Open and Shut: A Case for Preparing Our Students for What’s Next | Inside Higher Ed

In this post Barbara Fister makes a wonderfully succinct statement about the role of librarians in undergraduate education.  Also she echoes heartily my Participation Direction, and Lloyd's Information Literacy Landscapes:
Open and Shut: A Case for Preparing Our Students for What’s Next | Inside Higher Ed

My job as a librarian at a liberal arts college is to help students join those conversations by providing doorways into the places where the discussions are happening and by helping students figure out how to pick up what’s going on and practice unfamiliar conversational norms. Much of this work is done by disciplinary faculty, but sometimes they forget how hard it is to find the door and work the doorknob, which is an odd shape and design, baffling until you're used to it. Librarians can also sometimes help students figure out what some of the puzzling words in the conversation are and why that person in the corner is waving her hands so excitedly and why someone else is rolling his eyes. We, like the students, are not insiders, but we’ve picked up some strategies for entering conversations that have been going on for years around us.  We’re there to encourage them as they step forward, looking over their shoulders nervously. Am I doing this right? Will I be okay?

Read more: http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/library-babel-fish/open-and-shut-case-preparing-our-students-what%E2%80%99s-next#ixzz1uZN6m3KC
Inside Higher Ed

An Information Landscape Problem: "Teaching Web-Scale Discovery in the Context of Google"

Convenience and its Discontents: Teaching Web-Scale Discovery in the Context of Google

This post by Pete Coco on ACRLog basically raises the question of what do we teach when we don't need to teach the clicks. And his answer aligns with mine: Teach "the concepts and conventions underneath all the clicking."

Part of our struggle as librarians is to fully understand and fully show our students that research is not what happens on a two-dimensional screen with a search box in the middle. Research happens in us as we learn and then share what we know. It's not a matter of objects that fit an assignment. It's a matter of finding our ways into the information landscapes where our fellow learners (sources) share what they know and carry on with their own learning in their own communities of practice.

Granted, the multi-dimensional and dynamic world of human knowledge, even in a single discipline, is a huge thing for our students to comprehend. They can't do it all at once. But as library educators we have to keep pointing them to what's next. One citation can always lead to another. One question always leads to the next question. And you will get lost if you don't start thinking about the landscape you are exploring, and the context that gives you the sources you are discovering.

Sources of Confusion | Inside Higher Ed

From Fister's Library Babel Fish, comments on composition research that illuminates the problems students have with using sources through quotation and paraphrase.

I am beginning to see that we should teach summarizing of sources and discourage the use of paraphrase. It's the difference between collecting bits of information and slapping them together and learning from sources so that one can make a coherent and integrated statement of what one learns from the sources.

Citations Are More Than Un-Plagiarism

I can't believe I haven't noticed this before. Iris Jastrom echoes and reinforces the idea of citation as a shared scholarly practice, adapted to the particular community of practice one hopes to enter.
http://pegasuslibrarian.com/2008/01/class-citation-as-lens-for.html/trackback
See also my post here from last year and from "Books are for Use" the year before. And before that the Good Learning Versus Plagiarism Tutorial.

Open Access Copy Available

An open access copy of the "3 Directions" article is now available on the College and Research Libraries website.

Integrated Literacy Across the Curriculum

At SUNY Oswego we have three areas in which we require students to develop skills and abilities to an advanced level on the basis of infusion or work across-the-curriculum. These areas include:

• 1. Communication, written and oral
• 2. Critical Thinking
• 3. Information Literacy

We have approached these areas as if they are three to five separate things, leading to overly complex requirements and multiple overlapping programs. On the other hand, a complete description of information literacy offers an integrated view of these skills. And this integrated view can help us design programs that are less burdensome and more powerful.

Below I quote the national Information Literacy Competency Standards and provide notes on how each standard applies to Communications, Critical Thinking and Information Literacy.

The Information Literacy Standards Embrace Communication and Critical Thinking

Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education (ACRL 2000.)

1. The information literate student determines the nature and extent of the information needed.

2. The information literate student accesses needed information effectively and efficiently.

3. The information literate student evaluates information and its sources critically and incorporates selected information into his or her knowledge base and value system.

4. The information literate student, individually or as a member of a group, uses information effectively to accomplish a specific purpose.

5. The information literate student understands many of the economic, legal, and social issues surrounding the use of information and accesses and uses information ethically and legally.

1. Information need

Other words for this include “research question” and “thesis.” This is the first step for both an information search and also for planning and composing an essay. Critical thinking often gives rise to the information need.

2. Access information

This is the one element, searching for and accessing informative sources, that is predominately the concern of library and information science. At the same time, these abilities are meaningless exercises when separated from the kind of discovery and inquiry associated with writing and critical thinking. Any authenticate search for information is embedded in learning, and becomes most powerful when done thoughtfully.

3. Evaluation, critical thinking and learning

Critical thinking predominates here. From the information search perspective, we consider formal means for selecting one source over another. Critical reading of the selected sources provides a deeper evaluation of the information, and develops the material for good writing.

4. Uses information for a purpose

In a college program, written and oral presentation of one’s learning is the ultimate purpose. Obviously communication predominates here, but any presentation is likely to take the form of an argument and to include information from other sources as evidence.

5. Ethical, legal, economic, and social issues

It is easy to read this as about not doing plagiarism. But when we think about our integrity as scholars, we may want to think that we have done a good job in our research, our argument and our writing. In other words, that we treat our field, our sources, our own thinking, and our readers fairly and with respect.

Which is All to Propose

When we grant that these three areas are generally integral and necessary to each other, then we can entertain the development of an integrated statement of learning outcomes, coherent programs for developing and practicing these abilities and an integrated assessment at the capstone level, subject to the practices and situations in the specific disciplines.

The article for my colleagues at SUNY Oswego, or not

The 3 Directions article with Oswego's proxy
or you can follow this citation to your library's holdings

Nichols, J. T. (2009). The 3 Directions: Situated Information Literacy. College and Research Libraries, 70(6), 515-530.