60 research outputs found
Internet outfitters: librarians in the twenty-first century
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Purpose
In the future, librarians need to prepare users to navigate a profoundly different informational landscape. Addressing issues of information overload and informed selection of both search tools and results, the purpose of this paper is to cast the collaborative relationship between librarian and student in the mode of an outfitter: a guide preparing a client for a journey. Within this context, the authors emerging role involves guiding students through the task at hand using critical thinking skills to access a wider range of publications to meet a broader range of needs.
Design/methodology/approach
Metaphors created by Raymond and Friedman reflect the current state of information, the relationship users have with these sources, and the role librarians play in a disintermediated environment. In The Cathedral and the Bazaar, Raymond portrays a decentralized environment as a bazaar. In The World is Flat 3.0, Friedman describes how technology flattens organizations through empowering end users. The informational landscape in the twenty-first century is decentralized, and more powerful search tools provide unparalleled access to these sources. Users, however, continue to experience problems finding their information. A librarian/outfitter can prepare users to effectively track information in the new environment.
Findings
In the twenty-first century, a broader range of sources are available, and search engines are turning to dashboards to prioritize the growing list of results. Users need to adapt to the new environment through viewing the search as an activity rather than a destination. Librarians can help this process through sharing their expertise in uncovering likely places relevant information may be found, in evaluating sources, and locating information in a larger context. Through developing the meta-skill of information management, librarians guide users through the process of finding information for personal, professional, and academic needs.
Practical implications
The author’s goal is what it has always been: empowering end users to successfully access needed information in a disintermediated environment. Today librarians need to emphasize a fundamentally different set of skills in the interactions they have with students and faculty. People can use dashboards and satisficing to find sources they need, but librarian/outfitters can introduce a broader range of sources and tools suitable for completing specific tasks. This paper illustrates the different skills needed to effectively find information for personal, professional, and academic tasks.
Originality/value
This paper provides a new context for the process used for locating and validating information in an increasingly broad and diffuse informational landscape. Librarians become advisors in navigating a more complex informational landscape that is used to meet a broader range of informational needs. While focusing on navigating the broader range of resources through decoding dashboards and satisficing techniques, the author can assist users in overcoming information overload and advocate a broader sense of satisficing through using more sophisticated critical thinking skills.
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Leveraging Library Instruction in a Digital Age
No full textInformation management is an indispensable skill in the twenty-first century because finding credible information is now more complicated than ever before. Students continue to experience difficulty locating accurate information, especially for their academic assignments. Studies reveal that a number of factors undermine students' success in locating relevant information and that personal intervention may prove to be the most efficient means of teaching this proficiency. Librarians, however, seldom have more than a class period in which to intervene. Even an hour is enough to mentor students in appropriate techniques in order to allow them to complete their assignment, if virtual support is effective. This chapter illustrates how learning objectives can effectively serve to separate classroom activities in a face-to-face environment from virtually accessed digital instruction. An assignment from a second semester composition class serves as an example of how a teacher can leverage instruction in a face-to-face environment through providing supplemental online content.</jats:p
Discovery Services: An Academically Enhanced Google?
No full textGoogle prepared all of us for a single-search box window to access resources, and libraries recently adopted discovery services to accommodate this expectation. This service collates resources into a single-box search environment, and permits users to filter the results into meaningful groups that reinforce the research process. Teaching students to “think” their way through the search-process facilitates critical thinking skills
Library Assignments Beyond the Essay
No full textRather than bringing students to the library, bring library resources to you’re students through using critical thinking skills in a managing information exercise that uses locating and evaluating information to emphasize concepts within your class. Examples will include broader context for designing library instruction that echoes the courses’ content
Think critically: evaluate that information!
No full textCome examine how adding critical thinking components can meaningfully introduce the resources and services available through the library. Designing assignments with critical thinking components changes the focus from locating a thing to thinking about the relationship between things; between the topic and the key words that describe the idea; between the OPAC and the items on the shelf; between discovery and the quality of information. Examples will demonstrate how assignments emphasizing process and resourcefulness engage students to think through the search process and highlight the link between assignments and the various locations, services and resources needed
Managing Information: Lessons for the 21st Century
No full textManaging Information has become a buzz-word in objectives and courses, but how does this differ from Library Instruction? In an age where students are expected to demonstrate their familiarity with a topic through assessments other than a term paper, Information Literacy becomes more than learning traditional library skills. Library instruction typically involves showing students how to find peer reviewed articles for an academic paper. However, students are writing fewer papers and demonstrating their competence through their use of a growing array of social media; including discussion boards, mashups, and Skype. Acceptable sources have moved from merely published peer-reviewed scholarly documents to the new primary documents of blogs, tweets and even Facebook as well as a growing number of Creative Commons publications and digital archives. In addition, the granularity of these info-bits make it increasingly difficult for students to find a context within which to draw the pieces together, and their false sense of expertise further complicates relearning inadequate search strategies. Consequently, students are entering a seemingly familiar environment that works far differently from their expectations. A few examples illustrate this point: When contributing to a discussion board or writing a reflective journal, use of a blog from 9/11 survivors provides a valuable primary source. Tweets sent during the Arab spring illustrate the sense of chaos participants experienced. When Skyping, students need to find credible information in a timely fashion to support their opinions. Incorporating first hand observations from blogs can provide appropriate insight to more academic discussions, such as using blogs from a veterans’ forum in a literary discussion of “The Things They Carried.” As assignments move away from the traditional academic paper, students will still need to find credible sources to support their ideas. Through focusing on methods to locate and evaluate the broader range of information on the Web, students can gain a clearer sense of putting credible information into context to make their point on the Web, through a paper, or in-person
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Reevaluating the compositional process of Anton Webern, 1910-1925
No full texttextAnalytical treatments of Anton Webern’s compositions between 1910 and 1925
fail to provide a “rosetta stone” by which these works may be collectively understood. In
his 1932 lecture, The Way to the New Music, Webern provided a clue to understanding
these works. Here he used the term “run” to describe his compositional process for the
Bagatelles. The present study proposes that what Webern termed a “run” refers to an
unfolding aggregate of unique pitch-classes that mark a division, idea, or theme within
the composition. Although a run usually contains pitch-class repetition, the presentation
of all twelve unique pitch-classes defines structural divisions within the composition.
These boundaries are articulated by the appearance of the final missing pitch-class, and
generally supported by additional elements of timbre, tempo, and dynamics. Webern was
forced to thin the texture and compress the form in his atonal works in order to permit
one to aurally perceive the introduction of unique pitch-classes. My analyses of Opp. 7
through 19 support this conclusion.Musi
UHS Sophomore Class
No full textThe photographs were taken for the 1956 edition of the Uintah High School yearbook. They are on page 35. The portraits on the page were of some of the members of the Sophomore Class. Top row, from left to right: Robert Goodrich, Julane Goodrich, Joyce Green, and Gene Gurr. (NOTE: Ray Dean Gross and Larry Gurr were absent when the photos were taken.) Second row down, from left to right: Terry Hadlock, Nancy Hacking, Sandra Hacking, Wayne Hall, Aloah Harrison, and Jimmy Hardman. Third row down, from left to right: Vicki Harrison, Hallis Hatch, Janet Hatch, Virginia Hein, DeAnne Haws, and Polly Anna Haws. Fourth row down, from left to right: Judy Hickman, Harmon Hodgkinson, Gloria Horrocks, Edward Hullinger, and Frank Jaramillo. (NOTE: Enid Holmes was absent when the photos were taken.) Bottom row, from left to right: Charles James, Kay Johnson, Duane Karren, Kaye Kenny, and Shela Kendall. (NOTE: Johnnie Johnson was absent when the photos were taken.
Bacillus anthracis: Balancing innocent research with dual-use potential
No full textAnthrax Euronet, a Coordination Action of the EU 6th Framework Programme, was designed to strengthen networking activities between anthrax research groups in Europe and to harmonise protocols for testing anthrax vaccines and therapeutics. Inevitably, the project also addressed aspects of the current political issues of biosecurity and dual-use research, i.e. research into agents of important diseases of man, livestock or agriculture that could be used as agents of bioterrorism. This review provides a comprehensive overview of the biology of Bacillus anthracis, of the pathogenesis, epidemiology and diagnosis of anthrax, as well as vaccine and therapeutic intervention strategies. The proposed requirement for a code of conduct for working with dual-use agents such as the anthrax bacillus is also discussed
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