Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Visualizing the research process

There's no question that some people, when needing directions to get from Point A to Point B, respond better to a textual list of directions, while others prefer a map (and of course, some like both).

Some students may need a map of the research process. While there are no doubt many of these somewhere on the Web, I'm especially impressed by this map designed specifically for genealogical research by Mark Tucker:

http://www.thinkgenealogy.com/wp-content/uploads/Genealogy%20Research%20Map%20v2.pdf

Do you think your students would benefit from a map like this one? Let me know what you think.

Monday, March 30, 2009

Grown Up Digital

Don Tapscott, who wrote Growing Up Digital, has just come out with a sequel. Grown Up Digital describes a generation now in its teens and twenties who are in college (or very soon to be) or entering the workforce. While Tapscott devotes chapters to various applications of his ideas (business, consumerism, etc.), the most interesting to me is the one on education. Throughout the book, Tapscott describes 8 "norms" that apply to the Net Generation (as he calls them): freedom, customization, scrutiny, integrity, collaboration, entertainment, speed, and innovation.

How does this apply to information literacy? Let me take a stab at that.

Speed? Unless students are given a *very* good reason to look at print materials, they are going to go for the online (from anywhere) sources every time.

Integrity? Students expect assignments to be honest. They reject busywork but can see the value of an assignment that is going to model some real-world behavior that they can envision themselves doing in the future.

Assignments need to be fun, not merely frustrating. They need some flexibility (freedom and customization). Ideally, they should involve the student in some sort of collaboration (with the instructor, the librarian, other students, others?).

Scrutiny? This generation already goes first to the Internet before they make a purchase, to see what others are saying. Help students learn to scrutinize information sources for themselves (Google vs. the library databases). Have them do the same assignment both ways, and compare the end result. Have different groups do it different ways, and come back together to compare notes.

Innovation? What new ideas can your own students generate to help themselves (and others) acquire information literacy skills? Why not ask them how they would go about learning these things?

Thursday, March 26, 2009

The latest MLA citation style (and RefWorks)

In May 2008, the Modern Language Association (MLA) published the 3rd edition of its MLA Style Manual and Guide to Scholarly Publishing, which made some changes in the official MLA citation style. One of the biggest changes was in the way that electronic publications should be distinguished from print publications.

This month, MLA has published the 7th edition of its MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, the book commonly used as a reference for MLA style by undergraduates.

If your students use RefWorks (the online service provided free to USF students and faculty) to manage their citations and to produce bibliographies, you'll be happy to know that RefWorks now includes an output style listed as "MLA for Scholarly Publishing, 3rd Edition". Students may want to make this one of their standard citation styles in RefWorks.

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Note taking via the Web (Evernote)

As students launch into an assignment, they need ways to keep track of the many bits and pieces that they discover. Some of these are in written form (printed books and articles), others are e-books, online articles (journal, magazine, newspaper), and websites.

One of the most popular free solutions to this is a product/service known as Evernote. With Evernote, you create an online account, and can use the online service to keep track of these many notes (which are searchable). But even better, you can install Evernote on a PC or Macintosh. And you can install it on a Windows Mobile device or iPhone.

And you can have it automatically synchronize all of these various incarnations of Evernote on different devices. So whether you're online or offline, you've got it available. Evernote also makes a plug-in for popular Web browsers, to make it even easier to grab that information from web pages. Oh, and did I mention yet that Evernote can be installed on a SanDisk U3 flash drive, so that it can be run on computers where it isn't installed?

I'll have more to say about Evernote later after I've had more personal time to play with it, but for those students (and faculty) who need an ever-present tool to keep track of the information they find (in all of its little bits), this may be an excellent solution.

Monday, March 23, 2009

Finding articles at USF

A few minutes ago, I was in an online chat dialog with a student who needed to find peer-reviewed journal articles for his assignment. The student had used databases before, but wasn't sure where to find them on the USF Libraries website.

Most USF undergraduate students, especially those in lower-level General Education courses, will find the following steps helpful:
  1. Go to the home page of the USF Libraries website (at www.lib.usf.edu). If off-campus, click on the "Not Connected" button at the top left to sign in.
  2. Click on "Databases by Title/Subject". Then choose the "by Subject" tab, and scroll down to the "General and multidisciplinary" category. Highlight that one, and click "Go" on the far right.
  3. The 7 databases listed are good starting points for research, including several for journal articles, and two for newspaper articles. The first one (Academic Search Premier) is an especially good starting point, because it covers so many excellent journals.
With these simple steps, your students can be directed to high-quality sources.

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Assignments and the Library

If you are using an assignment for your class that requires using a physical resource found within the USF Tampa Library, or a resource that can be accessed online via the USF Libraries website, you may want to check to be sure that the resource is still available and in the same location as when you last used it.

Also, some kinds of resources change names, so using an older name in an assignment may frustrate a student if they can't find it with that name. For example, in the past few months a student came to the Reference Desk and said that their instructor had asked them to use "LUIS". This is a name for a previous version of our online catalog that has not been used for several years. Newer librarians and library graduate students may be unfamiliar with these older names, and be unable to help your students find the appropriate resource.

If you're short on time, feel free to e-mail me (or any other USF Tampa librarian) your assignment, and we can review it to make sure that the referenced resources are up-to-date and available to your students.

Monday, March 16, 2009

Reading citations before writing them

One of the things that I notice at the Reference Desk is that many students (both undergraduate and graduate) have difficult in reading citations that they have been given. Whether it's from a footnote, an endnote, or a works cited page, or something that an instructor has sent them, the student cannot immediately tell if they are dealing with an entire book, part of a book (such as a chapter or essay in a book with multiple authors), or an article from a periodical (journal, magazine, or newspaper).

Before students can develop their skills in writing correct citations for things that they find, it would be helpful to them if they could develop their skills in reading citations. Can a student look at a citation and determine that they are dealing with a book? If the citation is for a journal, can they distinguish the journal title from the article title? Can they identify the volume number, the issue number, and the page(s)?

Just as children are taught to read before they can write, students should be taught to read citations before they are expected to write them. Then they can more easily determine if they have all the necessary information in the citations they produce.

Friday, March 13, 2009

Less "Distracted", more information literacy (databases)

While I'm still working my way through Distracted, I felt that I should identify one of the most useful starting points for general undergraduate research: the database Academic Search Premier. One of the things that I think causes students to avoid library databases and use a simple tool such as Google is the fact that they only have to know one thing: Google. With Google, students aren't put into the position of having to decide which among several hundred databases they should start with in order to begin their research into the published literature.

When I demonstrate Academic Search Premier to students, I point out a few key features:
  • checking the "Scholarly (Peer Reviewed) Journals" box
  • *not* checking the "Full Text" box (so that they can still find articles in full text that might be in some database *other* than Academic Search Premier)
  • choosing "Find all my search terms" so that it behaves a bit more like Google
If you're just trying to introduce your students to the idea of a library database that contains peer-reviewed material, Academic Search Premier is a good starting point.

Thursday, March 12, 2009

"Distracted" by information literacy

In my leisure time, I don't set out to read books about information literacy, although I do enjoy books that cover some related fields, such as information technology and psychology. During my most recent visit to Borders, I came across one with an intriguing title and premise: Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age, by Maggie Jackson.

162 pages into it, I was surprised to find a section discussing information literacy and the experiences of college faculty as they see their students avoiding print sources and hoping to find everything that they need using only Google. While nothing about information literacy skills (or the students' lack thereof) surprised me, I was a bit surprised to find information literacy given a good treatment in a book for a general audience.

Perhaps you already share the view of CSU Vice-Chancellor Lorie Roth, who is quoted in Distracted as saying (after she had examined discarded print-outs used by students during their online searches): "As I sat there, surrounded by the detritus from the trash cans, paging through these print-outs, I tried to reconstruct what kind of thought processes these students were using. I finally arrived at the conclusion, in fact, that there was no process; that there was no logical, clear, systematic inquiry."

I'll let you know when I finish reading Distracted, because at this point, I don't know if Jackson plans to offer any advice for avoiding the "coming dark age" that she describes.

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Citing sources made more painless

Students may complain about writing research papers in general, but they are especially frustrated with trying to figure out how to correctly cite the material they find in online library databases. Our experience here in the USF Library is that many students are tickled to discover RefWorks, the online citation management service that is available free of charge to all USF students, faculty, and staff.

RefWorks not only can produce an alphabetized bibliography in a standard citation style from a list of sources (a bibliography that can be quickly copied and pasted into the end of a research paper), but also it manages sources using folders of the user's choosing. We've heard tell of some RefWorks users having as many as tens of thousands of citations!

Best of all, most of the major online databases to which the USF Libraries subscribe are designed to export source citations directly into RefWorks. It's not perfect. For instance, the newspaper articles in Access World News don't always get exported with the right capitalization and are often missing all date information except for the year. RefWorks users still need to examine their automated citations and fix them as needed.

For more information about RefWorks, visit the RefWorks link under the Research Help tab of the USF Libraries website. There you'll find tutorials on how to use the service.

Monday, March 09, 2009

Plagiarism and a little pop culture parody

While plagiarism (or cheating in general) is not a particular funny topic, teaching students about what it is and what the ramifications are can be done in an overly dry way. Instead, one may be able get the attention of students through a clever parody of a popular song.

Students who recognize Carrie Underwood's recent hit "Before He Cheats" will appreciate the following Gainesville-produced music video song parody (admittedly, for a high-school audience):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NvA4hCOfjU

Friday, March 06, 2009

Welcome!

The 2009 Spring Semester is in full swing at USF, and students ranging from freshmen to graduate students are struggling with their assignments. Some are having trouble finding peer-reviewed articles, while others are trying to figure out how to cite what they are finding.

Your students are trying to develop their information literacy skills. But they need your help.

Which skills a student develops and to what degree depends a great deal upon the kind of assignments you give them, the instructions you provide, and the instructional resources you provide them (such as links to online tutorials in the class Blackboard site).

This blog is intended to provide you with ideas, tips, techniques, resources, questions, answers, and whatever else can help you help your students. Whether it's formulating a research question, choosing a database to search, identifying search terms, evaluating sources, or citing sources in a particular style, this blog will attempt to cover the range of topics related to information literacy skills and their development among university students.

I hope that you find it helpful, and your feedback will always be appreciated.