Ithaka Report available

The Ithaka organization has published their findings from a 2006 survey of both faculty and librarians about scholarly publishing and how technological change has changed the faculty/library relationship. The studies, Ithaka’s 2006 Studies of Key Stakeholders in the Digital Transformation in Higher Education raise some interesting questions for academic libraries. One of its recommendations is that academic libraries need to be clearer about what they are doing to help faculty understand exactly what the library can and is providing.

“An important lesson is that the library is in many ways falling off the radar screens of faculty. Although scholars report general respect for libraries and librarians, the library is increasingly disintermediated from their actual research processes.”

and

“In the case of the library, both the library leadership as well as individual librarians should be reaching out to faculty members, formally and informally, to understand the nature of their teaching and research projects, and how their needs are being met or could be met better.”

This process can not happen if librarians sit in their offices or at the desk waiting for faculty and students to come to them. We have to provide relevant help at the point of need and we have to determine what that help should consist of both in person and online. Asking our faculty what they need from us should be an ongoing process and the more librarians understand of these needs, the more effective we can be. if we allow ourselves to become invisible to those we serve we make ourselves redundant.

Clickers and learning

As an instructor and professor I don’t believe in using technology in the classroom unless it serves a pedagogical purpose. Clickers when they were first introduced seemed to be a tool with limited functionality. Furthermore as at my previous institution, charging students a deposit for their required clickers seemed punitive.  I now have to determine for myself their usefulness in teaching as my new library has two sets.

In library instruction we always talk about assessment and how we can determine if students are learning what we think that they are learning.  I suppose clickers might provide a mode of doing this but I would want to try using it over a series of classes.  Knowing that my student base might skew a little older and that technology can possibly intimidate I might also want to try to provide other assessment criteria.  This might actually involve communicating with faculty about their goals for the instruction session.  I remain a skeptic but one who is willing to experiment.

Clickers in a classroom

Image Source:www.citl.ohiou.edu