20071212

Peninsula College Library 2.0 Meets Web 2.0

Peninsula College Library recently attended the Quarterly Library Instruction Roundtable, sponsored by the University of Washington Instruction & Information Literacy Working Group. The meeting took place Dec. 10, 2007 in the Allen Auditorium of the University of Washington Suzzallo Library. This is a brief first-hand report.

There were about 20 librarians in attendance. The meeting began with the presentation of three demonstrations. 1) screen casting of both product and concept tutorials, 2) a video of a library catalog concept tutorial, and 3) services for remote and online users.

SCREEN CASTING DEMONSTRATION
The product tutorials are point-of-use tutorials on subjects like “How to Use PubMed.” They can be linked to through a “Help” or “How To” tab on the library home page. Although these may duplicate vendor tutorials, they are customized with local features like “connecting to full text.”

Parts of concept tutorials, were presented. Concept tutorials include aids such as “Known Citation Searching,” “Finding Measurement Tools,” “Legal Research,” “Finding Drug Information,” etc. which are focused on a process involving the use of several different products.

VIDEO DEMONSTRATION
UW received a 21st Century Grant to buy video making equipment and they are using it to address conceptual problems, such as “What is a catalog?,” a video they produced using a 40’s/50’s style reminiscent of government training films, to add an element of humor.

SERVICES TO REMOTE AND ONLINE USERS
This presentation looked at library use of Web 2.0 and asked the questions: “Do librarians fit well in social networking? Do students want us there?” Instead of creating YouTube videos, FaceBook pages, blogs, wikis, etc. to attempt overt or covert library instruction, the suggestion was to involve students in active learning, for example the creation of movies on research skills.

SUMMARY OF SOME DISCUSSION POINTS

INTEGRATION
One especially relevant criticism voiced early in the discussion: This all seems piecemeal. There is no integration. There is no structure. We can only go so far marketing products with adlib stuff without a context. Knowing when and why to use a tool (or a library!) is as important as knowing how.

ASSESSMENT
How do you know students are using something? Are site meters and Google Analytics really providing us with significant feedback? To be effective, assessment should be embedded in courses where feedback mechanisms can be built in, such as student journaling of how they feel about IL (information literacy) components, whether learning styles are being addressed, etc. Discipline faculty can provide feedback to library faculty.

MISCELLANEOUS
Librarians can provide tools, organize the tools (indicating which are beginning level, which are useful for a certain problem, etc.), but… (and I quote)…: “The 50 minute library lecture is dead.”

There was some discussion of using course management systems, such as Moodle, to create a rich IL environment which includes videos, text, quizzes, chat rooms, etc. for distance learners.

Conclusory Note:
This meeting confirmed that Peninsula College is addressing the same issues that educational institutions in the I-5 corridor are addressing, with the same level of success. The Peninsula College Library is already Web 2.0-enabled with YouTube, MySpace, and Google blog presence and will soon (July 2008) have a new library instruction classroom to promote active learning using electronic and print resources.