Collins Unbound

FROM THE ARCHIVES – DECEMBER 2010

From Chuck Luce, Arches Magazine – A Todd portrait comes home:

“We received a cordial phone call from Eunice Robeck ’58, M.A.’74, remarking on the “From the Archives” item about Todd Hall (summer 2010) and tipping us off that on a recent visit to an antiques store on South Tacoma Way she spotted a nicely done portrait of President Edward H. Todd, drawn when he was a young man. Incurable browsers of antiques stores that we are, your editors couldn’t resist a field trip to check it out. Sure enough, we found the likeness upstairs in the South Tacoma Antique Mall, across from the B&I. (Picky editors’ aside: Names like “Antique Mall” or “Athletic Center” really get our backs up. The place we visited was not an old mall. It was an antiques mall; where antiques are sold. Harrumph.) The portrait appears to be a charcoal, we’re guessing drawn when Todd was in his 20s, about 1885. A little haggling over the price and we brought it home. We’ll turn it over to the college archives.”

A Sound Past
John Finney continues to add to the digital image collection A Sound Past. A full list of recent additions is available from the Archives web site. Here are three of my favorites!

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Need Information? Don’t forget the Collins Memorial Library Database List A-Z
Questions? Contact your liaison librarian
Comments: Contact Jane Carlin, Library Director
Remember – Your best search engine is a Librarian!

September 2010

INFORMATION LITERACY PART 1: WHERE ARE WE NOW?
During the April 2009 reaccreditation visit, the university received a recommendation for faculty and librarians to continue to work to integrate information literacy throughout the curriculum. In addition, LMIS submitted to the Faculty Senate a detailed statement supporting the library’s role in the academic life of the institution; the Faculty Senate endorsed this statement. Collins Library librarians have been hard at work to help our students gain the information literacy competencies that they need to succeed in college and as life-long learners. In this issue of Library Links, we share information about our current research and work to promote information literacy at Puget Sound; next week, in Part II, we will share our ideas about future plans in the realm of information literacy education.

• Information Literacy Workshop (May 2010)
  Last May, Collins Library and the Center for Writing, Learning and Teaching, with support from the Academic Vice President, sponsored a two-day faculty workshop on “Information Literacy for Twenty-first Century Learners,” which was attended by 17 faculty members. The workshop provided opportunities for faculty and librarians to share best practices and examples of successful assignments and also offered a syllabus and assignment clinic.
• Collins Memorial Library Undergraduate Research Awards:
  Students Jordan Carelli and Ayanna K. Drakos were winners of the first Collins Memorial Library Undergraduate Research Award. The award recognizes undergraduate students who demonstrate exemplary skill and creativity in the application of library and information resources to original research and scholarship.
• Information Literacy Portal for Faculty:
  Collins Library continues to expand this resource for faculty. For example, information about research competencies guidelines in the disciplines was added recently.
• Research Practices Survey
  Since 2006, Peggy Burge, Humanities Librarian and Information Literacy Coordinator, has administered the Research Practices Survey to incoming first-year Puget Sound students. The Research Practices Survey is an online survey instrument designed specifically for liberal arts colleges to measure the research experiences, attitudes, beliefs, knowledge, and critical capacities of beginning college students. The hope is that classroom faculty, librarians, and campus administrators will find the survey results helpful when making decisions about the content and process of instruction, requirements for assignments, and resources provided to students.
  

2010 Research Practices Survey Data
Taken by 44 percent of incoming first-year students

Students continue to be highly confident of their research skills and abilities. Examples:

• 92 % believe that it is “very easy” or “somewhat easy” to determine whether a source is scholarly
• 83 % believe that it is “very easy” or “somewhat easy” to know when to document a source

• Students have had limited experience with using standard library resources and tools. Examples:
• Only 57 percent had ever used an online library catalog
• Only 50 percent had ever used a subscription database
• 92 percent indicated that a general search engine like Google was their main research tool

Students have limited knowledge of standard research terms. Examples:

• 46 percent correctly defined a peer-reviewed journal
• When shown three citations, 59 percent could correctly identify a book, 23 percent could correctly identify a journal article, and 12 percent could correctly identify a chapter within a book.
• 21 percent could correctly distinguish between a scholarly journal and a popular magazine
• 73 percent could correctly distinguish between secondary and primary sources
• 50 percent could correctly explain when a citation is required

Students have limited knowledge of successful research strategies. Examples:

• 37 percent knew that clicking on subject headings in a library catalog would lead them to additional publications on that topic
• 23 percent could correctly use “and,” or “or” to construct a database search query
• Eight percent knew how to truncate a search word to retrieve all grammatical possibilities for that word

Students have limited knowledge of strategies for evaluating sources. Example:

• 63 percent said that they would give equal weight to multiple criteria before deciding to use a source, including whether or not it is available on the Internet, how easily they can obtain it, and whether or not it is scholarly

In spite of their general confidence, some students did express concern about their research skills and indicated a desire to learn more about conducting research and incorporating information into larger assignments. Examples of comments:

• “What is a more scholarly way to conduct research instead of using popular search engines?”
• “I would really like to have a better understanding of which sources are appropriate for research. I’m still a little fuzzy on knowing which sources are scholarly and which ones are not.”
• “I do have a hard time finding credible sources and integrating them into a clearly cohesive paper.”

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Need Information? Don’t forget the Collins Memorial Library Database List A-Z
Questions? Contact your liaison librarian
Comments: Contact Jane Carlin, Library Director
Remember – Your best search engine is a Librarian!

December 9, 2010

INFORMATION LITERACY PART II:   LOOKING AHEAD

Project Information Literacy:

Project Information Literacy (PIL) is a UW-based national study focusing on the information-seeking behaviors of early adults in the digital age.  The study is collecting  using data from 25 institutions nation-wide, including private liberal arts colleges, large research universities, state colleges, and community colleges.  The research team has been analyzing data and publishing highly illuminating reports, papers, and videos on the results, ranging from how and why students use Wikipedia to students’ frank descriptions of the challenges they face when conducting academic research.  The Project Information Literacy website provides access to all of these publications.  The website also offers “Smart Talks” which feature scholars and teachers responding to the results of the project; thus far, contributors to “Smart Talks” include John Palfrey, Professor of Law at Harvard University; Andrea Lundsford, Director of the Program in Writing and Rhetoric at Stanford University; and Peter Morville, author and president and founder of Semantic Studios, a consultancy in user experience, information architecture, and findability.

Although Project Information Literacy provides extremely valuable information about the information-seeking behavior of college students in general, it does not speak to the specific experiences and competencies of our own Puget Sound students.  The Research Practices Survey does provide information specific to our students, but it tells us only what they come in with, rather than what they learn over their four years here.  For these reasons, Collins Library endeavors to undertake a longitudinal study of the information-seeking behaviors and information literacy competencies of a representative sample of Puget Sound students throughout their college career.  At this point, the project is still in its infancy, with plans to submit a proposal to IRB.  Faculty input into the project design would be most welcome. Please contact Peggy Burge at pburge@pugetsound.edu if you would like more information.

What Can a Student Who Is Information-Literate Do?
What specific information literacy skills would we like our students to be able to demonstrate?  The answers naturally will vary according to the discipline, the level of the course, and other factors.  Nonetheless, there are fundamental baseline information literacy skills that we believe all students should be given an opportunity to learn and demonstrate.  The librarians have drafted a list of  these foundational information literacy skills.  Because the acquisition of information literacy competencies is an iterative, developmental process, we have indicated which skills students should be able to demonstrate competently by the end of the first year of college, and which concepts should simply be introduced.

These six information literacy competencies are not presented in weighted order; instead, we consider them to be interconnected. This is only a draft, intended to spark discussion. We would love your feedback. Please share your comments with  Peggy Burge pburge@pugetsound.edu.

Citations/Plagiarism/Academic Integrity

– By end of first year

1. Ability to read citations to determine whether the item is a book, an essay within a book, a journal article, or a work of multimedia (i.e., a film or a piece of recorded music).
2. Ability  to create a bibliography in a specific style (i.e., APA, MLA, Chicago, etc.) of commonly used types of materials (books, journal articles, etc.)
3. Understanding of basic principles of academic integrity (when to cite and why)

– Introduction to concepts

1. Uses of knowledge management tools like RefWorks or Zotero
2. Awareness of nuances in the realm of copyright and intellectual property

Types, Purposes, and Uses of Information

–  By end of first year

Ability to identify the following types of information, with the understanding that definitions are contextual:

1. Scholarly vs. Popular
2. Primary vs. secondary
3. General vs. specific
4. Current vs. historical
5. Empirical vs. anecdotal
6. Qualitative vs. quantitative

– Introduction to concepts

1. Information cycles among the disciplines
2. When, how, and why to use  various types of information within various disciplines

Information Retrieval Skills, Search Strategies, and Search Construction

– By end of first year

1. Basic structure of academic libraries, stressing their interconnectedness WorldCat, Interlibrary loan)
2. Known-item searching:

• Use library catalog to locate local holdings of books, DVDs, and CDs
• Use call numbers to physically locate books in the stacks
• Use Journal Locator to locate specific articles, whether in digital or paper formats
• Use interlibrary loan when materials are not available locally (SUMMIT for books, ILLiad for journal articles)

– Introduction to concepts

– Discovery searching

1. Identify appropriate databases to search (Research by Subject pages)
2. Use Boolean logic to broaden or narrow searches, as needed
3. Use knowledge of classification systems (Library of Congress, discipline-specific thesauri) to locate relevant sources

Formation of Research Questions

– Introduction to concepts

1. Appropriate use of general information resources (subject encyclopedias, textbooks, etc.)
2. Formation of research questions within the disciplines

Evaluation of Information

– Introduction to concepts

1. Critically evaluates sources for biases, reliability, scope, and situational appropriateness
2. Seeks out best possible sources, rather than settling for “good enough”
3. Moves away from binary opposition of “good vs. bad sources” to a more nuanced understanding of what kinds of information are appropriate within the disciplines

Seeking Help

– Introduction to concepts

1. Recognizes situations when help or advice is needed
2. Uses online resources (tutorials, library course research pages, etc.) to answer basic questions
3. Seeks advice/help/input/feedback from appropriate experts (librarians and professors) during the research process

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Need Information? Don’t forget the Collins Memorial Library Database List A-Z
Questions? Contact your liaison librarian
Comments: Contact Jane Carlin, Library Director
Remember – Your best search engine is a Librarian!