New eyes each year
Find old books here,
And new books, too,
Old eyes renew;
So youth and age
Like ink and page
In this house join,
Minting new coin.
Philip Larkin
1979
You know, we write an awful lot of papers!
• Students think Power point is not particularly useful.
• Students like to work together on projects.
• Students love to be asked their opinions on how to design multi-media projects that will help them learn.
• Students think librarians and IT people are their learning partners along with the faculty, and they don’t think faculty members appreciate the librarians and instructional technologists as much as they should.
• Search engines fit the student life style;
• Library use is diminishing; and
• “books” are the library brand”
"The Future of the Library in the Research University, "
Paul Courant in No Brief Candle: Reconceiving Research Libraries for the 21st Century, CLIR publication no. 142
“It is likely that almost all of the scholarly literature will be available in digital form, at least somewhere, within the next ten years.
“The teaching of scholarly method is the most important aspect of undergraduate education. Our students must learn how to make judgments about the quality of information that they use. I do not presume that things in libraries are “good” and that things on the open Web are not good. Rather, I argue that it is essential that students be able to check on facts and assertions using reliably replicable sources. Libraries provide the infrastructure for this kind of teaching just as they do for scholarship, as the methods involved are the same in both. Success here will require two things:
1. Coordinated curricula in which librarians and faculty demand the engaged use of library materials and library expertise;
2. The ability to search collections with something like the same ease and efficacy with which one can search the open Web
What is to be done if we are to nurture and teach this generation of students?
• Faculty, librarians and instructional technologists must work together as Courant suggests.
• Learn more about how students do their work
• Make it possible for searchers to find scholarly material as easily as they find material on the open Web
• Rethink assignments
• Use technology in academically appropriate ways
• Help students to understand that they are now part of a community of scholars
• Design attractive work spaces for individual and group work
• Do less of some other activities so that we can do more with information fluency
• Assess our efforts
Some examples:
There are lots of online resources. Here are some examples. How might you use them?
• The Homer multitext project
http://chs.harvard.edu/chs/homer_multitext
• Rome Wasn’t Digitized in a Day, CLIR Publication
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http://www.clir.org/pubs/abstract/reports/pub150
• Lapis-a game
http://www.practomime.com/?page_id=122
• Propylaeum Virtual Library of Classical Studies
http://www.propylaeum.de/en/altertumswissenschaften/
• American School of Classical Studies in Athens
http://www.ascsa.net/research?v=default
• Anthropology faculty member wants his students to understand how communities of scholars evolve beginning with one seminal thinker’s work.
http://www.mtholyoke.edu/~mglackin/roth.jpg
Questions for consideration
1. How can an information fluency program be designed as a key element of a course on the ancient world?
2. What are the key ingredients needed to build collaborative relationships among faculty, librarians and information technology staff?
3. How might chief academic officers be involved in information fluency planning?
4. How might students be involved in information fluency planning?
5. What ingredients of curricular, library and information technology planning need to be aligned in order for the three areas to work together effectively?
6. What current activities can be changed, dropped, or outsourced to create time and energy for information fluency programs?
7. How can we measure success?
