This is a topic that I’ve been grappling with lately, and I know that others have too. It seems like in library instruction we mostly start with “finding” for a variety of reasons: finding has been difficult, finding is the “library part,” finding connects users to our collections, and finding is where we can show off what we know best. Of course many of us spend time on other skills in library instruction sessions – topic formation, evaluation, citing. And some of us work, usually in collaboration with faculty, to promote other skills such as analysis.
But in my recent experience, our (perceived?) focus on finding creates some negative publicity for library instruction programs. Why are we so focused on teaching people to search when library interfaces are becoming easier to use, people will be discovering all content through Google, and so on. These all seem like valid questions, and my initial thoughts have been that if finding really does become such a non-issue, there will certainly be plenty of other areas where learners need our support, like evaluating the results of a Google search. But I also think that there’s plenty of research that people are not so good at finding, so we really need to look into the “finding is easy” assumption first.
A very interesting post on ACRLog refers to some new research by the very famous web usability expert Jacob Nielsen on this topic. According to Nielsen, users face three problems: inability to revise their strategy, inability to understand search results and evaluate for potential usefulness, inability to sort through search results. I’m still figuring out the distinctions between the last two, so go to the source for the full story. The ACRLog post includes some other interesting leads as well.
Sarah,
I grapple with this one all the time, because I want to explore other aspects of chemistry info literacy, but users want to focus on the “finding” piece only. Often just finding something is good enough. In chemistry there is often a great deal of time spent on finding: technical part of accessing resources (client-based), intricacies of structure-based searching, nuances of name or formula, etc. We never get to the more interesting part such as the three points above. I might use those points as points 2,3,4 in the outline for my next session: 1. Finding; 2. Revising strategies; 3. Search results; 4. Managing. I usually cover these things, but I might try to be more deliberate about it next time.
Comment by Emily Wixson — April 15, 2008 @ 1:47 pm |