Deborah Wells-Clinton: Information literacy

Copyright Materials

Sat, 04 Sep 2004 16:56:26 GMT

ALA to launch copyright course. To stem the influx of peer-to-peer file-sharing lawsuits cropping up in schools, the American Library Association (ALA) plans to roll out a nationwide curriculum designed to help students navigate the murky waters of copyright law. [eSchool News Top Stories]
This looks like a good initiative. School librarians can certainly use some help with teaching students about intellectural property rights.

Authoritative Sources

Sun, 29 Aug 2004 14:48:17 GMT

Wikipedia -- can open source be a good source?. Over on Web4Lib, there's been a bit of discussion based on this article, in which a school librarian says that Wikipedia, a popular online encyclopedia built by a community of web users, is not an authoritative source and is therefore untrustworthy.
Some of the questions raised on Web4Lib were: who makes the determination that a source is authoritative? How do they reach that conclusion? Can a community-built encyclopedia be equated with the latest World Book? Wikipedia is immensely popular at the community college where I work and students use it all the time. Do other librarians use/recommend/hate/revile this resource? [LISNews.com]
This is an interesting post because of the discussion. I agreed with the school librarian in the article until I read some of the comments to the LISNews post. I guess we need to carefully rethink our concept of authority.

Subject Headings, Keywords, or ??

Sun, 15 Aug 2004 21:33:35 GMT

Search Tool Hopes To Make Key Words Obsolete. A new search tool has eliminated the need for keyword searching. Blinkx recently launched a free beta version of its search application that uses self-learning algorithms to search the Web and a user's PC. [InternetWeek]

Information Competency

Tue, 10 Aug 2004 21:46:30 GMT

Information Competency. If you have been following this weblog a long time, you might remember our reference to Topsy N. Smalley's webpage, topsy.org back in November 2003. Well, Topsy has been busy collecting information competency and information literacy resources, and has put them together on a page called Information Competency. The bulk of information is specific to California and information competency/literacy in community colleges, but also includes more general IL resources. It is regularly updated and certainly worth a look. --Stuart. [Information Literacy Weblog]

Info Lit in a WebQuest

Wed, 02 Jun 2004 01:02:59 GMT

A WebQuest to Information Literacy. Karen Hunt has recently completed a project, hosted by the Manitoba Libraries Association, entitled A WebQuest to Information Literacy whose purpose is: '... to introduce librarians to the format of the WebQuest for creating information literacy learning environments. At the same time the WebQuest is also about the various tools and standards that are available describing information literacy learning outcomes and programmes.'... [Information Literacy Weblog]
Very nice -- good site for looking at and considering both WebQuests and information literacy standards.

Information Literacy Tutorial

Sat, 29 May 2004 21:22:54 GMT

BILT: Brevard Information Literacy Tutorial. BILT, the Brevard Information Literacy Tutorial, is a recent development of Deborah Anderson and the Palm Bay Campus of Brevard Community College designed: '...to help students learn basic information literacy skills necessary to effectively find, retrieve and evaluate information..." [Information Literacy Weblog]
This "tutorial" is just a very well-laid-out set of web pages with explanations and tips about this college's library and its resources. It's really very nice, but I was hoping for something a little more interactive, with a quiz, for example. (I keep thinking of the self-paced workbooks that many of us were having students work through in college libraries twenty years ago.) On the other hand, this one encourages teachers to collaborate with librarians to incorporate various modules into assignments, which is always better than having students simply read the web pages. I certainly recommend this tutorial to high school librarians as a model they could use as well.

Plagiarism Prevention in DC Public Schools

Fri, 23 Apr 2004 12:29:28 GMT

Schools Turn to Software to Help Stop Plagiarism [The Washington Post (requires free registration)] [Library Link of the Day]
Not a new story, but interesting in its coverage in the popular press.

Everyone Needs To Be Information Literate

Wed, 17 Mar 2004 12:03:50 GMT

H2O Nomenclature Fools City Officials. A California city council scheduled a vote on banning dihydrogen monoxide before someone realized they'd be outlawing water. Dihydrogen monoxide is one of the many Internet hoaxes that can mislead surfers (and journalists) lacking modern literacy skills.[LISNews.com]
To be fair, the city council in this article was really concerned about the pollution caused by Styrofoam, but this is certainly a great example to show students how misinformation can get passed along. I wonder if the paralegal who did the research has ever had any lessons in evaluating information.

The Whole World in a Google

Mon, 15 Mar 2004 17:07:05 GMT

In Google they trust. ""In one sense, with Google, everything is knowable now," said Esther Dyson, who publishes Release 1.0, a technology-industry newsletter. "We were much more passive about information in the past. We would go to the library or the phone book, and if it wasn't there, we didn't worry about it. Now, people can't as easily drift from your life. We can't pretend to be ignorant." But the flood of unedited information, she said, demands that users sharpen critical thinking skills, to filter the results. "Google," she said, "forces us to ask, `What do we really want to know?' " Full story at NYTimes" (free registration required). [LISNews.com]
This is a fun article about the search engine that has become such a huge part of popular culture. Is it really changing culture and is the change a good one?

Ask Them What It Means

Mon, 15 Mar 2004 16:48:53 GMT

Reading a lost art [The Denver Post] [Library Link of the Day]
This article by Heather Grimshaw has the subtitle "Comprehension drops, causing teachers to rethink instructional plan." I was interested to see once again a call for instruction that includes questioning, discussion, and analysis, rather than just regurgitation. The article talks about "fake readers," who must be related to "fake researchers" -- the ones who copy and paste and otherwise plagiarize their papers.

Wading in the Deep Web

Sat, 13 Mar 2004 22:53:50 GMT

In search of the deep Web

The next generation of Web search engines will do more than give you a longer list of search results. They will disrupt the information economy.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Alex Wright
March 9, 2004 | When Yahoo announced its Content Acquisition Program on March 2, press coverage zeroed in on its controversial paid inclusion program, whereby customers can pony up in exchange for enhanced search coverage and a vaunted "trusted feed" status. But lost amid the inevitable search-wars storyline was another, more intriguing development: the unlocking of the deep Web.
Those of us who place our faith in the Googlebot may be surprised to learn that the big search engines crawl less than 1 percent of the known Web. Beneath the surface layer of company sites, blogs and porn lies another, hidden Web. The "deep Web" is the great lode of databases, flight schedules, library catalogs, classified ads, patent filings, genetic research data and another 90-odd terabytes of data that never find their way onto a typical search results page.
...
The deep Web contains some 500 times more data than the surface Web; but to regard the deep Web as simply a bigger and better version of the current Web is to overlook the essential feature of databases, which is structure. Most of the deep Web is structured or semi-structured data, as opposed to the sea of flotsam HTML that bobs across the surface Web.

This is something that librarians and information scientists have known about for a long time, but knowledge of the "deep web" or the "invisible web", as some call it, is beginning to move into the mainstream, and with that knowledge are coming new ways of searching and of accessing all that information. This is just more of what I've remarked on a couple of times recently, and it puts another line under that question: how do we teach people to navigate and evaluate information as the flood gets ever deeper?

Sat, 06 Mar 2004 20:21:02 GMT

Pseudo Sites. "Think you can tell an authoritative, scholarly web site from a "spurious" one? Think your students can?
Well, If you want a laugh, check out this collection of faux web sites. ... Jeffrey Hastings,Librarian, Highlander Way Middle School Library. Send YOUR spurious encyclopedia entries in html to: hastingj@howellschools.com" [LISNews.com]
These are really pretty funny. I could see slipping one or two into a list of sites in a lesson on website evaluation, just to see if the kids catch on.

Making Citations Easier

Mon, 01 Mar 2004 21:12:14 GMT

Making Citations Easier. A Cite to Delight In
"After enduring a few book projects and several whitepapers, we know the pain that is footnotes. Apparently, so do the folks over at Encyclopædia Britannica (example). We've noticed recently that they have introduced a helpful feature: Ready-made citations.... While online news sites might not think of themselves as academic resources, people are turning the Web first for information. Why not do things that will help them credit you properly?"[The Shifted Librarian]
I've seen this feature on other resources, but it's certainly something to think about again. How could we provide this -- if the resource doesn't do it -- for our students? BTW the citation formats that EB provides are for the bibliography, not for footnotes.

Sun, 29 Feb 2004 17:25:36 GMT

School librarians role shifting from storyteller to data expert. The Seattle Times noticed with computers in most classrooms and encyclopedias online, a major shift is taking place in school libraries. They say a job once designed for mild-mannered book lovers has evolved into something more powerful: CIO, or chief information officer, of the school. And school districts across Puget Sound are officially recognizing the shift. [LISNews.com]

Print vs. Web in School Libraries

Fri, 27 Feb 2004 14:22:01 GMT

The January issue of From Now On, one of the ezines from Jamie Mckenzie, has a good article on school libraries.

Fri, 20 Feb 2004 17:53:59 GMT

The Infodiet: How Libraries Can Offer an Appetizing Alternative to Google. Academic Libraries
Source: The Chronicle of Higher Education
The Infodiet: How Libraries Can Offer an Appetizing Alternative to Google
A new article by Steven Bell. He writes, "For some time now, the largest producers of databases have focused more on competing with each other for library business than on designing interfaces that students can navigate on their own. And because the producers seem to think that a librarian cares most about the number of full-text journals a database contains, their databases are now so loaded down with journals of questionable value that searches often yield results that are not much better than Google's -- but almost equally addictive to students, who get lots of full-text articles fast without having to do much thinking. In their current state, the aggregators are part of the infobesity problem, not part of its solution." Kudos to S.B. for an excellent article. One potential solution (at least for the time being) might be the federated database/common user interface concept. This could help solve several research issues common in academic and other types of libraries. This technology can also allow the individual library or research organization to build an interface for the particular wants and needs of their users. Finally, when a faculty member is nice enough to invite a librarian into their class, the librarian can talk about a single interface instead of many disparate sources and tools. [ResourceShelf]
This is an important article, and one that librarians who serve high school students should read and consider as well, since our students have the same problem and have even fewer discriminiation skills.

Fri, 20 Feb 2004 17:40:51 GMT

Invisible Web and Information Literacy. Yazdan Mansourian, who produces the Invisible web weblog writes for us: "Mary Hricko from Kent State University has published an article entitled [base "]Using the Invisible Web to Teach Information Literacy [base "](Ref 1). This is an interesting article because it has... [Information Literacy Weblog]

Sat, 07 Feb 2004 13:53:33 GMT

Burn the catalog. An intriguing commentary on the frustrations of using the online catalog, and of teaching others to use it. Honey, I feel your pain.

This is not just about availability, but about the near-impossibility of teaching undergraduates the kinds of search heuristics that will reliably produce useful material on most research subjects. ... I used to be a punk and think that was about Luddism and sloth, but I'm realizing that the fault lies less in ourselves and more in our tools...

[baa baa blog]
I can relate to the frustrations espressed here -- with my students and with my own research. I think this is a great suggestion:

I'm to the point where I think we'd be better off to just utterly erase our existing academic catalogs and forget about backwards-compatibility, lock all the vendors and librarians and scholars together in a room, and make them hammer out electronic research tools that are Amazon-plus, Amazon without the intent to sell books but with the intent of guiding users of all kinds to the books and articles and materials that they ought to find, a catalog that is a partner rather than an obstacle in the making and tracking of knowledge.

Searching by Grid

Thu, 05 Feb 2004 11:07:32 GMT

Interesting Google Tool: SearchGrid. Ever wondered how various combinations of search words can change your result count? Now you can find out with an interesting Google tool called SearchGrid ( http://blog.outer-court.com/search-grid/ ). ... [ResearchBuzz]
This would be an especially good tool to use with students when talking about search terms and keywords. I can imagine using it myself with complicated queries; it appeals to my visual learning style.

Finding the Meaning

Fri, 19 Dec 2003 15:00:07 GMT

Finding the Meaning: Using online resources, history students investigate artifacts of war. Battle Creek, Michigan When Scott Durham joined the faculty at Lakeview High eight years ago, it was a homecoming. He was back at his alma mater, teaching where he was once taught. [Innovation Odyssey]
This is a nice article about a history teacher and a librarian who were inspired by the American Fellows program at the Library of Congress and have gone on to inspire their students using primary documents and encouraging them to be critical thinkers.

Arthur C. Clarke on Information Pollution

Thu, 11 Dec 2003 10:26:46 GMT

In the way it often happens, I followed a link on the blog pointed to in the posting below and ended up at this article, an interview with Arthur C. Clarke that ranges over many aspects of technology in modern society. I agree with McGee that this is a good quote:

We are now faced with the responsibility of discernment. Just as our ancestors quickly realised that no one was going to force them to read the entire library of a thousand books, we are now overcoming the initial alarm at the sheer weight of available information [^] and coming to understand that it is not the information itself that determines our future, only the use we can make of it.

This is news?

Sun, 07 Dec 2003 12:04:11 GMT

LibrarianTeacher Partnership Key to Student Success. The Appoquinimink School District (DE) has begun promoting librarian-teacher collaboration to increase the academic performance of its students, taking a clue from numerous studies that demonstrate the benefits of such programs. Instead of students going to the library for small periods of time for library instruction, the schools' libraries will be open all the time, as classroom extensions, with lessons co-led by librarians and teachers. Despite the obvious benefits, there are issues with money, scheduling, staffing and implementing a new way. More information here from the News Journal Online. [LISNews.com]It seems so sad and frustrating to me that the ideas of teacher/librarian collaboration and flexible school library scheduling are still so novel to many people that they warrent a news article.

Web Searching 101

Sat, 06 Dec 2003 17:14:58 GMT

Search the Web More Efficiently. Daniel Bazac passed along a link to his article, Search the Web More Efficiently, Tips, Techniques and Strategies. It's a nice beginners guide to searching the web, but experts might learn a thing or two as well. [LISNews.com]

Library Research Guide

Tue, 25 Nov 2003 11:00:40 GMT

QuickStudy: Library Research Guide
This site from the University of Minnesota (UM) Libraries has eight modules designed to teach library research techniques. The modules include "the process of choosing a topic; designing a research strategy; finding different kinds of sources such as articles, books and internet sites; evaluating sources; [and] essential citation information." Although some of the information is specific to UM libraries, much of it can be applied to research in any library. [From lii.org: Librarians' Index to the Internet NEW THIS WEEK for November 20, 2003]
These tutorials are very complete, and for a certain type of learner, they are excellent. They also give me some good ideas about structuring our library website more logically.

Sat, 15 Nov 2003 21:02:19 GMT

10 things about Google.

Interesting series of charts/facts: 10 Things I Bet You Didn't Know About Google...via cogdogblog

[elearnspace blog]
This is a cool resource to show students and teachers.