Dear Laval This is a brilliant approach, and one which I would wholeheartedly endorse: the librarian as fellow scholar. For too long I think we have become sidetracked by how to do our stuff (the technical), to consider why we do it at all. This technical approach was endorsed and supported by Melvil Dewey, one of our minor gods, and has further become entrenched by the service model which obtains in all public libraries and most other libraries: the librarian as the person behind the desk, merely there to find and locate information resources. I believe this would be a fantastic project, one that I deeply suspect has never been previously attempted. Good for you!!! Sue All the best Sue Dr Susan Myburgh School of Communication University of South Australia St Bernard's Road Magill SA 5076 ADELAIDE P: 618 8302 4421 F: 618 8302 4745 E: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]> I refuse to have a battle of wits with an unarmed person. 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Please consider the environment before printing this email From: Open Lib/Info Sci Education Forum [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Laval Hunsucker Sent: Thursday, 29 April 2010 4:56 AM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: Where do libraries fit in the "information-seeking food chain"? (fwd) This is a very good and useful post of Bob's, in my opinion, and it largely rings true. ( The part about Powerpoint reminds me of a nice little film, "How NOT To Use Powerpoint", of which some of you may be aware : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BP2HlNmRJ4 . As they say, "In der Beschränkung zeigt sich der Meister". ) With respect to Bob's good question : > Why should we expect students and perhaps even faculty > to follow a different principle for our area of concern? Here's something I've been sort of wanting to ask, and I'm not being facetious : Does any of you know a librarian who has ever actually come out and said the following, or something comparable, to a researcher, say an historian or a geologist or a social psychologist or a classicist or a microbiologist or a musicologist ? : "Prof. A, I have carefully read through your recent article, X, in The International Journal of Y, and, I want to tell you, it can clearly be shown that this article would have made a more significant contribution to the field [ or avoided such- and-such a shortcoming, etc. ] if you had in the process of preparing it only consulted with a librarian, or had only previously followed a course of instruction by library staff on effective literature searching in the databases which the library has licensed and made available to the university community." Or suchlike. Follow-up question : does any of you know of an actual case in which, though no one may have pointed this out to the researcher involved, such an assertion by the librarian could more or less objectively have been demonstrated to be correct ? Last question : Is anyone here in a position to produce valid and reliable evidence that, in any academic field of his/her choice, the state of knowledge at the moment ( in history or geology or social psychology or classics or microbiology or musicology or anthropology or whatever you like ) is less advanced, or the achievements to date less impressive, than they might have been, namely because its specialists have made insufficient use of librarians, librarians' methods, or recommended library resources ? OK -- forget maybe about a cause-and-effect relationship, if you like. What about even statistically valid evidence of a positive correlation ? One could put the same questions, mutatis mutandis, regarding the scholars'/scientists' accomplishments as educators rather than for the moment as researchers, if one so desired. Why am I posing these questions ? Are they silly ? Am I being much too overly simplistic ? *Can* librarians and other "information professionals" render, empirically, their oft-heard claims and critiques credible ? Convincing ? Irrefutable ? Have I missed something, and have they, in practice, accomplished such a task already ? I'd really like to be steered toward some clear cases in point, should they exist. You can also turn it around : Any obvious cases of googling scholars' ultimately screwing it up ? Of a discipline that's not as far as it could be, or is deteriorating, because of too much googling by its researchers ? Isn't this kind of like where the rubber really hits the road ? So to repeat Bob's question quoted above : "Why should we expect students and perhaps even faculty to follow a different principle for our area of concern?" Why indeed ? If the real validity and value of our way of looking at things can be shown, in black and white as it were, with solid pragmatic evidence, will the outside world then not *have* to listen, and then to behave accordingly ( unless they genuinely *aren't* in their right minds ) ? If these *can't* be shown, should we then finally give up on all the lamentations and protestations and preaching to the choir that we've been doing for as long as I can remember, and start expending our energy in a more meaningful ( productive, facilitating ) way ? It was perhaps a fun game, but who needs it anymore ? Am I talking nonsense ? [ Don't answer that ! :-) ] - Laval Hunsucker Breukelen, Nederland ________________________________ From: Bob Holley <[log in to unmask]> To: [log in to unmask] Sent: Tue, April 27, 2010 1:04:38 AM Subject: Re: Where do libraries fit in the "information-seeking food chain"? (fwd) I would like to present the concept of “it’s good enough” to meet my needs. My PowerPoint presentations are minimalistic. With a few hours of free instruction, I would be able to present results that would be dazzling compared with what I do now. But I’m always busy and have other competing priorities. The PowerPoint’s that I do produce are “good enough” and don’t get me booted off the podium. As long as faculty accept and give reasonable grades to research produced from a naïve use of Google and other “easy” resources, time stressed and efficient students won’t feel the need to develop more complex information seeking skills because what they are doing produces “good enough” results. I’m sure that most of us have areas in our life where we could do much better with a bit of extra effort, but we don’t bother because what we are doing meets our needs. Why should we expect students and perhaps even faculty to follow a different principle for our area of concern? I’m sure that we’ve all been in situations where all we wanted to do was minimally accomplish a task and judged all the additional attempts to impart knowledge as frustrating for wasting our time on a topic where we didn’t want to know more. Bob Robert P. Holley Professor, School of Library & Information Science Wayne State University Detroit, MI 48202 1-888-497-8754, ext 705 (phone) 313-577-7563 (fax) [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]> (email)