Category: Academic Libraries

vampire_diaries_0302_jeremy_uses-internet_for_research

Research in popular culture and in the classroom

There’s been a great thread on ILI-L this week that lists television programs and films that highlight how messy research can be at times.  A number of interesting clips were suggested, ranging from Buffy the Vampire Slayer to Seven to use in our own lessons on information literacy, critical thinking and research.  And hats off to Mollie Freier, who suggested the entire mystery and detective genre – now there’s an academic paper I could sink my teeth into.

This thread got me thinking about how research is presented in popular culture since the Internet and the search engine has become such a dominant part of our everyday lives. Some people feel that the scenes showing Twilight‘s Bella researching on the Internet reinforce the fact that there isn’t always one answer or dominant interpretation (this isn’t necessarily stated in the ILI-L thread – I’m speaking generally), however, I think research as we see it today is still glossed over in pop culture. Television and film don’t have time and space to feature the research process.  The research process is broadly used as a device to push the plot forward, so what we often get are scenes that look like this:

I’m using this clip from Vampire Diaries as an example because it aired just last Thursday, i.e., it’s on television right now and its target demographic is watching it, big-time.  If you don’t care to play the video, then let me tell you that Jeremy is telling Matt that he’s used the Internet to research how to contact his dead girlfriend, Vikki, who happens to be Matt’s dead sister.  And, he’s found out some things, like that fact that he doesn’t need the help of a witch like Bonnie, his current girlfriend to call upon this spirit.   Voila! Research is done!  Thanks, Interweb!

(Vampire Diaries is actually compelling drama. You should look past my snark and watch it. And in Jeremy’s case, the directors have shown him conducting something closer to “real” research in the past, so he’d a good guy that librarians should appreciate in the end.)

Admittedly, there are better “research clips” than this one. The best clips will spend a lot of time on the research process or even make it the focus of the scene.  But even the clips that show top-rate critical inquiry, evaluative reasoning, and strong synthesis will have to summarize much of this process in the interest of story’s plot and time.  And our students know this already.  So, instead of playing a clip that illustrates what parts of research are shown in the movies, I think it’s better to engage the students personally and research with them, on the spot, so they can learn by doing (which is especially important in a one-shot class).  If films are “show and tell,” then I try to emphasize “do and learn” when I’m working with students.

So much of this comes down to teaching styles and the way we present ourselves to a class. I’m real comfortable interacting closely with students to put the focus on what it means to actually do critical thinking and researching on a topic, first-hand.  Although I do use film clips from time to time, my own preference is to get the students actually “thinking about thinking” or even by doing some research with them in the classroom (or hopefully, in a computer lab).  In the end, I want them to focus on what I’ve got to say and how they are applying this advice to their own work in front of them, so I make sure that I’m animated, personable, and approachable throughout the session.

Research, as we see it in popular culture, is glossed over.  Watching it on film can’t show the full spectrum, so I try not to put too much of my time into these film clips.  In the end, I want to help my students learn real, proven strategies on how to research effectively in their courses, so I prefer to keep my eye on the prize and give them what they’re looking for: lessons, advice, and hints to turn their neat idea for a subject into a well-researched, well-written A-level submission to the prof.

 

[Post-script:  I'm not saying that I object to using film in class. On the contrary, I think film clips can be a great educational tool.  For example, I've used television commercials to great effect when teaching critical thinking in the past.  I played old Axe Bodywash commercials to help students analyze expectations and stereotypes surrounding sex and gender.  By the end of the class, the students had conducted a "close reading" of these commercials and were well on their way to writing an essay on gender stereotypes in popular culture.  But the difference here is that the film clip was the class's actual object of study.]

Be Where The Conversation Is.

Lately, I’ve been speaking publicly quite a bit on the importance of communication and collaboration amoung different units in an organization. (This has pre-empted my regular posts on this blog.) Yesterday, I summarized this to a colleague by reminding how vital it is for librarians to move beyond our offices and seek out our students, users, and stakeholders if we want to best understand their needs and make ourselves essential to their own work. That’s when she pointed to the quotation I keep taped to my door:

Like RD Lankes tells us, "Be where the conversation is."

 

Dave Lankes has made this statement, a lot. I agree with him, and I make it part of my practice to initiate conversations with people who are affected by or have an interest in my work.

Some people may think that this idea to be “where the conversation is,” or to interview, collaborate, and work with our stakeholders (be they students, faculty, staff, librarians, etc.) goes without saying, i.e,. that networking, collaborating, and speaking with others should be natural to our everyday work. Well, it *should* be natural to our work, but I don’t think it always is. It’s easy to get side-tracked, and it’s easy to become so involved with one’s work that we put up blinders to what’s going on around us.  That’s human nature sometimes, and we’ve got to fight it if it happens.

So let’s do what we can not to inadvertently put the blinders up. Don’t be an island. Go and involve yourself with others’ work. And go and involve them with your own. Query your students and your colleagues on how your projects affect the organization. Doing so will benefit them, your library and your students, and yourself.

P.S.  Happy Bastille Day, France!  Pour Liberté, égalité, fraternité!

 

 

 

Micah Vandegrift on the librarians of the future

Micah Vandegrift of HackLibSchool has written great post on the future of libraries (or on the librarian of the future, anyway you cut it) on his own blog; it neatly parallels some of the things I’ve been ranting about on blogs and on Twitter this past week.   He, too, sees the need for librarians to increase their technical knowledge and abilities, and to increase these competencies fast:

My advice to LIS students? Get digital skills, whether you want to or not. To those who want to work in academic libraries? Get deep knowledge of digital trends, including CompSci, Data science, information architecture, digital humanities, digital archiving practices, CMS’s and yes even programming . . . To current academic librarians, maybe its time to use some of your free continuing education credits and update your skill set to remain in the know.

Kudos to Vandegrift for calling it as he sees it.  It’s high time that we stop acting like we’re the kings of the library technology castle unless we actually have the ability and are willing to defend these statements.  We need to not only walk the walk but also talk the talk when it comes to information technology as it affects our workplaces, other people’s lives and their research, and our culture in general.  Librarians aren’t so removed from this sphere that we can’t accomplish this, but we have some catching up to do in order to make it happen.

On a sidenote, I’d like to note that Micah makes this call to arms without have to deal with any of the off-base assumptions made by Jeff Trzeciak (recipient of the 2011 Jeff Trzeciak Award for Just Not Getting It) in the run-up to and during #fulmac11.  I believe this IT question presumes that credentialed librarians are the experts on librarianship and should be the people who organize and run our information centres and libraries.  What matters here is the amount of IT knowledge we’re bringing to the profession when we enter it, and also what we’re doing to enrich ourselves and our organizations once we’re there.  The letters MLIS (or MLS, etc) will remain compulsory;  Let’s just find a way to emphasize the IT within the degree.

 


 

With Apologies to Albert Einstein and Steve Wheeler

Further Reading: Tim Fedak on literacies in higher ed

Happy Monday.   This week, I’m pointing you all to an insightful post by Tim Fedak, director of Distributed Medical Education at Dalhousie University.   Tim has written a great post on the nature of technology, literacies, and instruction in higher education.  I especially like his closing remarks:

There is a serious challenge facing the delivery of education in today’s technologically dominated media social landscape – our university leadership and faculty members have not been generally trained to speak, let alone be fluent in the languages of images and digital media.  The “teachers” and university leaders are fluent in text-based languages, not the image and digital literacies that are the dominant channels of information and communication today . . .

In the years to come images and digital media will continue to expand – how do we prepare our current students become fluent in the ways that will allow them to contribute to advance social well being?  How do we teach our learners to be visually and digitally literate?  Where are we giving them these skills?  As “teachers” how do we attain these new literacies?

Tim asks a lot of questions here, as most good blog posts do.  He raises a couple questions that librarians have been grappling with for some time now:

  • How do we communicate effectively with students who have are familiar with different modes of communication?
  • How do we teach critical thinking and research skills to students whose alphabets, vocabularies, and languages are visual more than they are textual?  What fundamental changes have occurred to research (and to teaching research) with the shift to the digital and the visual?
  • How do we keep up with these new technologies and literacies, ourselves?

So head to Tim’s blog:  read, and discuss.   You may also want to check out my previous post on transliteracies, which may have some useful links on the matter, too.

-M

With Apologies to Albert Einstein and Steve Wheeler

Information Literacy, Transliteracy, and other literacies

[Note: I originally posted this on Dalhousie University's School Of Information Management blog.  It's only a few quick words meant to introduce others to one of the biggest information literacy debates in 2010/11.]

This winter and spring, the library blogosphere has buzzed around the idea of transliteracy, which broadly encompasses critical thinking and writing (or perhaps “synthesizing”) across a multitude of formats and devices.  You can read more about digital literacy at:

The incorporation of transliteracy into our definition of information literacy is either controversial or welcome news.  Some people see it only as the flavour of the month, while others believe that the arguments behind transliteracy should have been developed long ago and that librarians are still trying to catch up with the implications of our changed information society.   Regardless of what you believe, Bobbi Newman of the Libraries and Transliteracy blog must be commended for starting an information literacy discussion that has asked our profession what we do as instructors, what it is we instruct, and how we well may be doing it.
Personally, I see a lot of merit in broadening our understanding of IL to incorporate the arguments made by transliteracy advocates.  However, I also worry that we may be spending too much time thinking about what to call our paradigms instead of properly researching their implications and incorporating them into practice.  Perhaps it’s because I’ve always considered myself to be “tech-savvy”, but I’ve always believed that our notions of information literacy would naturally incorporate information regardless of its medium, both before and after it’s synthesized into knowledge.  Whether we call this subject “transliteracy” or “information literacy,” our focus must be on improving (information) literacy levels amoung our users.  As librarians, we don’t “teach” information literacy so much as we teach people how to find and evaluate information effectively, and how to improve people’s ability to turn that information into their own knowledge.

Having said all that, I believe that transliteracy is a subject that should be followed by any librarian who is concerned with how their patrons interact with their materials.  Thus far, transliteracy has produced incredible research and opinion within LIS.  It’s given us a chance to share our expertise and opinion on education and pedagogy with a wider community of scholars and practitioners.  Don’t forget the term, “transliteracy.”  It’s not just a buzzword, and it has implications that are here to stay.