The January issue of ITAL (Information Technology and Libraries) had an interesting article on academic librarians learning to keep up with the changing pace of technology.

Here’s a Drexel proxied link to the article, and an ITALica blog post with the abstract.

Even though “emerging technologies” in libraries are somewhat different from the rest of the world, it’s important to be able to keep up with what the students are actually doing, and to understand the tools they use to complete their coursework.

As Libraries think about data curation, why don’t we start with our own data?  This Code4Lib article from NCSU talks about how to plan and execute a data analysis project for helping to make decisions and share with stakeholders for various programs.

Some examples include:
Reference Transactions
QuickSearch (NCSU’s homegrown federated search)
Library Course Tools
Special collections usage

“Although there is undeniably a time-commitment involved in initiating this kind of effort, especially in cases where data-analysis and interdepartmental outreach are not part of one’s usual responsibilities, we think the short term and long term benefits are significant. At NCSU Libraries, a grassroots approach to data analysis with cooperation between technically-oriented librarians and departmental stakeholders has yielded positive short term results, helping a variety of departments to answer questions about how patrons use specific library applications and services. Developing strong collaborative partnerships between departments is both a challenge and a positive outcome of this approach. Longer term, we hope these efforts can increase awareness of good data collection practices and of the opportunities that exist to leverage data to answer questions that can help libraries improve applications and services, as well as foster a spirit of collaboration between library departments.”

http://journal.code4lib.org/articles/4258

I was listening to a webcast that Peggy recommended and I found a section of the talk very interesting regarding organizing electronic documents in support of research.  The second presenter that focused on organizing pdfs in support of your research, and other tools that can help you organize your research documentation and citations.

You can listen to the section of the webcast here.  This particular section starts at about 16 minutes in, and it’s only about 10 minutes long.

Some of the featured product links:
Papers for reading/organizing

Sente for citations

Scrivener for writing

Yesterday was the 2010 Scholarly Communications Symposium entitled “Inspiration, Derivation or Appropriation? Defining Ownership in the Arts” held at Drexel University (and organized by my colleagues).  The sessions featured talks and discussions between academics, artists and attorneys covering issues of legality and ownership when it comes to visual and performing arts and artists.

I found the sessions to be compelling — good discussions of what kinds of issues become important when dealing with copyright outside of the printed word.

The recordings will be posted soon on the conference website.

The University of Washington iSchool’s Project Information Literacy released a report covering the results and findings from the Spring 2009 survey of college students and research strategies.  The full report is available as a 42-page PDF, but here’s an overview, followed by a list of six key findings:

Whether they were conducting research for a college course or for personal reasons,
nearly all of the students in our sample had developed an information-seeking strategy
reliant on a small set of common information sources—close at hand, tried and true.

Moreover, students exhibited little inclination to vary the frequency or order of their use,
regardless of their information goals and despite the plethora of other online and inperson
information resources—including librarians—that were available to them.

Many students in our sample used a strategy for finding information and conducting
research that leveraged scholarly sources and public Internet sites and favored brevity,
consensus, and currency in the sources they sought.

Major findings from the survey are as follows:

1. Many students in the sample reported being curious, engaged, and motivated at the beginning of the course-related and everyday life research process. Respondentsʼ need for big-picture context, or background about a topic, was the trigger for beginning course-related (65%) or everyday life research (63%).

2. Almost every student in the sample turned to course readings—not Google—first for course-related research assignments. Likewise, Google and Wikipedia were the go-to sites for everyday life research for nearly every respondent.

3. Librarians were tremendously underutilized by students. Eight out of 10 of the respondents reported rarely, if ever, turning to librarians for help with course-related research assignments.

4. Nine out of 10 students in the sample turned to libraries for certain online scholarly research databases (such as those provided by EBSCO, JSTOR, or ProQuest) for conducting course-related research, valuing the resources for credible content, in-depth information, and the ability to meet instructorsʼ
expectations.

5. Even though it was librarians who initially informed students about using online scholarly research databases during freshmen training sessions, students in follow-up interviews reported turning to instructors as valued research coaches, as they advanced through the higher levels of their
education.

6. The reasons why students procrastinate are no longer driven by the same pre-Internet fears of failure and a lack of confidence that once were part of the college scene in the 1980s. Instead, we found that most of the digital natives in the sample (40%) tended to delay work on assignments as they juggled their needs to meet competing course demands from other classes.