Virtually the Same: Comparing the Effectiveness of Online Versus In-Person Library Tours

ABSTRACT

The use of virtual or Web-based tours is on the rise in academic libraries, but with the loss of face-to-face contact and direct experience with the library's physical spaces, questions abound about this format's efficacy. Do online tour experiences measure up to those of a guided, face-to-face tour? Do online tours help mold students' perceptions of the library, while imparting important practical knowledge about the library's resources and services? Librarians at Kent State University in Kent, Ohio, recently confronted these questions, as they added an option for an online library tour to a large library tour program for freshman that had previously been offered strictly through guided, librarian-led tours. This paper presents the results of a preliminary study comparing the efficacy of learning and affective outcomes between face-to-face library tours and online library tours at Kent State University.     

Library virtual tours: A case study

Virtual tours delivered via the Web have become a common tool for both instruction and outreach. This article is a case study of the creation of a virtual tour for a university library and is intended to provide others interested in creating a virtual tour of their library the opportunity to learn from the mistakes and successes of fellow librarians. Virtual tours can enhance a library's Web presence as well as provide much needed information to remote or prospective users.     

Modeling the impact of individuals’ characteristics and library service levels on high school students’ public library usage: A national analysis

Information behavior (IB) and public library usage studies seldom simultaneously analyze individual-level characteristics and community-level information service factors. Thus, it is uncertain whether changes in community-level factors, such as an increase in public library funding and service level, make a difference in an individual's library usage after differences in personal characteristics are accounted for. Applying the person-in-environment (PIE) framework designed to integrate individual agency and sociostructural factors in IB research, this study used structural equation modeling (SEM) to test the factors influencing a student's frequency of public library usage for schoolwork, leisure, and Internet access. It mapped and merged a nationally representative survey of 13,000 U.S. 12th graders with census tract data and public library statistics. The SEM findings indicate that school information environment, frequency of school library use, race/ethnicity, and home computer availability were among the top three factors affecting public library usage for schoolwork, leisure, and Internet access. More importantly, library service levels had a positive impact on students’ library usage in terms of frequency of use. Specifically, even after personal differences such as each student's socioeconomic status and achievement motivation were controlled for, higher service levels in the student's neighborhood public library contributed to more frequent library usage. The findings pinpoint the benefits for individual-level IB study to incorporate etic measures of community-level factors. The findings also suggest that continuous effort to fund high levels of public library services—particularly in disadvantaged areas—is worthwhile. Such efforts should be encouraged.     

No more tours: how library tours of the past become today's celebrations

In 1999, Northwestern University's Galter Health Sciences Library redesigned the library orientation program for first-year medical students. Surveys indicated tours were ineffective and students retained little of the information presented. Furthermore, the tour was not related to the student's curriculum and did not reinforce their learning objectives. As a replacement, the library staff developed a self-directed two-hour library open house. Stations throughout the library showcased the library staff, services, and resources, focusing on the first-year student curriculum. A follow-up survey found this redesign more useful and relevant to the students' course work, indicating libraries should be creating more interactive tours for students allowing them to learn actively.     

The Role of Cooperation in Creating a Library Online Tutorial

SUMMARY

Reference librarians at St. Charles Community College discovered the benefits of cooperation when they began the process of creating an online library tutorial. In the fall of 1999, librarians realized that their walk-in library sessions were becoming ineffective due to poor attendance by students. The tours didn't fit into on-campus students' busy schedules, and failed to serve distance students at all. Two reference librarians decided to work together to create a web-based tutorial introducing students to library online resources. It was an informal process that started with information gathering on what tutorials exist, how they were developed and what type of software was used. After the librarians decided on the format and appropriate software, they brought together their creative and technical strengths to design an appealing and functional tutorial. To create a “virtual tour” of the library's physical layout, the librarians also collaborated with the Instructional Support Center, a group of educational technology specialists who are part of SCC's community college consortium. The tutorial was completed in only a year, partly because working in a small library allows for constant contact between the librarians, but also due to the efficiency of using cooperation. This successful collaborative project eventually won the Missouri Community College Association's 2001 Technology Innovation Award.     

Libr-AR-y Tours: Increasing engagement and scalability of library tours using augmented reality

Abstract

Orienting patrons to library spaces, collections, and services is an important, but time-intensive, challenge for many librarians. Library tours are one strategy commonly employed to familiarize patrons with library spaces and services. Augmented reality provides a new opportunity for librarians to develop engaging and interactive unmediated tours. Augmented reality tours provide participants with an opportunity to explore library spaces and service points while affording librarians the chance to share valuable information about those spaces and services. This article details how one library constructed an augmented reality tour and shares assessment-based insights into participant responses to the augmented reality format.     

高校博物馆研学旅行的发展历程、现实境况与优化策略

高校博物馆研学旅行的发展历经蓄势积淀、起步发展阶段,目前正处于快速发展阶段。我国高校博物馆研学旅行教育资源丰富,研学旅行市场需求旺盛,但在高校博物馆研学课程建设和研学配套资源供给方面存在欠缺,影响高校博物馆高质量研学旅行活动的开展。鉴于此,本文从立足独特馆藏资源、抓住时代发展机遇、加强研学课程开发、优化研学配套资源供给等四个方面提出新时期高校博物馆研学旅行的优化策略,以期打造高质量的高校博物馆研学旅行活动,充分释放高校博物馆的教育潜能。     

The scholar's journey; transforming the maze into the labyrinth

By exploring the labyrinth as a metaphor for a student's shift from information consumer to knowledge creator, an approach to library design emerges in which the whole library facilitates that transformative journey. Approaching this idea from multiple perspectives, the author joins ideas from education, architecture, environmental psychology, and retail shopping to build a case for the use of the labyrinth as a metaphor for both the student's learning journey and library design, and offers the beginnings of how such a library might work.     

Accessing and Incorporating Visitors' Entrance Narratives in Guided Museum Tours

Abstract Museum visitors arrive at an exhibit or tour with their own individual experiences, memories and knowledge related to the subject — in a phrase, their “entrance narrative.” We tested what happens to participants in guided tours when the guide first accesses — by two different methods — the entrance narratives of their visitors, and then makes specific connections from these entrance narratives to the content of the tour. The subject of the tour was a guided tree walk at Hebrew University's open‐campus museum. Behavioral measures and questionnaires both indicated that accessing and incorporating participants' entrance narratives profoundly enhanced their experience. The enhancement was somewhat greater among visitors from the general public than among groups of university students. We suggest that guides could use the simple methods described here, in a wide variety of tour types, to enhance visitor experiences.     

An iPod (MP3) Library Tour for First-Year Students

This article describes the creation and evolution of an iPod (MP3) Library Tour and Assignment at the University of South Carolina (USC) Upstate. Designed as an integral part of the First-Year Information Literacy Program, the tour functions as an orientation to the layout of the physical library, including its collections and major service points. Issues addressed are the collaboration that led to the adoption of the tour, the results of a student survey that led to significant revisions, and the unique place of the tour's being required for a first-year program.     

Pathways for Communicating about Objects on Guided Tours

Abstract Guided tours offer special opportunities for lively and varied presentations that match the methods of interpretation to the characteristics of the participating visitors. Most tour guides rely on rather limited, unidirectional (guide‐to‐visitor) communication. Instead, this paper outlines six different pathways of communication that are possible among guide, visitors, and object. Each pathway offers several specific types of communicative acts. In addition, 35 guided tours in several different kinds of venue were examined to identify the pathways and types of acts that were used. The professional literature describes other types of acts, and more have been developed at the writer's home museum. All in all, the 58 different types of communicative acts described here present a wide range of opportunities for guides to communicate with visitors.     

The Library and Admissions

With today's intense competition for new students, a college with a library that it's proud of ought to make better use of it in its recruiting efforts. This piece shows how, with some cooperation between Admissions and the librarians, the tour stop in the library can make a contribution to the institution's appeal for prospective students and their parents.     

Marketing “Drop-In” Workshops for Lifelong Learning

Abstract

“Drop-in” workshops historically played important roles as components of instruction programs in college and university libraries. Unrelated to any specific course and initiated largely at the library's discretion, these sessions-along with tours, course-related library instruction sessions, and credit courses-served to introduce library users to the basics of information research as well as the organization of particular, local libraries. Perhaps because of increasing demands for library instruction and upon instruction librarians' time, as well as changes in values brought by the focus on information literacy, workshops have not factored significantly in recent library literature. Workshops still merit continued attention-as well as marketing to maximize their attendance and thus their effectiveness-because they uniquely allow students, faculty, and staff to behave as lifelong learners, not just to learn the information literacy skills characteristic of lifelong learners. Data from over a decade's worth of drop-in workshops at New Mexico State University underlie the discussion herein of ways to market workshops successfully by attention to their topics, their timing, and publicity.     

Practical help for history instruction: Making the one-shot count

While it is generally assumed that active learning, information literacy course are the most effective means of teaching library skills, not every college or university library has the talent, resources, or institutional support required for that level of instruction. Frequently, a student's library instruction is taught as a “one-shot” by a librarian without specialized training in the subject being taught. This essay is addressed to instruction librarians with limited experience in historical research find themselves called upon to conduct “one-shot” instruction sessions for history classes.     

GoPro as an ethnographic tool: A wayfinding study in an academic library

In this study, researchers sought to capture students’ authentic experience of finding books in the main library using a GoPro camera and the think-aloud protocol. The GoPro provided a first-person perspective and was an effective ethnographic tool for observing a student's individual experience, while also demonstrating what tools they use to find items. Using the think-aloud protocol, observers could hear students express their internal decisions, thoughts, and feelings about the process. Results confirmed trouble spots in the building and that directories are not typically used and need updating. GoPro footage revealed that there are certain qualities of the help-desk experience that can make a search more or less successful. No major sex differences were found in preference of wayfinding tools and behaviors, except that males appear to have used directories marginally more than females. In a debriefing survey, students still affirmed human help and online maps as the most useful wayfinding tools and advocated for better signage. Mapping of behaviors by floor also validated GoPro observations. At low cost to the library, the GoPro/think-aloud combination along with survey and mapping methodologies affirmed trouble spots in the building and provided suggestions for wayfinding improvements to library administration.     

Library Research Project for First-Year Engineering Students: Results from Collaboration by Teaching and Library Faculty

SUMMARY

This article will discuss three years of collaboration between the Freshman Engineering Program and the Engineering Library of the University Library System at the University of Pittsburgh. This collaboration has resulted in a library research project that is integrated into the freshman curriculum. The project ultimately provides the students with a research structure for presentations in an annual mock professional conference. The mission of the Freshman Engineering Program's academic and advising components is to create a first-year experience that promotes the student's continued pursuit of an engineering degree through commitment to clearly understood and self-declared goals. The goal for the Engineering Library is to introduce library research as a necessary skill-set for successful engineers. The successful outcome of all of these goals requires the collaboration between “teaching” faculty and “library” faculty and results in better prepared, more focused students. Developing and integrating a library research project into the freshman engineering academic curriculum is a significant opportunity for library instruction, and the approach demonstrated here may be transferable to other disciplines.     

A Library in the Metro Station

This paper discusses the results of a survey of patrons of the Metro McGill Library, a facility opened on December 14, 1981, on the pedestrian overpass of the McGill metro station in Montreal. The study shows that this convenient library attracted 5,000 new library users in one year's time.     

News and notes

A set of audio‐taped systematic desensitization sessions for outside‐of‐class use was developed to reduce student's speech anxiety with minimum allocation of staff time. This automated treatment was as effective as treatment by therapists in reducing scores on McCroskey's PRCA.     

Establishing Influential Decision Making Factors for University Library Opening Hours: An Exploratory UK Regional Study

Many factors and pressures affect decisions made in UK university libraries on opening hours especially 24/7. This article reports on a project to examine the decision making process, influential factors, and stakeholders. A workshop for senior library managers in the East Midlands was held to gather data and share experiences. From analysis of the workshop a framework of influential factors was devised and the decision making process was examined. Although each library had different priorities, important factors overall included pressure from undergraduates and the student's union, and provision during exam periods. Further research to examine the framework nationally is required.