might be conceivable to consider an entirely newpossibility: that while undergraduates still lack a knowledge of or-ganic chemistry, they are already natural critical thinkers, savvy in-formation consumers, and skilled information retrievers in ways fac-ulty and librarians have yet to acknowledge. In short, what if all thethinking and behavior students exhibit is not wrong for this informa-tion environment, but precisely the conceptualization and skills nowrequired?

THE STUDENT AS TEACHER

Return for a moment to the original scenario of student ‘‘misuse’’ ofthe full-text journal service. It was characterized as wrong because

S the student is overlooking or ignoring what may be the most ap-propriate or relevant material

S the student is completing a paper or assignment based on incom-plete information or information that may be in error; the qualityof the completed assignment will therefore be significantly com-promised

S the student is losing what may be the most important intellectualaspects of the assignment--the careful framing of the topic or in-

itat P

olitè

formation need, and the systematic rigor of information gather-ing and synthesis at the heart of scholarly inquiry.

S By reducing the process to a thoughtless grab off the informationmarket shelves, the student relinquishes all the potential to devel-op as an information literate, critical thinker likely to be moresuccessful in later life.

Why not look at this purely through an undergraduate’s eyes? To dothis successfully requires setting aside personal and traditional valuejudgments.

I am a nineteen year old student who has a paper to write. There area lot of demands on my time: part-time job, class reading to catch upon, calculus homework, mid-terms in two weeks, and an every-daylife where each experience or connection with people is unbelievablyengaging. I do not give the library a moment’s thought, except when Iabsolutely have to go there to get something done related to class. Ifind I can spend fifteen minutes at a computer workstation, somehowbring up some citations that appear to be about U.S. economic policytoward China, and get a few printed out on a printer several feet away.There will probably be a ‘‘keeper’’ or two which I’ll be able to tellbetter once I’ve got them in hand, and I’ll leave the rest behind. I alsofound some sites on the Web that look pretty useful. I manage to pulltogether a paper from the material that I’ve retrieved, things I’vepicked up from my text, or maybe the faculty member’s comments.I’m not the world’s greatest writer, but I generally do OK, so I spendfive or six hours at a computing lab writing my paper. I turn it in andget a B+. I’m pretty pleased with that (and for my first college paper,my parents likely will be, too). I’ll probably do even better next time,because I’m picking up new things all the time.

That scenario is exaggerated, but forces the essential question.Doesn’t this particular student’s perception and consequent behaviorseem logical? Don’t the ‘‘right’’ alternatives a librarian would urgebegin to appear ludicrous? Consider what instruction librarians say tostudents. Frame your topic carefully and narrow it appropriately; mapout a search strategy; consider some background material; decide ifyou need a scholarly perspective, or data, or interpretation in the massmedia. Evaluate each source carefully; consider the relation to eachother; make sure you get balanced points of view. Most scholarlyliterature is still in print format, so allow time to gather your material,

itat P

olitè

Barbara MacAdam 83

and try not to get frustrated that things are checked out, off the shelf,or not owned by the library.

Keep in mind what your life is like as a student. You might book anairline reservation on-line, or at least by phone, and put it on a creditcard. Last semester you may have even bought a textbook or yourfavorite CD from Amazon.com. You still follow the Philadelphia Fly-ers minute by minute on the NHL site--in fact your screen saver has afreeze frame you downloaded from the last highlight clip on the site.Between Net, phone, fax, e-mail, your sense of being able to workseven days a week, twenty-four hours a day, and engage with much ofthe rest of the world is reinforced in every facet of your life. Yourcollege just began keeping the computer labs open twenty-four hours/day, and your residence hall has an Ethernet jack in every room.Whenever you go on the Web with a search, you always find at leastsomething, and the time flies by. Your time matters to you, and you areoutcome oriented, so you measure success by the result, not by aseparately constructed set of values.

And what if you are not this student, but come to college as one ofthe information have nots? Your overall perception of the worldconstructed along the lines above has been solidly implanted by themass media, although your actual exposure to information technologythrough family, schools, and peer group may be far more limited. Yourvery lack of technology skills, combined with your institutional em-phasis on seeing that you acquire them, is likely to leave you withgreater frustration and impatience with processes that appear confus-ing, unproductive, and outmoded.

If you can, even for a brief moment, feel this through the psyche ofa student, then you will get it. And you cannot begin to consider theimplications for academic libraries unless you get it.

TRYING TO PUT NEW WINE IN OLD BOTTLES

Academic librarians understand how profoundly the informationenvironment has changed during recent years. The problem comes inthe failure to reexamine the instructional strategies of the past with acritical enough eye. Let me begin by suggesting some heretical viewsof this recent past, not because past strategies didn’t work, but precise-ly because their effectiveness makes them so hard to relinquish now.

itat P

olitè

SEARCH STRATEGY

Instruction librarians have concentrated on helping students devel-op a conceptual understanding of a research process appropriate to theneed at hand. This process, if followed reasonably, should lead to asuccessful outcome. Success might be defined as focused, balanced,accurate, and complete information relevant to the subject, suitable foracademic inquiry, and with enough relation among the content topermit a realistic synthesis for a five-page paper (or twenty-page pa-per). Science, social sciences, arts and humanities, with differentstructures to their component disciplines called for variant searchstrategies. The process was predominantly linear, logical, systematic,and consciously analytical.

The fact that scholars in any field did not work like this was irrele-vant (Perrow, 1989). Faculty knew the subject matter. Undergraduatesrequired a systematic process because their limited knowledge per-mitted no short cuts, e.g., contacting an expert colleague. Informationgathering also required the systematic physical gathering of material,so, in spite of a somewhat artificial search strategy, there was a naturalharmony between intellectual linearity and the tangible collation ofprint content.

INFORMATION RETRIEVAL SKILLS

Hands-on, skill-based information retrieval instruction has been akey, and highly necessary, requirement of the structured world offormal information, coupled with the command-driven, on-line cata-log. So, too, has been understanding controlled vocabulary as a con-cept mapped uniquely to subject search terms and the explicit rules forentry in any system. Lack of understanding and mistakes did not resultin just poor information, but no information. Judgment was swift andinexorable, and the incentive to learn rules was adequate for student,faculty, and librarian alike. There was a comforting veneer of preci-sion to the whole process, and the degrees of freedom were limited.

EVALUATION AND CRITICAL THINKING

There were obvious distinctions between TV Guide and the Colum-bia Journalism Review, between a book and journal article, a govern-

itat P

olitè

Barbara MacAdam 85

ment document and a letter to the editor in a newspaper. The concept ofan author might occasionally be complicated, but answering ‘‘whowrote this’’ was generally less challenging than the more substantivequestion of what biases or perspectives that author might bring. Under-graduates may have been equally content with the first informationavailable, but could make distinctions readily once acquainted with thedifference among formats and authority of sources. Since such informa-tion presented itself in predictable garb, librarians could point out thedistinctions, and faculty could easily reinforce for ‘‘good’’ content andprovide disincentives for ‘‘bad.’’ It was fair enough--there were rulesthat could be communicated, and sanctions implied: ‘‘Don’t use popu-lar magazines,’’ warned the faculty member. ‘‘Don’t use Readers’Guide,’’ admonished the librarian. Following the rules might not guar-antee a good paper, but could prevent disaster in the bibliographydomain.

WARM AND FUZZY

Students were intimidated by academic libraries, and anxious aboutthe search process. Encouraging them to ask questions, to feel confi-dent that someone would help them, that their ignorance was in factunderstandable and even welcome, were all part of instruction. Theinformation environment was the natural home of scholars and librari-ans, not hapless 18-year-olds. It took effort to minimize this disso-nance and make a challenging environment more accessible.

In summary, the thought process, behavior, and emotion of ordinarylife had to be recast for students to be successful in academic libraries.Life was natural, libraries were human-constructed artifices. Solibrarians taught students things, to shield them from the errors theywould inevitably make by following their natural inclinations. Andthis is what they continue to try and do.

PROPOSING A NEW SET OF ASSUMPTIONS

S Raised on the steady diet of mass media and advertising, under-graduates tend to be cynical and are willing to challenge author-ity. They are naturally critical, even iconoclastic in their thinking.

S Students are naturally democratic and will give most new ideas afair shot, but will move quickly and decisively to judgment.

itat P

olitè

S Undergraduates have a rich intellectual and emotional life. Theyare comfortable and practiced in argument, and the value ofpolite discussion for its own sake eludes them.

S From Internet chat rooms to their sojourn in K-12 curriculum,they like to collaborate with others. They gravitate naturally tosituations where they can be active participants, with a certainenergy and sense of fun.

S Bombarded with constant graphic and information stimuli, theyexpect the unexpected. The predictable, systematic and orderlyappears unrealistic and unnatural to them.

S Teaching faculty may complain about student study and workhabits, but students in the main appear to find ways to completetheir academic work successfully on their own.

S Grounded in a market economy and surrounded by rampant con-sumerism, students are used to being courted in highly competi-tive fashion for their time, attention, and money. They are notlikely to lower their standards for service when they enter a li-brary.

S Librarians and other academics experience considerable anxietyand frustration in the current information environment, studentsdo not.

S Undergraduates are emotionally and intellectually at home in thedigital, networked information environment. In fact they areshaping that environment with an influence and power unprece-dented for the young intellect (Tapscott, 1998).

If academic librarians are willing to accept at least some of theseassumptions, then it may be clearer why there is such a natural meshbetween today’s information environment and undergraduates. It willalso help librarians understand why they need to re-conceptualize theirvision of a teaching library.

SEARCH STRATEGY REPRISE

The sheer volume of content in the networked environment lendsitself to picking up discernible patterns and following common threadsof meaning across content. Contrary opinions tend to converge uponan idea quickly on the Internet. Rather than trying to teach a formal

itat P

olitè

Barbara MacAdam 87

and linear search strategy, accept a new ‘‘signal to noise’’ model thatassumes that a ‘‘successful’’ search query will pull up the worthlessside by side with the valuable. The saving grace is that it does so withenough speed that the time can be devoted to the view and discardstage, rather than the retrieval stage. With the proliferation of full text,there’s a better basis for making a judgment, thus evening the odds forthe critical acumen of the younger intellect. The end result will notnecessarily turn out to be poorer, provided undergraduates understandthat each click of the mouse represents a selective choice amongcontent.

BEING CRITICAL ABOUT CRITICAL THINKING

Remember that students are naturally critical in everyday life. Tryingto get them to follow a set of web site evaluation criteria consciously asthey fly from URL to URL is unrealistic. Worse, it is precisely contraryto the nature of the Web, and how humans work within it. It may betime to set aside worries that they’ll never find the right, the best, oreven good information, and just use instructional interventions to tellthem, ‘‘Trust your instincts.’’ The more time they spend engaging withthe Web, the better their instincts will be in general.

Above all, librarians need to keep in mind that the vast majority ofundergraduate academic life always has been, and should be, spentengaging with a subject itself. Lectures, discussion, readings, assign-ments, lab work, all expand students’ intellectual grasp and buildcontextual instincts for information. Before we persist in arguing thatstudents cannot develop such contextual instincts without librarianintervention, accept this reality: Students routinely produce decentpapers and assignments without a librarian at their side. That doesn’tmarginalize a librarian’s role, it just means that there are many criticaldimensions to successful academic work. The single most importantstep academic librarians can take right now is to help faculty findways to develop curriculum bridges from the natural critical na-ture of students to the formal contextual judgments they mustmake in any specific subject discipline.

DO GOOD COLLECTIONS ALWAYS FINISH LAST?

It is an interesting and provocative phenomenon that academiclibrarians often appear to assume that students’ inexperience will in-

itat P

olitè

variably lead them to the worst information and keep them fromfinding the best. Pure chance should lead undergraduates to carefullyassembled and organized library digital resources at least 50 percent ofthe time even if they try to avoid anything in print.

Librarians are onto something in perceiving that students wouldrather do an Internet search than wrestle with more complex knowl-edge systems now in direct competition with so many other informa-tion resources. The immediate reaction is to attribute this equally toundergraduate disinclination for serious work and to the failure ofinstruction to develop students’ critical judgment. But unless librari-ans believe that faculty are fully conversant with the electronic envi-ronment librarians have created, it is probably time to accept thatlibrarians haven’t made intuitive search systems and clearly organizeddigital content their highest priority.

THE TEACHING LIBRARY AS A SERVICE ORGANIZATION

Students are a neglected part of service focus, even in college andundergraduate libraries ostensibly focused on their needs. Librarianstry to make sure the photocopiers are working, the environment iswelcoming, and the building is open long hours. They carefully selectdigital resources for the virtual reference collection and still make surethat collections include the books needed for the undergraduate curric-ulum. They devote themselves heart and soul to instruction and refer-ence, and are dedicated to their role as educational partners.

What librarians may not see is that their educational goals aresometimes in conflict with their service goals. Part of being a teacheris to guide a student through a learning process, so that intellectual andcharacter growth can take place. A certain dimension of struggle, offrustration, of success, and occasional failure, is part of this growth.Think about the academic grading structure that builds in a valuesystem where some endeavors must be less successful than others inorder to define accomplishment. There is a lurking sentiment amongall academic librarians that a certain amount of slogging is good forthe undergraduate soul, that it correlates with the self-discipline andcommitment requisite for acquiring knowledge of substance, as wellas the ethos of the life-long learner.

Librarians think of instantaneous and distance-independent docu-ment delivery, for example, as a service goal for faculty, and informa-

itat P

olitè

Barbara MacAdam 89

tion on a platter as the modus operandi of the special librarian becausefaculty and professionals demand and deserve such client-centeredservice. But when students behave like faculty, placing a premium ontheir time, demonstrating high value for prompt and accurate informa-tion, and displaying the clear ability to make conscious and logicalcost/benefit choices, we consider this wrong. Recall the anecdoteabout the full-text journals project, and look at it through a differentlens. Students were making an astute choice that quick, simple, andfree access to content trumped slow, hard, and cost-laden informationany day. They made another logical choice in modulating their prefer-ences when confronted with a new cost model. This isn’t immature,lazy, or ignorant behavior, it is eminently ‘‘professional.’’

Students have high expectations of everything: from the look andvalue of Web sites, to the ease and functionality of systems, and thespeed and cost of services. Libraries persisting in making students dothings the ‘‘hard’’ way because it is good for them don’t look likeeducational partners, they look like poor libraries, and not very goodvalue for student tuition dollars. Libraries had their rules and stuck tothem. Students had no choice but to live within them, and there was noAmazon.com to provoke their higher expectations. It is time to re-scrutinize services from a student viewpoint and stop mixing up themany practical elements of information gathering, in both the printand digital or virtual environment, with the work of the intellect. Byreducing the efforts students devote to the former, librarians can pro-tect their time and focus for the latter.

What students want and need from a reference desk in terms ofuser-centered service often differs surprisingly little from faculty(Massey-Burzio, 1998). But before librarians can apply available re-search to the design of relevant and effective services, they need to setaside pejorative views that serve as barriers to open discussion aboutreference:

S They only want us to do their work for them.S Expecting everything to be digital or accessible electronically is

just a mark of student ignorance.S If they cared about a subject or about learning, they would be

willing to put in the time and thought research requires.

Instead, try to see the student view of the world as a service goallibraries are ultimately working toward. Librarians may perceive fac-

itat P

olitè

ulty as the primary audience for ease of scholarly knowledge access,but can surely appreciate the benefits to students.

As a possible blueprint for service, consider the following:

S Provide reference service that avoids making students jumpthrough a set of hoops that would never be demanded of faculty.Use the reference setting as a prime opportunity for the ‘‘learningmoment.’’ Continually challenge the assumption that making stu-dents do something the hard way is inherently good for them andpart of the educational process.

S Finite resources and views toward students conspire to make aca-demic librarians justify withholding from students the servicesthey make available (or wish they could) to faculty. If a facultymember finds a pull-and-copy or other document-delivery ser-vice convenient, why wouldn’t students, who find the libraryharder to use and who work under even shorter deadlines, findthem even more so? Every library must make choices in priori-ties for what services it can realistically provide to segments ofits user community. However, librarians should take students’ de-sire for gold-standard service as a sign of their sophistication,maturity, and common sense, not just self indulgence.

S Hold any new system up to tougher standards. If it takes staff atwo-hour introductory session and a two hour advanced sessionto become familiar with a resource, think about the implicationsfor students. And if it is remotely possible to deploy an existingsystem in a way that an intelligent student can use it, make thecommitment to devote staff resources to the necessary design andimplementation. If designing a web site, there is no excuse forpoor functionality or design, and if acquiring a necessary infor-mation resource for a research environment, then be willing toput aside unrealistic expectations of the independent user.

S Make instruction a learner-centered endeavor. How often haveyou heard reference staff bemoan: ‘‘Why don’t all students haveto take a class in using the on-line catalog?’’ or ‘‘Students don’tpay attention in class and then expect us to teach them the basicsevery time they come to the desk!’’ It is time to set aside expecta-tions of when and how students should learn, and how they dolearn. Why are librarians so unwilling to reframe observed be-

itat P

olitè

Barbara MacAdam 91

havior, which is assumed a sign that instruction has ‘‘failed’’rather than for what it is?

Undergraduate behavior should be viewed as ongoing user inputsignaling more loudly than any survey or focus group, ‘‘Pay attention!This is what I need to learn, and this is exactly how, and when, I wantto learn it.’’ Students aren’t unwilling to learn what we’re trying toteach them, the who, what, when, where, and why is just still wrongfar too often. The fact that faculty continue to request course-inte-grated instruction in ever-growing numbers doesn’t automatically val-idate actual learning outcome for the student. Perhaps librarians’ in-stincts are more accurate in questioning the amount of effort balancedagainst the observable gains.

Academic librarians are not wrong to explore self-paced, technolo-gy-based instruction, or any other innovations to teach students, butthey should make greater use of the obvious opportunities and devotethemselves to a professional culture change. The professional litera-ture on active learning is probably more relevant to today’s studentsthan ever. Librarians should, in fact, revisit their instructional founda-tions, encouraged by the possibility that the knowledge environmenthas both produced, and been produced by, our future undergraduates.These students may be more suited than ever to work with each other,and with us, in incredibly productive ways.

REDEFINING THE TEACHING ROLE OF LIBRARIANS

If academic librarians were to create a road map to guide theirundergraduate teaching role during the next few years, they shouldfocus on the following priorities:

S Identify and take advantage of any possible opportunity to workwith teaching faculty to help them understand how students real-ly think and work in the contemporary information environment.

S Collaborate with faculty in the design of curriculum and assign-ments that integrate information gathering and synthesis intellec-tually within a disciplinary context.

S Develop a systematic and ongoing way to evaluate how under-graduates think and use digital knowledge resources and net-worked information systems, and incorporate those findingsquickly and effectively back into system and service design.

itat P

olitè

S Reemphasize reference as a context-specific, learner-centeredteaching opportunity, even if it comes at the expense of tradition-al library instruction.

S Participate in all campus initiatives designed to improve, sup-port, and expand undergraduate education: academic and studentsupport program development, new facility design, accreditationstandards, cultural enrichment, recruiting and retention efforts,faculty adoption of instructional technology, and development ofinformation technology infrastructure and policy.

THE OTHER SIDE OF THE RIVER

The problem with a new perspective is that it inevitably meansletting go of what came before. In the rush to do so, there is a risk offorgetting that not everything examined is found wanting. If librariansreturn to the goals of a liberal education, and to the intrinsic values ofhigher education, they have relinquished nothing. Students are con-fronting the world less through books, but they engage with it verydirectly in equally powerful ways. Their curiosity, willingness to in-vestigate, read, write, devote themselves to ideas, talk, and collaborateisn’t less, it is probably greater than ever. For many decades, academiclibrarians have devoted much of their intellectual, emotional, andoperational effort to making students feel comfortable and helpingthem work effectively in libraries. Some of those specifics can bejettisoned, if they can see the way more clearly. Initiatives such as theAssociation of College and Research Libraries’ Institute for Informa-tion Literacy, intended to train instruction librarians and to developprogramming for library administrators on information issues, havethe potential to help a new generation of librarians understand whatstudents need and how to teach them effectively.

Academic librarians are at the forefront of digital resource creationand the design of systems to access this knowledge. Faculty, whothemselves struggle anew with technology and the need to developfresh relationships with their undergraduates, will benefit immeasur-ably from librarians’ insights. Librarians, after all, see students moreimmediately as they go about their academic work. Librarians simplyneed to collaborate more substantively with faculty toward a sharedvision of how the undergraduate’s way of working relates to the intel-lectual growth faculty and librarians want from students.

Finally, let me suggest another way to look at the debate surround-

itat P

olitè

Barbara MacAdam 93

ing the dramatic changes in professional education during the last fewyears. A much broader range of scholarship and breadth of profession-al practice now serves as the foundation of academic librarianship. Ifthere are important questions that beg for answers before librarianscan redefine the teaching role of libraries, they have probably neverbeen in a stronger position as a profession to engage in the researchnecessary for meaningful solutions.

REFERENCES

Kaulthau, Carol. Teaching the Library Research Process, 2d ed. New York: Scare-crow Press, 1994.

MacAdam, Barbara. ‘‘Sustaining the Culture of the Book: The Role of EnrichmentReading and Critical Thinking in the Undergraduate Curriculum.’’ Library Trends44 (Fall 1995): 238-263.

Massey-Burzio, Virginia. ‘‘From the Other Side of the Reference Desk: A FocusGroup.’’ The Journal of Academic Librarianship 24 (May 1998): 208-215.

Perrow, Charles. ‘‘On Not Using Libraries.’’ In Humanists At Work: DisciplinaryPerspectives and Personal Reflections. Proceedings of Symposium Sponsored bythe Institute for the Humanities and the University Library, The University ofIllinois at Chicago. Chicago, Illinois: April 27-28, 1989, 29-42.

Perry, William Graves. Forms of Intellectual and Ethical Development In the CollegeYears. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1978.

Tapscott, Don. Growing Up Digital: The Rise of the Net Generation. New York:McGraw Hill, 1998.

itat P

olitè

from the other side of the river

Documents

leadership on the other side

2012 the other side

the other side of innovation

the other side of html

the other side of chaos

the other side

the other side of eilat

citizen journalism - the other side

just on the other side

on the other side

the other side of motorsport

the other side of psychopharmacology

river side green, goa_ _r2

china (the yellow river) india (the indus river) egypt …...

the other side of iran

the reason: other side

the other side of tehran!

warning from the other side

decies -...

the global hydrological cycle · river carrying water to...