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Deb Robertson

Bridging the Gap: Understanding the Differing Research Expectations of First-Year Stude... - 0 views

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    "Objective: This study sought to better understand the research expectations of first-year students upon beginning university study, and how these expectations differed from those of their professors. Most academic librarians observe that the research expectations of these two groups differ considerably and being able to articulate where these differences are greatest may help us provided more focused instruction, and allow us to work more effectively with professors and student support services."
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    This article offers interesting data about expectations of college freshmen and the faculty who work with them.
Dan Chibnall

Speak Up, the Internet Can't Hear You - NYTimes.com - 0 views

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    Article about allowing more annotations on websites to drive popularity and relevance.
Sara Scheib

Improving subject guides with existing citation analyses data: Water resources at Orego... - 0 views

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    Interesting article on using citation analysis data to inform the selection of resources for subject guides.
Deb Robertson

Becoming a more thoughtful library job seeker - 0 views

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    . . . we leave out one crucial point: A membership in a professional association is not the same as being involved in professional service. Taking an active role in your professional organization is also a way to cultivate leadership skills you can't gain from volunteer or part-time work. Focus your attentions less on building a resume and more on improving libraries.
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    At our last board meeting we talked about our commitment to keeping our membership and conference costs for students low enough so they can be part of a professional association. This article suggests we go one step further and have them on our committees to gain "hands-on" experiences. With this in mind, the directory committee is adding a SLIS student to our committee to give her "hands-on" experience in our association.
Sara Thompson

Can You Put that in the Form of a Question? | Inside Higher Ed - 0 views

  • One of their assignments is to interview a researcher in their field. This year, since the students had a nice mix of majors from across the curriculum, we used reports from the interviews as an opportunity to analyze on how research traditions vary from one discipline to another and how these experts’ processes differ from those of non-experts.
  • One thing that many students remarked on as they reported on their interviews: the activities that define research are enormously varied from one discipline to another. The process a researcher goes through to examine the historical context in which Shakespeare wrote one of his history plays is a world apart from what a researcher does to develop a new vaccine or what an ethnographer does when studying an isolated culture in Brazil.
  • The scientists all had co-authors; the social scientists were a mix of solo and collaborative projects, and the humanists all performed solo acts. And yet, it became clear that all of them were working within an ongoing conversation. None of them was doing work that didn’t draw on and respond to the work of others.
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  • Every interview subject conducted some sort of a literature review as part of any research project
  • Every researcher described some strategies for keeping up with new developments in their area of expertise, all of which involved some scanning of new publications and some personal contact with individuals exploring the same territory.
  • For most, presenting research at conferences was a common part of bringing their research to completion. For all, writing up results for publication was an important final step, and they seemed acutely aware of the pecking order for publication venues in their field.
  • (In contrast, undergraduates mostly encounter articles within databases, called up by key words, not as artifacts within a particular journal which carries clout.)
  • One thing the students all gained through these interviews was an appreciation that research is not a matter of finding answers in other people’s publications. Every scholar interviewed described how they had asked a question that nobody had asked before, a question they couldn’t answer themselves until they had completed the research. It struck me that so much of what undergraduates experience as “research” is very nearly the opposite, a process of uncovering answers others have already arrived at.
  • I’m also thinking about what these interviews said collectively about how real research is conducted. It makes me a little crazy when students abandon a truly interesting question because they can’t find sources to quote that provide the answer, or when they change their topic based on what they can find easily. Or (shudder) when they say they've written their paper, but need help finding five sources to cite. Clearly, they are not learning how to do research; they aren't even learning what research is.  What I would really, really like is to figure out how to give every student the experience of not worrying so much about getting the right answers, but learning how to ask a really good question. The kind they won't find answered in the library.
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    "I teach a course in the spring called Information Fluency... It's an upper division undergraduate course pitched to students who are planning to go to graduate school, giving them a chance to learn more about the way the literature of their field works as well as generally how to use library and internet tools for research."
Amy Paulus

Liaison connection - 1 views

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    Everyone may have seen this article already but wanted to share! Features the University of Iowa!
Sara Thompson

Library Publishing Toolkit - 0 views

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    "Our goals include to: Develop strategies libraries can use to identify types of publishing services and content that can be created and curated by libraries. Assess trends in digital content creation and publishing that can be useful in libraries and suggesting potential future projects. Identify efficient workflows for distributing content for free online and with potential for some cost-recovery in print on demand markets."
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