Comments on CHANGING A CULTURAL ICON: the ACADEMIC LIBRARY AS A VIRTUAL DESTINATION
by Jerry D. Campbell
Educause Review Jan/Feb 2006. Download file
“The reality was that ease of access significantly affected users’ willingness to consult a particular source of information. This circumstance drove academic libraries to exploit every means available in the classroom or on the Web1 to teach students how to assess critically the Web-based information”
So, how does this happen at Earlham? What means are we using to teach students how to critically assess Web based information?
Thus, deep into the digital age, academic libraries have relinquished much of their fundamental and sustaining role. For most people, including academicians, the library—in its most basic function as a source of information—has become overwhelmingly a virtual destination.
This just about sums it up. Also note the enthusiastic and uncritical heralding of the GooglePrint project.
As libraries and other agencies continue to make information accessible via the Web, there will be considerable need within the academy for the development of portals, tools, and strategies customized for precision research on the vast Web.
YES! See comments in other blog entry
“proactively created educational guides and other helpful tools to inform scholars before questions arose. “
This function could still be very useful.
The author asserts that :
“the librarian-assisted, face to-face reference services—in all of their manifestations, including those that are technology-empowered—are realistically too limited in scope and speed to be the academy’s answer to providing assistance in the Web-based knowledge environment. In an environment increasingly characterized by information on demand and instant information gratification, the academic public has decreasing patience with reference services based on personal response, even if they are Web-delivered and asynchronous.”
I think that this is nonsense. Faculty in particular still desire one-on-one interactions of this sort. In a similar vien, when asked about ‘training’ a senior faculty replied that he had no desire for ‘training’; he just wanted to know the parts that were relevant for himself; that is, he wanted one-on-one instruction and he wnated it when he needed it (and not at times set by a training schedule). Moreover, the addendum “even if they are Web-delivered and asynchronous.” misses the point. Faculty want synchronous assistance - they want an answer to the question now before the class session and not by email several hours later. They need Just-In-Time assistance.
In the context of Moving the Library into Moodle have to think about:
“librarians risk being vilified as cultural barbarians by the general academic community as well as by some of their library colleagues.”
Hands up all Reference Librariians with Visigoth sympathies!
Excellent article.
1 For a good example, see Esther Grassian, “Thinking Critically about World Wide Web Resources” June 1995, updated September 6, 2000, <http://www.library.ucla.edu/libraries/college/help/critical/>.
Posted by markp at February 27, 2006 10:09 AM