Transcript No Slide Title

Buon Giorno!
Gary Handman
Director,
Media Resources Center
The Teaching Library
Moffitt Library
UC Berkeley
[email protected]
http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/MRC
..talking to you today about:
...comunicando con voi oggi circa :
The Teaching Library -- UC Berkeley
What is it? (Che cosa è esso?)
How did it develop? (Come si è sviluppato?)
What goes on in it? (Che cosa continua in esso?)
Has it succeeded? (È riuscito?)
Information Literacy & Media Literacy
What are they? (che cosa sono questi )
What challenges do they present for
librarians and educators? (Che sfide
presentano per i bibliotecari e gli educatori? )
Twenty-nine Years Ago
on a University Campus
in Northern California...
.

James K. Moffitt Undergraduate Library opens at
UCB Berkeley
 The
primary collection and facility serving
undergrads: A center for undergrad intellectual life
Moffitt collections -- a core collection comprising:
 150-160K book volumes
 300 serials titles
 Main (Doe Library) 1 million book volumes and
100K serials in closed stacks

Total 24 branch library volumes = 5 million
 Primary bibliographic access to all libraries:
card catalogs and printed indexes


Number of machine-readable databases available to
library end-users = 0 (limited, fee-based mediated
searching in sciences)

Hi tech = Hollerith cards, primitive mainframes for
academic computing; Telex (punched tape
programming)

Number of personal computers owned by students:
probably none.

Media-equipped classrooms = 10/250

Media collections on campus = 0

Primary mode of student communication:
telephones, coffee houses

Student ownership of pcs = 80% within 1st year of
entry

Faculty ownership of pcs = 98%

Wired classrooms = 248/250

Number of course web accounts = 350+

Primary mode of student communication: email,
coffee houses

Total volumes, all libraries = 8.5 million

Primary bibliographic access to library collections
= online catalogs (systemwide & local)

Number of online databases available to library
end-users = scores:
Networked and stand-alone CD-ROMS
Full-text journals; indexes/abstracts online
Other free and licensed web resources:
encyclopedias, handbooks, directories
UC Digital Library resources (California Digital
Library)
…The rest of the Great Unwashed Web
The Birth of
The Teaching Library



A new program focus dedicated to:
teaching information literacy and developing new
information access tool
A combination of expediency, vision, and fortuitousness
An evolutionary move in response to:
A decade of fiscal hard times; decreasing staff and
materials resources
National trends in academic libraries (including UGL
deconstruction)
New Main Library construction; the opening of the stacks
to UG users
...And perhaps more significantly,
a response to:
Exploding
complexity and scope of the information
universe
 The rise of the digital/networked library resources & The
Net in General
 Changes in student culture and life
 Changes in the culture of the classroom
 Changes in the workplace outside of the university
 The continuing need for undergraduate services
Mission Statement
“The mission of the Teaching Library is
to enable users of the UC Berkeley
Library -- from freshman through full
professor -- to efficiently and
effectively access and evaluate
information/knowledge wherever it
resides.”
Teaching Library Organization & Culture

TL staff drawn from former ULG, and staff recruited from
disparate library units outside of Moffitt
A mix of librarians & talented career staff recruited from
within the library
 self-identified as interested in instruction and public service

Competencies sought:

 Motivated

to innovate and lead
Curious about new technologies
 Dedicated
to facilitating research & learning
 Willingness
 High
to take risks and to learn from experimentation.
tolerance for ambiguity
Teaching Library Organization & Culture

Head of TL team
Ellen Meltzer (former head of UGL)

Program Coordinators
(3 FTE librarians, 5FTE career staff)

Graphic Staff
(2 career staff)

User Research Coordinator (surveys/focus groups)
(.50 FTE librarian)

Media Resources Center
(1 FTE librarian; 1 FTE career staff; 10-12 student assistants)

California Heritage Project (K-12 outreach)
(1 FTE coordinator)
So…
What goes on in this place,
anyway?...
Information/Media Literacy R Us
 Differs from (but may include) teaching tech competency
 Ideally comprises a number of components:
 Resource
literacy -- understanding the form/format, location
and access methods of information resources. Classification
and organization of information.
 Research literacy -- understanding research methodology,
including the use of IT tools relevant to the work of today’s
scholar. Discipline-specialized resources.
 Critical Analysis of Information -- in terms of relevance,
authority, quality, timeliness, biases….etc.
 Publishing literacy -- publishing ideas and works electronically;
scholarly communication in a digital world.
 Information & Society -- the socio-cultural nature and role of
info and info institutions; the role of scholarly research;
scholarly ethics
So... What Goes On In This Place, Anyway?
Undergrad Information/Media Literacy Programs:
Using online catalog
Using web resources (including full-text and
other dbs)
Critical evaluation of print/online resources
Critical evaluation of media (film, TV, video)
Taught in various contexts:
 Course-integrated instruction
 Individual research paper consultation
 Drop-in clinics and classes
So... What Goes On In This Place, Anyway?

Electronic reference: The Information Gateway
60 high-end, broad-bandwidth public access
multimedia computers (developed with support
from PacBell).
Provides access to:
library catalogs
web (licensed and open-access sources)
networked CD-ROM databases
Online reserve materials (MusiLan, MRC
online audio and video files)
The Information Gateway
So... What Goes On In This Place, Anyway?
 Faculty Seminars and summer institutes: open to all
UCB faculty and GSIs (and some staff)
 Learning & using HTML/Basic Web pages
 Web Usability & Design Fundamentals
 Managing Bibliographies, Footnotes
(EndNote)
 Beginning and Advanced Catalog and Web
Searching
 Full-text Resources
 Powerpoint and other productivity tools
 Specialized Media Resources
 Focus groups and surveys of campus users
So? What Goes On In This Place, Anyway?

California Heritage Program (K-12 outreach)
http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/CalHeritage/
An
online archive of over 28,000 images illustrating California's
history and culture from the collections of the Bancroft Library.
Programs aimed at teacher education in using these and other
digital resources.

Graphics Office (signage and publication for TL and rest of
library; web design support) -- change from reporting to
business to integration in teaching program.

Media Resources Center
 One of largest collections of non-theatrical video in US
 Largest documentary web site in WORLD!
 Curriculum design and faculty consultation
 Digital audio and video collections (new territory!)
Have we been successful ??


STATISTICS (at least) are impressive:
 1997/98
 27,000 participants in instruction librarywide
• 7,000 taught by Teaching Library staff
• 5,000 one-on-one research consultations
• 15,000 taught by other units with
Teaching Library support
 2/3 of our primary user base (40,000) in
one year
More teaching valued & done librarywide because
of Teaching Library
…Where we seem to be headed
(or want to be headed)

More web and print resource development (guides,
bibliographies, online tutorials)

More involvement in library web design: meta-resources and
navigation tools.

More involvement in the future of UCB digital library
development

Broader collaboration in development of course web resources
(integration of library resources into course web sites)

Support for selected IT/classroom projects:
e.g., The Humanities Server Project.

Larger general leadership role in campus IT and broader
collaboration with other IT units on campus
What We’ve Learned About
Our User Culture
and
What We Need To Do To
Address Its Quirks and Needs...
Class of 2015
Undergraduate students
today tend to be...







Result-oriented
Expect high-tech, expect transferability of experience
Want pre-packaged, full-text, convenience
Expect their needs to be addressed
Accustomed to action, speed, change
Annoyed, lose interest if results not expedient and
practical
Have the attention span of a gnat (thank you, MTV)
Disappointed if required to get up and WALK
“What are print publications?”
It’s a culture which...






Equates finding something worthwhile with
expertise
Equates ANY RESULTS with BEST RESULTS
Is uniformly PROCRUSTEAN in it’s approach to
the information universe
Favors ease and/or popularity over
authoritativeness (or confuses the two)
Isn’t particularly critical of ANYTHING on a
screen
Circumvents the reference desk and other human
mediation if at all possible
And What About Faculty…?






In many instances, still grappling with the basics of
tech literacy
Frequently hamstrung by institutional IT
shortcomings: media convergence vs institutional
decentralization
Time constraints and institutional pressures often
preclude experimentation and change
Narrow discipline focus puts blinders on (research
vs known items).
Often hesitant to admit gaps in knowledge…?
Humanities/Social Sciences & Sciences = different
worlds
And What About Faculty…?





Academic culture not particularly amenable to
collaboration and partnership
Still looking for IT outcomes evidence
Still trying to figure how all this fits in with
promotion/advancement
The library is still a storehouse for books;
librarians exist to get those books in the door and
on the shelves (if they think about librarians at all)
Rely on graduate students for much of the grunt
work and for much of the innovations in teaching
The Challenges &
The Pitfalls
Ahead...
None of this stuff
is intuitive...
Total
end-user self-sufficiency
might be a myth
We are “afloat in a growing sea of information,
which we must navigate with tools that are far
from being up to the task” -- Paul Saffo

“Information overload” may not be the primary
problem.

The biggest problem may be the gap between:
The ability of technology to facilitate the production and
distribution of vast quantities of information and,
its ability to help make sense of all this stuff, in answer to
our questions
Poor tools, no integration, little standardization, too many
formats, too many places to look
Even with sufficient tools and skills to
navigate the information universe...
“The prodigious output of the human mind
is a grand and wonderful achievement-but now what do we do with all this stuff?”
--Joel Achenbach, Washington Post
“It’s significant that we call it the
Information Age. We don’t talk about the
Knowledge Age.”
--James Billington, Librarian of Congress
Domande? Osservazioni?