#info lit

But the one thing that’s most important overall, in my mind?

Information literacy.

It’s more important now than ever.

And most of my answers about library life came back to that.

What skills do you need? Info literacy.

What’s become more important? Info literacy.

What do patrons need most help with (after the fucking printer)? Info literacy.

If you’re a library worker, please brush up on basic info lit skills. That alone is going to make a huge difference in the work we do going forward.

Book Review: Copyright Conversations

https://www.instagram.com/p/CI1gKf6jryy/

Back in June 2015, I presented these quick slides in the LITA Lightning Round talks at ALA in San Francisco. I’m currently working on a book chapter with Meghan Dowell, Beloit College, for a book about using libguides apps in Moodle.

I spoke about designing an embedded library resources block in moodle that will connect students and instructors to the relevant research guides for their disciplines and course content is a constant struggle for hybrid and online courses. Students can miss a link to a course guide in a syllabus, the instructor may be unaware of the full scope of library resources available, and research guides may not be connected at all in a one shot to the day-to-day flow of the 15 week semester and student life. the goal is to put the goods up front and center, where students already are.

The block is built so that there are default settings to the block that sync w the appropriate discipline of the course. If you're in an environmental science course, the default should be an environmental science research guide. librarians roles in moodle have administrative access to aligning the list of departmental disciplines of courses on campus to default research guides to be displayed. in the event that there is not a research guide for a course (for instance, we have a 1 credit critical research skills class, and we don't have an LIS department on campus), then there is a default link to a list of all research guides from the library website.

Instructors can add multiple additional research guides (from libguides, our spring share software), as well as links to citation guides online. Faculty can also change the name of the guide link that appears, and work w liaison librarian to include other resources as they wish. If an instructor wants to create a custom guide, there is a link to contact the liaison program coordinator.

Student: Sorry, I zoned out for a bit. What did you say about streaming videos?

The sheep are continuing their historical research in Special Collections this week.  They’re looking for information about sheep in history, but last time they didn’t find exactly what they needed.  

 After getting some advice from Merlin about our eponymous catalog, they refined their search and brought up a publication by a well-known name at the University of Missouri: Frederick Mumford.  So they went off to the University of Missouri Collection to page his treatise on experiments in sheep breeding in 1901.

Mumford published his research as part of the Agricultural Experiment Station bulletins, a series of research reports aimed to inform and improve approaches to farming.  Our sheep found the photos of sheep who lived long ago fascinating. They were also gratified to find out that the Agricultural Experiment Station publications are all online in our Digital Library.  They decided to check out the rest after hours.

After they read all about Mumford’s experiments in the early twentieth century, they refined their research question.  Now they want to know how herd management practices have changed over the centuries – which sent them back to the catalog for their next adventure.  More on that next time!