Re: Library Tech Dilemna

[Betty Dawn Hamilton <bhamilt@TENET.EDU>]

> It is an insidious thing.  The tech people have not had training in research
> skills, censorship issues, copryright, integration of the information
> retrieval and processing skills into the curriculum, etc. They fail to
> realize that there are many tools that can be used to provide for the
> information needs of students of different abilities and reading levels.

Group,

I see this as a fairly common dilemma.  I *accidentally* stumbled onto a
part of a solution.  About 3 years ago I realized that students were
coming to the library with a smattering of computer knowledge, thinking
they knew everything about search strategies, word processing, etc.  I
found myself teaching one-on-one, trying to correct some misconceptions
about research.  One-on-one with 630 students and 55 faculty is a *bit*
time consuming!  ;-)

Because the high school computer teacher is a friend, I called her and
asked if she would collaborate on a staff development presentation for
our regional service center.  I wanted to talk about the skills that
would be helpful for me in the media center if students came to the media
center knowing.  (Terrible sentence!)

She said she and discovered that teaching on-line searching via a
commercial database (which was one of her Essential Elements) as a
hypothetical situation was not really effective.  Our  presentation was
to combine our efforts and suggest that she teach students as a group certain
skills and to inform her students that when they come to the library for
"real" research assignments, the skills would be honed to fit what the
library had to offer as well as additional search strategies that her
program does not include ... my job.  She even made a chart about
minimum word processing skills that students need before they can work
independently on a library computer.  The freshman keyboarding teacher is
emphasizing those skills.

WE BOTH advocated that teachers help out by actually making a research
assignment that students would learn to implement as a group in the
computer lab and then to transfer the use of those skills as an individual
assignment in the library.  She felt her efforts would be reinforced and
would have better student retention if students had to actully USE what
she taught as they fulfilled assignments in the library.

I also think that, at first, she was a bit surprised at what librarians
know about electronic searches.

We presented a program at the Texas Computer Educators Association
conference in Feb, and I attended a special interest group meeting arranged
for librarians at that conference.  That was also interesting.  Actually,
I see our jobs as being more related than many tech people realize ...
and we need BOTH!  (I have a terrible time keeping my computers running
with 600 kids trying to use the 6 available in the library ... the
computer teacher helps me with that.)

Betty
                            bhamilt@tenet.edu
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