Old School 2.0

I had hoped to hand my camera to a stranger and get a nice picture of me smiling beside the poster session on Friday . . . but something MUCH better happened. This is the only shot I got because so many people came by that I never got a chance. The crowds at the poster sessions this year were downright Biblical in size and it was so validating to talk with so many other teaching librarians who are having some of the same challenges we have at UMW.

How do you help professors to remember what it’s like to be an undergraduate and guide them to respond to their students with research help that is appropriate for “beginning” researchers and truly helpful?

How do you introduce professors to the overwhelming new formats and technologies that have sprung up since they were doing their own intense library research for their dissertations?

And how do you do both of these things in a way that acknowledges faculty’s strong intelligence and deep commitment to scholarship and teaching and that cements the relationship between professors and librarians rather than straining it?

At the session, “Why do they do that? Helping Professors to Understand Undergraduate Information-Seeking Behavior (And Vice Versa)” I shared some tools that I used to try to address these challenges in a workshop for our First Year Seminar faculty. All 300 sets of handouts disappeared and at least 40 more people gave me their cards for follow-up. Thank you! Word versions of the documents are available on this site under the Toolkit tab, and I will be updating and adding other versions and materials when I get back to the campus next week.