Research Partners,Teaching Partners: A Collaboration between FYC Faculty and Librarians to Study Students’ Research and Writing Habits

In Spring 2012, instruction librarians collaborated with first year composition (FYC) faculty to study students’ research habits as they related to writing. We collected process narratives from students in the introductory FYC course at the beginning and end of the fall semester, and a group of librarians and FYC faculty coded them together. Although we did not achieve one of our initial research goals, we still gained valuable insight into how our students perceive sources and the research process. We applied what we learned to create new instructional materials and developed a valuable relationship with FYC faculty.     

The Research Experience for Education Graduate Students: A Phenomenographic Study

This article presents the findings of an exploratory study of education graduate students’ information-seeking behavior and attitudes. Qualitative data included interviews with education students, focusing on their research habits, and analyzed from phenomenographic approach that focused on variations in individuals’ experiences. The quantitative analysis stemmed from participants’ responses to the survey of their information-seeking behavior. A comparison of interview participants and survey respondents’ search skills, research strategies, and attitudes toward previous library instruction illustrate the wide variation in students’ abilities and experiences between the groups. This suggests the need for further analysis of these students’ information seeking behaviors.     

Power up! Using Digital Gaming Techniques to Enhance Library Instruction

ABSTRACT

Incorporating digital gaming into education is an increasingly popular topic in academia. Educators’ views of digital gaming (e.g., computer, video, and online games) have shifted from categorizing these games as an entertaining, yet pedagogically void activity to a promising medium that engages students in the learning process. With over 70% of college students enthusiastically playing digital games, educators are tapping into digital gaming as an effective means to teach millennials problem solving and communication skills. This article investigates gamer characteristics, motivational and engaging aspects of digital games, and the parallels between gaming and the information retrieval process. The authors build on this information to present approaches to incorporate digital gaming techniques into the library classroom since it is not feasible for all libraries to create instructional digital games.     

Researching Recent U.S. Legislation Using Free Sites on the Internet

Abstract

This study investigates the effects of gender, college status, and prior Internet experience on the use of Internet resources. The subjects were 96 patrons randomly selected from those using the Internet terminals at the University Library of the University at Albany, SUNY, during the first two months of 1995. We found that the majority of users shared the following characteristics: they are male undergraduates affiliated with the social sciences and are novice users who have less than six months experience. Respondents felt strongly that the Internet is useful, and has been an important resource for their research and assignments. Users have high expectations of searching capabilities, while they feel neutral or disappointed with browsing. Our findings indicate that libraries should provide access to the Internet. They also suggest that libraries should take the lead in developing searchable indexes and making info-bases better organized for the ease and effectiveness of browsing.     

A Proposal for Implementing Multi-User Data Base (MUD) Technology in and Academic Library

Multi-user Data base (MUD) technology, and its object-oriented descendant (MOO), is one of the most exciting tools to surface on the Internet, and offers libraries and librarians a unique opportunity to participate in creating user-friendly standardized interfaces to many of our most frequently used resources. These resources include those we access through the Internet already, using gopher, telnet, WWW, and FTP, and also those proprietary databases that we currently access through leased lines such as OCLC First Search, Prism, DIALOG, and many others. MOO technology is already being used successfully to create user-extensible collaborative professional environments for educators, astronomers, and computer network systems administrators. With the growing relevance of the Internet for libraries and other information professionals, it behooves the library community to engage those emerging technologies which will aloow us to interface most effectively with the Internet and its many resources, with the proprietary databases which we depend on, and with one another.     

Not All Sources Are Created Equal: Student Research,Source Equivalence

ABSTRACT

With the emergence of the browser searchable Internet in the early 1990s, accessing the World Wide Web has become commonplace. In regards to its impact on student research, current undergraduates have become savvy searchers when it comes to accessing and integrating Internet documents into their research papers. However, this ease of use has come at a price. The overall quality of research being submitted by our students has suffered. Many incoming undergraduates don't make the distinction between documents located via a typical Internet search engine and full-text information generated from academic proprietary databases housed on the library's home page.     

More of the Same? Understanding Transformation in Tablet-based Academic Library Instruction

Academic librarians have shared their experiences with tablet computers, but few examine how librarians use tablets in their instruction design. While the education literature provides technology integration models, the nature of library instruction requires adapting these models to the library classroom. After reviewing literature related to tablets in library instruction and a number of technology integration frameworks, this article demonstrates an application of the Substitution, Augmentation, Modification, Redefinition framework to analyze observations of an iPad-equipped classroom at a university library. Demonstrating this use of a framework provides an approach to technology integration and continues the discussion about tablets’ potential to promote innovative pedagogy.     

EDITORIAL

The process undertaken by an information seeker, in order to form relevance decisions regarding documents, is defined as “Document Triage.” To better facilitate users’ needs in their triage activities, interactive interfaces have begun to evolve within on-line academic repositories. In order to complement current work on interface design and interaction, and produce custom guidelines to inform the creation of triage interfaces, we examine how interfaces that alter the document presentation and structure affect information seekers’ visual and navigational attention. We present a set of heuristics for both creating and evaluating such interfaces.     

Examining Patterns of Information Behavior Among Healthcare Professionals: A Case Study on Health Psychologists

Psychologists are an understudied population in terms of information needs and information seeking behavior. This article provides theoretical analysis accompanied with some empirical evidence drawn from a nationwide survey of psychologists working in the Greek National Healthcare System (GNHS). The empirical study was conducted during the spring of 2011, through a specially designed questionnaire distributed to all psychologists within GNHS. Psychologists seek information for patient consultation purposes and for knowledge updating; they prefer using their personal library, internet search engines, and their colleagues as information sources, while the main obstacles they face include the lack of hospital libraries. This research identified the need to more strongly link hospital library services to health psychologists on the grounds of their information needs and behaviors.     

The dark side of information technology use

A large body of research has considered the positive aspects of information technology (IT) use. However, emerging research and practice commentary is beginning to focus on complex and often alarming ways in which use of IT affects organisational and social life. This Special Issue focuses on these ‘dark’ effects of IT use.