Olivia Nellums blogs about her first year experience as a Reference and Instruction Librarian at Camden County College in New Jersey.
Even though I’m a young librarian, I can’t remember not knowing how to use the library. I learned gradually, through a process of trial and error, and then by going to library school.
This leaves me in a curious spot as an instruction librarian: A class comes to the library to learn how to do research for a particular assignment, and basically I communicate what I’ve learned so far about how to effectively use a library. Then, unless they find me later at the reference desk, I don’t see them again. Broadly speaking, library instruction seems to be regarded as skills-based: The librarian demonstrates the skills, and the students are supposed to absorb them in that traditional way that equates their brains with sponges. The library is relevant to them only in the context of their course, and I can tell they’d like me to hurry up and get it over with so they can get back to the competing concerns of their class.
So, as many instruction librarians before me, I’ve turned to learning theories for guidance. Here’s what I’m gathering:
-I should leave students wanting to strike out independently to learn more about information and information-gathering, but without omitting essential points in my lecture.
-I should encourage students to be curious about how to solve an information problem. Also I should nurture them into reconsidering what they think they know about information.
-I should assist with the above in a patient, encouraging, and overall enthusiastic manner.
Now, before I started this job my biggest worries were that I talk too fast and might be mistaken for a student rather than a librarian. On the bright side, I’m glad to see I can set aside those trivialities. I’m also glad that the ideas above are really part of information literacy, which seems to be getting an increasing amount of attention from the academy at large.
As for other past concerns – mainly that I’m in charge of helping students learn every little thing about the library, and that it’s a personal failure if they don’t get it – maybe what I ought to be supporting is a framework of information and the basics of how to find it. So, here’s my summary of that earlier list (borrowing slightly from Ken Bain‘s What the Best College Teachers Do):
-I should promote a natural critical learning environment where students can confront beautiful and intriguing information problems, yet not make it so theoretical that they throw rotten tomatoes at me.
I’m on it.
I am an adjunct associate professor at Rider U, Lawrenceville, NJ. Please check out my website and let me know what you think.
-Sanford
Thanks for the insights! I have learned there is a component of entertainment to all successful classes. Who was it that said ‘everything is social?’ I just know that if you are relaxed and interact with the students in a genuine way as you wend your way through the material, you will do fine. Thinking of you in New York!!
What an exciting time to be in the ‘information finding” business…because that universe lies at our fingertips. That being said, I must add that we can only ever be as good as the support we receive. I work at the other end—K through 5, and start building skills and sparking minds at the start. Thanks to my own kids, I have some window on the contemporary world of information and communication…educators have to be willing to meet today’s learners where they are, navigate them through the channels that they know, and guide them to that place of being savvy interpreters of information and meaning.
Nice post, Olivia. We miss you here at TC3.