A little while back, I said I might speak further about LibGuides. Now seemed like a good time; I’ve dug into it more deeply and I’ve got a better sense of what it can do.
Overall, I’m pleased. Really pleased, in fact - it’s made creating online tools for the students I teach whys and wherefores of library research dramatically easier and faster, and the fact that LibGuides handles layout and design means that I no longer have to write* CSS to make my web things pretty.
I mentioned in my last entry that the sessions I taught using LibGuides page like this one have been far more successful and engaging to students. The pattern has held - my most recent victory was for a class in research analysis and design for psychology students, and the guide is seeing a lot of hits. My Industrial Psych guide is far and away the leader, with hundreds of hits since I taught the session, and the professor there asked if he could make it a core component of the course from now until eternity (or, I suppose, until something better comes along). It’s working out nicely. Read more…
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BI, libguides, library instruction, news
One of my responsibilities - a responsibility shared by many of my fellow librarians - is to teach library stuff to science students. Library orientation, BI, information literacy instruction, whatever you call it, it means teaching students the 5 W’s of the Library:
- Who is this guy?
- What is that squirrel doing out there? It looks merry.
- When will this end? Oh god, this is never going to end.
- Where is the coffee shop again?
- Why is he still talking?
In all seriousness, the prospect of teaching a library instruction teaching fills me with the nervousness, because although I have done it many times, I remain acutely aware of two things:
- Sometimes, you can’t make databases interesting, and
- I have no real training in teaching, and I have bored students nearly to death in the past.
However, I have to say that this week has proven to be an excellent week for library instruction. I’ve done two sessions, which is actually a little ahead of the pace for the sciences (I advertise every semester, and the response rate is almost always great in the Fall, and weaker in the Spring; I generally do one session per week at most), and both have gone very well.* Read more…
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BI, engaging students, information literacy, libguides, library instruction