eContent requires meticulous, patron-aware (rather than traditional) cataloging. It is virtually (no pun intended) impossible to “display” eContent. There is no way to physically put it in the hands of students, if students are using their own technology. This is not happening for a few reasons:
Since vendors and library management systems have made it possible to import MARC records, librarians, as a whole, have been falling out of the cataloging practice.
Cataloging is time consuming, and tedious work.
Cataloging, as we learned it, doesn’t work for our students. We have to reinvent it. For example, at New Canaan High School, we add the project name as a subject heading to each title in the eCollection that supports it.
Judy O'Connell on 18 Jan 11A report about college students and their information-seeking strategies and research difficulties, including findings from 8,353 survey respondents from college students on 25 campuses distributed across the U.S. in spring of 2010, as part of Project Information Literacy. Respondents reported taking little at face value and were frequent evaluators of Web and library sources used for course work, and to a lesser extent, of Web content for personal use. Most respondents turned to friends and family when asking for help with evaluating information for personal use and instructors when evaluating information for course research
