Successful Library Instruction

At the close of another instruction season for me, I have some observations.

Energy

I found that movement around the classroom made a huge difference in attention. Although it felt awkward at times, even showing a book or other item of interest behind the first few rows changed things up and kept the students off-balance enough to renew their focus.

Another technique I found effective was voice variation. I got more mileage out of emphasizing through whispers than I did through loud excitement. Of course it was the bellowing that made the whispers unusual.

Meaning

What do you do when you hear, “I don’t like my topic” or the softer “I don’t really have a topic yet”? My first response is always, “What’s your major?” Freshman writing can be dangerous going down this road. If they are Undeclared, I move on to “What do you like to do?” Essentially, I try to get them to tell me what they are interested in, why they are in the major they are in, what they do in their spare time, etc. From there we talk about how their individual interests actually can connect with the assigned umbrella topic.

Once they have a topic that they are actually interested in, they need to find information and resources. Students really respond when they see how a tool applies to their research. Answering the “So…how is this supposed to help ME?” question in their eyes can do wonders. Sometimes a practice run through a database with a student’s real topic doesn’t go that well (0 hits). Taking the extra time running through ways of broadening search terms pays dividends. My favorite thing to do is open it up to the whole class. The more or the students who participate openly, the more other students can gain ideas and confidence from their peers.

Control

One of the tools I love to introduce is the bibliography generator (in our case, RefWorks). I know that everyone gets an “ooh, aaah” out the of three-second Works Cited page but I like RefWorks because of its organization potential. I love helping students see how having links back to the item or at least a citation can help them speed up the initial source-finding process. Mark it and export so you can look at it later without having to re-search again.

One of the aspects of library instruction I find can be potentially frustrating is teaching how to use the library catalog. Since the OPAC is not as usable as Google, students can quickly become turned off by it. Helping them see that general terms are best in the OPAC and specific are best in subscription databases has increase the usefulness of the library and books in general. Monographs in the catalog have a lot more information than what their title and limited LCSH have to tell about them.

Connection

Finally, even though the instruction sessions are designed to be formal, finding a way to connect to each student is invaluable. Be personal; allow yourself to laugh with them. Show interest in what they are researching and why. This helps you connect faster when you go one-on-one with them during their personal practice time; now they will really accept your help when you approach them. If you honestly try to remember their topics and majors, or at least show that you tried (by guessing and failing) you will have another connection.

One of the funnest ways I have found to connect with the students is learning their names. 20 students names in only 1 to 2 hours (depending on your program)? Mission: possible. Be at the door when they come in and ask them. Then in the middle of instruction you can use the name when they raise their hand or if you call on them. If you forget, take a minute and try to remember. A good laugh comes quickly when students see an instructor struggling on a name–but it also adds credibility. All people, not just students, what to be treated as individuals.

Librarians vs. Taxi Drivers

Terry Reese’s conversation with a taxi driver in Phili is worth taking a minute to read. At first I was a little offended that this driver was so degrading of librarians. Are librarians really all “boring and cheap”? Before I got too carried away though I stopped and asked myself, “Self, do I really care what a couple of taxi drivers think?”

I guess the point Terry was trying to make is this: sometimes it really helps to look at ourselves from the outside. Our little sub-culture is tens-of-thousands strong; there are bound to be some perceived eccentricities from non-library folk.

Recently it seems like our librarian image is becoming more positive. I know that we are always excited when articles like this come out but I still wonder how much impact the supposed shift from the hair-in-the-bun, shushing librarian image to the “cool” tech-savvy librarian image is actually having on our library traffic. Is the image shift really making a difference in the numbers?

Sometimes I buy into the question above and shudder; when I am really in a “the glass is half-full” kind of mood I feel like it is irrelevant. If there is even one librarian who feels like they are better–or just feels better about themselves–because the image is changing … well, isn’t that more important than the numbers? Librarian confidence and personal identity seem more important to me than whether reference stats go up or not.

Faculty Librarians

This post by Stephen Bell on the ACRL blog has caused some stir since yesterday.

Here’s the gist: At institutions with tenure-tract librarians why are librarians called faculty? What makes a faculty librarian faculty?

(BTW: A lot of the comments from Bell’s post are very informative, especially Anne-Marie Deitering’s; go see her own post about this).

In an interview recently for a library faculty position one of the committee members asked: “What do you think it means to be a faculty member?” Although I can’t remember what I said (I was totally caught off guard), here is what I came up with later:

1. A faculty member researches and publishes
2. A faculty member teaches and instructs
3. A faculty member serves in the academic/professional community

From what I have seen this is also in order of professional significance. Now some may be offended by this but that is just what I have observed (and I’m not saying I agree with it either). The platitude is “publish or perish” not “serve on a committee or perish.” Anyway, beside the point…

This list shows that no matter what Stephen Bell may say, the relationship with students is not really what faculty is about (unfortunately; again, I’m not saying I agree here). Of course administrators will require professors to “mentor” students and “assist them in learning” but those are nebulous charges. Only publishable research resulting from student-interaction is what goes into a faculty portfolio. There is little/no weight given for any academic status/rank advancement system that I know of that counts how many hours were spent consulting with students in an office. Again it is not that consultations are unimportant, it is just that they have no weight in deciding status/rank (unless one or more of the students write glowing notes about you to the dean; even then are the weight of student reviews even with publications when it comes to advancement?). It all boils down to the three things above: research, formal teaching, and citizenship.

Do the ‘teaching faculty’ do those three things? Yup. Do faculty librarians? Yup. However, that is only what makes faculty librarians faculty. That is not what makes them librarians.

I got into academic librarianship because I felt that, unlike professorial faculty, a librarian’s weight and worth is measured largely on relationships with patrons. We really are about helping with research and encouraging learning in both formal and informal settings.

Faculty librarians have a responsibility to do the three things above–no question, so that may be what makes them faculty, but they are librarians because of their relationships with patrons.