WELCOME
BACK
ISSUES
By Vanessa Burford, vburford@utsa.edu
About thirty librarians attended the LIRT Discussion Forum at 9:30 am on January 16. After brainstorming for topics, the attendees broke into small discussion groups, and later shared the results of their discussions. The five topics included: 1) Hard to Reach Patrons, 2) Reaching First-Year Students, 3), Reaching Transfer Students, 4) Designing Instruction to Address a Variety of Skill Levels & Subjects, and 5) Collaboration Between High School & College Libraries to Equip High School Graduates.
Hard to Reach Patrons
Group 1 focused on faculty, distance learners/home users, and non-users. Main points of the discussion included communication, training, and convenience factors.
Librarians can increase levels of communication by establishing liaison relationships with faculty departments, and public and school libraries. A benefit that many would like to see in addition to marketing library instruction services would be increased communication with faculty regarding their assignments such as course outlines, contact instructions, and assignment notebooks.
Training of faculty could be accomplished by attending departmental meetings to introduce library services and resources and methods of teaching their students to evaluate resources.
Convenience was stressed when discussing distance learners. Remote users of the library find it helpful when provided with toll-free telephone numbers, course web pages, and librarian contact information provided on the syllabus. Linda Goff shared the CSUS Library Distance Learning Website at
Reaching First-Year Students
Under discussion was library service marketing to first-year students, including the size of the institution, library presence in campus life, influence of department liaisons, collaboration with high schools, and teaching to mixed research skill levels.
The issue receiving the most attention was preparation for instruction to a group with mixed research skill levels. Possible solutions included partnering students with unlike research skills, consulting with faculty to discuss specific assignments, and asking faculty to offer a pretest to determine students’ research skill levels.
A corresponding issue raised in this discussion was that of “never-ending basic instruction”: how do we keep students interested past their immediate need and facilitate a greater transfer of knowledge?
Reaching Transfer Students
One option raised by Group 3 to address the needs of transfer students included making information competency a requirement. Research was also recommended to discover which departments receive the most transfers and assessing information skills at junior colleges and feeder schools.
Instruction service marketing was also discussed, with service options such as providing instruction for upper
division research classes and creating webliographies and pathfinders for specific subjects.
Designing Instruction to Address a Variety of Skill Levels & Subjects
Or, what do I include/exclude with only 50 minutes to present? Members in this group stressed the importance of differentiating between orientation and instruction.
Library orientation could be facilitated through tours either at the library facility or via the Web. Instruction should have a more pedagogical focus than orientation, and should be subject oriented, possibly assignment based. Instruction would likely include orientation, but also lecture, discussion, and/or group work to address topic selection, critical thinking, and search strategies. Handouts and worksheets, both in print and on the Web, could be included.
Collaboration Between High School & College Libraries to Equip High
School Graduates
The perception of Group 5 was that students entering higher education are not prepared to use the college / university library. Possible solutions to the problem included outreach and marketing of library instruction services such as addressing students seeking media certification and teachers/media specialists attending in-services. Coordinating with community college and public librarians is another method of finding ways to address inbound students’ research abilities.
Other suggestions included obtaining grants for outreach to K-12 institutions and students in bridging programs such as Upward Bound, and publicizing Web tutorials.
Vanessa Burford is a reference librarian at the University of Texas, San Antonio.
LIRT News,
March 2000. Volume 22, number 3.
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