Assessing,Analyzing, and Adapting: Improving a Graduate Student Instruction Program Through Needs Assessment

This article highlights an assessment of library instruction needs among graduate students in the social sciences. The article addresses the development and implementation of the assessment and the application of assessment results to an established set of library instruction workshops. The article provides a detailed summary of assessment findings and a discussion of how the findings were successfully used to create a user-centered instruction program. The findings were used to make significant changes in workshop content, as well as refinements in the overall number and format of workshops offered, schedule of workshops, and marketing of the instruction program.     

硕士阶段留学生医学文献检索课教学实践与探索

医学高校的留学生日益增多,使针对外国留学生的医学文献检索课成为文检课教师的重要工作内容之一。与本科阶段的留学生相比,硕士留学生群体具有较明显的特殊性,学习需求等多方面与本科学生有显著区别,在教学内容选择、课时安排、授课方式、考核方式等方面宜有针对性,且要辅以多种手段辅助教学。     

基于文献调研的国内外研究生信息素养教育实践进展

[目的/意义]运用文献调研方法,对2000年以来国内外研究生信息素养教学实践研究论文进行归纳梳理,探讨教学模式及教学内容变化新趋势,为国内同行开展研究生信息素养教育提供参考。[方法/过程]分别以Web of Science平台的SCI-E及SSCI数据库和中国知网的中国学术期刊网络出版总库为研究对象,收集国内外自2000年以来发表的有关研究生信息素养教育的期刊论文,通过分析研究生信息素养教学模式与教学内容,总结新环境下研究生信息素养教育的主要研究成果。[结果/结论]近年来嵌入式信息素养教育得到进一步应用与推广,基于学习项目或研究任务的信息素养教育、基于同伴培训的信息素养教育及"翻转课堂"的应用具有借鉴意义,而文献综述与写作技能、科技查新、数据素养等可以作为信息素养教育的拓展。研究生信息素养教育应以课程教学为主,开展更广泛的合作,尤其是引入写作、出版方面的专家;重视与专业课程结合,培养专业技能及信息能力;仍要重视研究生检索技能的培养并需要系统的信息素养评价工具或评价体系来测试研究生信息素养能力及评估信息素养教育效果。     

Presenting Your Best: Web-Based Applications for Library Instruction

Library instruction in academic, health sciences, and hospital libraries is an evolving concept. Content, the intended learner, and various teaching models influence the creation of library instructional tutorials and presentations. Standard programs such as PowerPoint and Keynote are often used to generate these instructional materials. However, new and dynamic web-based presentation applications have the potential to improve the learning experience for patients and health care professionals. This column will briefly touch on library instruction and standard presentation creators, but will mainly concentrate on six web-based applications that can be used for the creation of library instructional presentations.     

研究生群体阅读倾向调查分析

通过对2004-2008年硕士研究生借阅图书的数据统计和他们毕业论文的引文分析,从定量的角度分析研究生利用文献的特点、阅读倾向,同时为高校图书馆加强文献资源建设、提高文献采访水平提供科学管理的依据。     

Student Engagement in One-Shot Library Instruction

As technology has increased students' access to both high and low quality information, the need for effective information literacy instruction has become more apparent. However, many librarians still struggle to solidify their place, and their value, in the instructional landscape of their parent institution. This struggle persists while library instruction for students remains limited to one 50–75 min session (one-shot instruction). Indeed, the notion that information literacy can be taught in one session is preposterous for most librarians. Nevertheless, as this constraint persists, librarians must work to improve the results students achieve within the one-shot model. This research explores ways in which one-shot library instruction might be bolstered through the promotion of higher levels of student engagement. This research utilizes a pre and post-test analytical model to compare an experimental, learner-centered approach to library instruction, supplemented with clickers, to a more traditional pedagogical approach. Statistical analyses show that while both the experimental and control groups witnessed significant improvement from pre to post-test, there was no statistically significant difference between these two approaches. These findings elicit further, perhaps more troubling, questions regarding the level of engagement possible in one-shot library instruction.     

Boot Camps for Graduate Student Success: A Collaborative Initiative

Although graduate students are interested in learning data, grant, literature research, presentation, scholarly communication, and writing and publishing skills – topics not typically taught within their curriculum – scheduling conflicts during the academic year often prevent them from attending workshops that teach these skills. This article describes a grant-funded initiative where multiple campus units collaborated to provide themed boot camps outside of the fall and spring semesters. It also offers recommendations for adapting such a program at other institutions for lower cost, which administrators and practitioners in higher education, especially in academic libraries, may be particularly interested in.     

Taking Library Instruction into the Online Classroom: Best Practices for Embedded Librarians

ABSTRACT

The proliferation of online courses has led librarians to adapt their instructional techniques and follow teaching faculty and students into the online environment. Moving beyond Web pages and online research guides, librarians are now becoming instructional partners in online course management systems. Through an online survey of librarians and a literature review, the authors examine best practices for these “embedded librarians.”     

Supporting Student Work: Some Thoughts About Special Collections Instruction

ABSTRACT

During the past decade we have noted a marked increase in the use of special collections materials in the university classroom. This presents the library with an opportunity to assert its role as a unique and irreplaceable contributor to the University's core mission. Asserting this is predicated on the assumption that an instructor's goals will be met, that students will become successful researchers, and that library staff will survive the encounter. This is not easy to accomplish and this article is an attempt to describe those elements that we have found to be central to a successful instructional outcome.     

Wake up Information Literacy Instruction: Ideas for Student Engagement

In this article, three librarians from Santa Fe College, the community college winner of the 2015 ACRL Excellence in Academic Libraries Award, share their successful work in information literacy instruction. While the ACRL award is given for overall achievement, this article focuses upon their creative and varied approaches to instruction, incorporating a wide blend of strategies to reach students across the college. Beginning with targeted approaches to virtual instruction, including broad use of the flipped classroom model, and building in active learning techniques, the librarians at Santa Fe College have built an instruction program that could serve as a model to community college libraries across the country.     

Working out the Bugs: Piloting Library Instruction in an Online Entomology Graduate Program

Like most of its peer institutions, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries faced the challenge of meeting the needs of a growing number of students taking online courses. The author, hired as the new Virtual Learning Librarian in January 2016, was charged with creating a new Virtual Learning Program. This tutorials-based program was first fully implemented in a fully online Entomology graduate program. This paper summarizes the development of the Virtual Learning Program, how it was adapted to the Entomology program, and the initial results from the first semester of implementation.     

Building Trust to Relieve Graduate Student Research Anxiety

This paper outlines the case studies of two librarians who work closely with graduate students in fine arts programs. Realizing that graduate students can often experience a unique form of research anxiety, both librarians collaborated with faculty to embed themselves into the research methods courses of their programs. Both librarians found that the chance to work one-on-one with graduate students resulted in a reduction of their anxiety, an increase in information literacy skills, and a strengthened partnership between the librarians and the departments.     

From Missionary and Graduate Student to Reference Librarian

Summary

A service orientation strongly rooted both in mission work and in identification with students has firmly undergirded and motivated my reference service. A missionary's familiarity with certain subject areas provides certain ready-response and advisory capabilities. Extending my approach from missionary teaching, I attempt to provide leads to all significant data that are relevant to reference questions. By making the most of fleeting reference opportunities with students, I try to train them as potential peer teachers of library skills to other students. Effective communication with library users can involve adapting to very different ways of conveying messages. Saving face for others and building an inviting public impression can be a key to effective reference communication. Highly committed users, especially graduate and international students, deserve our most skillful, conscientious reference assistance.     

The Best of the Recent Literature Focusing on the User

This will be my first time authoring this column, and I'm delighted to have the opportunity it presents to explore the intersection of library technology and public services. As the recent title of the 2008 Internet Librarian conference indicates, Beyond Library 2.0: User-Focused Tools and Technologies, the tide of what for several years has felt like library technology evangelism is turning. A focus on more effective tech-based development in libraries is underway, one that privileges the actual impact of services on patrons over our need to keep up with the proverbial Joneses. This is a natural correction—libraries experienced a sort of “tech bubble” as early adopters enthusiastically explored the promise of new Web-based communication methods and user-created tools. After several years of trial and error, many early adopters now find themselves adjusting expectations, considering overall scalability, and evaluating outcomes of their early experiments. Much can be learned from these experiences, and a wealth of evidence, conjecture, and rules of thumb can now assist librarians in any stage of technology development prevent duplication of effort (and error). With this in mind, I will attempt to make this column as practically oriented as possible. I will draw from the knowledge of those who have confronted the types of issues and pitfalls inherent to library innovation, and I will explore proven approaches that can help librarians in the public services develop more effective and user-centered technologies. At times I will invite guest authors to describe best practices developed at their own institutions and/or explore topics that carry broad implications for public service practitioners.     

医学研究生应用Internet网络现状调查与分析

对在校６３名医学硕士研究生利用Ｉｎｔｅｒｎｅｔ网上信息资源的现状进行了问卷式调查,调查表明：专业信息查询和学术交流是医学研究生上网的主要目的,但他们对网上常用医药卫生同多站利用较少;４５．２％的人未上过网,没有条件和不会应用计算机网络是上网受限的主要原因。     

Best Practices of Library Mobile Website Design: A Literature Review

This article is intended to serve as a guide for librarians developing mobile Websites to be linked to their current library Website. Kroski (2008a) defines the mobile Web as “the World Wide Web accessed through a mobile device, ranging from a cellular phone to an iPod Touch. It includes the entirety of the Web and is not limited to Websites that are specifically designed for mobile viewing” (5). This literature review focuses on the mobile Web, mobile device usage, and best practices for designing mobile Websites for libraries.     

Closing the Loop on Nursing Library Instruction: Using Student Performance to Improve Outcomes

Two librarians analyzed nursing students’ performance on an information literacy assignment to determine how they could change their instruction to better assist the students in comprehending the material. After identifying major areas of difficulty, including the use of search techniques, they revised both the instruction and the assignment, closing the loop by utilizing their assessment data. Next, they analyzed those results to evaluate the effectiveness of their changes and to make further improvements, thus demonstrating the iterative nature of instruction and assessment. The evidence-based instruction cycle of teaching, assessing, and revising should be repeated frequently to keep the assignment fresh and relevant.     

Library Value in the Classroom: Assessing Student Learning Outcomes from Instruction and Collections

What is the value of library services and resources in the college classroom? How do library instruction and collections contribute to academic teaching and learning outcomes? A chemistry instructor, instruction librarian, and technical services librarian collaborated to answer these questions by combining chemistry education and information literacy pedagogy to assess student learning. The authors developed curriculum units that teach information literacy skills and scientific literature research in a General Chemistry Laboratory course for Honors students. Their study extends beyond examining library instruction and collections assessment in isolation. Rather, their research protocol intends to contribute to student learning outcomes assessment research. The authors propose that an embedded, mixed-methodology, and longitudinal approach can be used to collect data and assess outcomes in terms that describe and measure the value of library services and resources.     

General Education,Graduate Education,and Instruction in the Use of Libraries

Libraries have an important role to play in the general education process, even at the graduate level. An infusion of education about library resources can help to lessen the insularity which characterizes so much of graduate education in the U.S., and could help to break the cycle which perpetuates the lack of communication between academic disciplines. Various roles suggested for academic libraries in this regard include an approach through disciplinary instruction, a "handmaiden approach" to assisting individual graduate students, and a specific general education role for libraries which cuts across disciplines, through the use of seminars and other general education activities. Computer database searching may be a useful fulcrum, in any of these approaches, to broaden the perspective and the interdisciplinary awareness of both graduate students and faculty.