So I’m only going to be working at my current job as a librarian for another 4 weeks. Today one of the reference librarians at the desk detected evidence that an instructor for the program I’m responsible for has unleashed students on the library with a poorly-designed library scavenger hunt. It seems like a rather ironic way to close the instruction librarian chapter of my career.

Also, even though I went to the web site and unsubscribed (after never subscribing in the first place) Ladies’ Home Journal showed up at my house again. Now I really do think that there is a sinister marital industrial complex.

Library 2.0, the New Coke? In this discussion about Library 2.0 and branding, satirical or not, I want to point to one of Bruce Sterling’s talks about the naming of things and his new word spime. Worth a read, if you haven’t seen it already.

There’s an interesting discussion going on about the use of software to control student computers in the comments section of this post on Information Literacy and Instruction at Information Wants to be Free. I’ve taught both with and without that type of software, and I was happy when we reconfigured the classroom where I work to allow me the option to choose if I wanted to lock student workstations during a presentation or not. Originally we just had software that would broadcast what was happening on the instructor’s screen to the student workstations. We didn’t have a projector and screen in the room, so using the software was my only option if I wanted to demonstrate any of the library databases. Since I have the option of using a projector now, I only tend to use the lockdown software at the beginning of class. I don’t care if students surf the web if they come to the library a couple minutes early, so taking over the students computers is a quick way of focusing attention and announcing that class is going to start. Then I’ll tend to point out a few features on the library web page and then release the computers when I start to show students the library databases. I like to incorporate as much hands-on time as possible in my library classes, so mostly I prefer to use the projector so students can follow along with what I’m doing or try their own searches. There’s enough room that I can walk around to see what students are doing, and I don’t need to take over the computers to keep people on task. I can see how the lockdown software would come in handy if your classroom is configured in a way that makes it very difficult to walk around, or if you need to do more of a straight lecture with less hands-on time. I like having both options.

I wonder about using videos on library web sites. Many libraries have video virtual tours, but I’m not sure if they ever help anyone find their way in the library. I don’t think that using videos for library instruction works all that well, although I do like the idea of using screencasts that show an animated search in a library database. I haven’t developed many screencasts, although I do have Macromedia Captivate, and I’ve used it for some very short tutorials.

I’m not sure what purpose tutorials like this serve. Although it is always nifty to see libraries experimenting with technology on their web site, I’m not too crazy about the content of the videos. There are a couple amusing bits (like the professor appearing in a cloud), but most of it looks like a skit that someone might act out to show future librarians how NOT to do a reference interview. This video triggered one of my big pet peeves – if you give your library catalog a cute nickname and joke about how people can’t understand the cute nickname, why not just drop the nickname already?! The most informative parts of the videos were the animations of how to use the library web site, and the image was too small to actually see any of the search examples.

Sometimes I’m surprised by the feedback that I’ll get from my classes. We don’t have a very sophisticated assessment program where I work, but we do have an online form that asks the classic couple of questions “What did you learn today?” and “Do you find anything confusing?” I don’t tend to invest this type of feedback with much meaning, but it can still be useful sometimes. Even though it is fairly rare for a student to post anything negative, I can use the answers to those questions to see how aspects of my presentation went – if a student writes that they aren’t sure how to find books in the library or if several students write that they have difficulty finding the full text of a journal article when given only a citation, I know that is one area I’m going to have to repeat or try to emphasize further.

I taught a class this week that I was expecting to be very painful, because when I talked to a few of the students who came in early it was clear that they hadn’t gotten their research paper assignments yet and they didn’t know that they were all going to be asked to write about a specific topic. This is not a good scenario for the introduction to research workshops that I do, because it is so much easier to connect with a class if they are actually ready to start working on their assignment. But I went through my usual session, using their future assignment topic for all my search examples. I actually spent more time explaining a few things, because I thought that they might not be able to take full advantage of tons of hands-on time.

A few students asked questions, but there were also a bunch that didn’t look very engaged (and I don’t blame them, I would be less than engaged if I was in their places, having a library session without the context of an assignment). I was surprised when I got the student feedback from this class, because there were a bunch of comments that my presentation was “clear and concise” and one person said that they were not expecting the library visit to be useful but they ended up learning a lot. So if nothing else, the feedback served as a bit of a boost after teaching a class I was not feeling very postive about.

Usually in the summer I have almost no classes. I tend to try to update online library instuction stuff and plan ahead for next year. The type of classes that I tend to work with over the summer tend to be outside students enrolled in special summer classes. Earlier I taught three classes for students enrolled in an intensive English program, and today I worked with a group of high school kids. The kids were great, their instructors had blocked out two hours for a library visit and the students were able to have plenty of time to explore their topics and locate articles. Since they were all working on fairly short papers with developed but still general topics I didn’t spend too much time on showing them how to track down print journals in the library. We talked about the difference between using search engines and article databases for research, and I showed them how to search Expanded Academic. Since there was so much time set aside for the class, many of the students also looked up books and we were able to go to the stacks in groups to locate them.