January 2011 C&RL – Comments and thoughts a long time coming


Yeah, so this entry has been “A Long Time Coming”, but I am using Penn State’s spring break 2012 to catch up on research and that means reading (though soon I may rant about that “practice of information literacy”)

Guest Editorial “Distinctive Signifiers of Excellence”: Library Services and the Future of the Academic Library by Scott Walter – How could I miss this?  Not only does it address a core belief I share, that libraries can no longer be measured by collection size and other collection metrics for ‘excellence’ but it also gives a shout out to ODSP.  Points off Scott for linking to a non-public ARL wiki in his Notes.

Library on the Go: A Focus Group Study of the Mobile Web and the Academic Library by Seeholzer and Salem at Kent State – great study and well presented.  It makes our mobile site fit the basics (at least for KSU students) but has implications for our next step: a total mobile site.  I wonder if it is possible to have a Rapid Prototyping lab of library services complete with structure for user focus groups.  Currently we have a great Website Usability team, but right now they mainly do individually monitored usability studies.  Minor negative, there did not need to be 3 pictures of basically the same KSU Libraries website in the article.

Unheard Voices: Institutional Repository End-Users by St. Jean, Rieh, Yakel, and Markey – 21 pages!  I am going to have jackflaps read this one.

Knowing Where They Went – Six Years of Online Access Statistics via the Online Catalog for Federal Government Information
by Christopher Brown at the University of Denver – “users prefer online content over print for both newer and older documents” Done!  I mean, I trust the editors of C&RL and the author for a nice abstract.

Reframing Information Literacy as a Metaliteracy by Mackey and Jacobson – may seem an abstract thought piece, but winds up being a pretty good review of the literature and summary of various “literacies” out there (visual just got its own ACRL standard).  I am concerned about a move away from skill based approaches, but as long as we as a librarian profession can set real learning outcomes based on the ocean of metaliteracy skills, we’ll be okay.  Note that does not mean it is necessarily possible.

Facebook as a Library Tool: Perceived vs Actual Use by Terra Jacobson – not sure I am on board with the methodology of this paper, but it does bear out reality in the conclusion that a library page on Facebook needs regular attention and is best used for announcements and marketing.  Personally the literature review helped me figure out my research in the use of Facebook FOR research by librarians is undiscovered country.

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