Jessica: Welcome to the Librarian’s Guide to Teaching podcast! I’m Jessica Kiebler.
Amanda: And I’m Amanda Piekart. Jessica: So on today’s episode, we are going to address a controversial article that has many librarians tweeting their responses. But before we get into our discussion let's just talk about how our week has been. How are you doing? Amanda: Oh, it’s been a busy week. Instruction has been somewhat winding down at least in the online classes that I’m supporting. But on-site is starting to ramp up. I was in two classes this week and I’m in at least one class every week for the next like three weeks. But it’s good! What’s going on with you? Jessica: Um, well, I'm sure everybody that’s listened to our two episodes so far knows that I'm obsessed with LibWizard. And excitingly I have actually built my first LibWizard tutorial this week. Which is very exciting. I haven't actually gotten to build a tutorial. So I've done the quizzes and the surveys and the forms but I've never done one of those. So I'm finally going to put one together for an English class that I've been having some issues with engagement in and I'm hoping that maybe walking them through the tutorial in the class with all the different activities might make it a little more interesting. Amanda: Oh, that’s exciting! I'm actually working on four LibWizard tutorials with the assessment built in. It’s in the works. But it’ll take us time. We’re hoping to finish by the end of the semester and launch them in the Winter. But, I don’t know. It’s a slow going process right now. Jessica: And those are going to be standardized instruction? Amanda: Yup, those will be standardized instruction that’ll be embedded in all the sections of a particular class. We’re doing two in two marketing classes, a management one and the two in legal studies classes. So we’re uh..it’s exciting but it’s also. you know, a little nerve-wracking. Jessica: Yea, exactly, it’s not just like a tutorial, it’s like going to be standardized. Yea that’s interesting...cool! Amanda: Have you completed them yet? The LibWizard tutorials? Jessica: No, I’m still in the build out stage. I finally got all the slides done this week so now I have to just go back and make sure it all makes sense, touch up any spelling grammar, test it actually and go through it once. So still in that part. Amanda: Ok, well I look forward to hearing about it. That’s exciting! Jessica: Yea I’ll definitely send it over to you! Amanda: Great! So why don’t we get into our topic for today. So the article that Jessica mentioned that is controversial and I actually first head about it on Twitter...and you did, too, right Jess? Jessica: Yea! Amanda: ...Is an article that was published earlier this month in the Atlantic called, “College Students Just Want Normal Libraries”. And I thought it would be a good episode for us to tackle because I think it touches on, obviously, it touches on instruction and in some ways that I don't think the author realizes. And you know, librarianship. And outsiders’ perspectives on librarianship. But I think it’s important to note that the woman that wrote the article is not a librarian. And that’s always interesting to me. I think it's exciting when people who are not librarians want to write about librarianship and libraries but then it’s also disappointing when they just don't properly represent us. Jessica: Right. And that was something that some people on Twitter were saying was that they were getting this article from their faculty members like “hey, look what she had to say.” And then it becomes work for us - as if we don't have enough work to do - to respond and mythbust and you know, that's not really necessary. If she had just interviewed a librarian maybe the article would have been different but we’ll get into that, too, in our discussion. Amanda: Absolutely. So she does touch on a variety of points so the way I thought we would talk about this is kind of responding to some of her points and just go back and forth. So I think I want to point out one of her earlier points that she made is that libraries are pouring resources into interior design updates and building renovations or into glitzy technology. I think that that's an unfair statement to make because it's not always the library doing this. I think sometimes there is pressure from an institution for libraries to become more than just a library and become a learning hub. I think from an institutional standpoint, I think they're trying to get the students all in one place and the library sometimes becomes that place where the students can meet with the, you know Academic Success Center, meet with the library and then have access to computer labs and glitzy technology all in one location. So it's not always the library. I think there is external pressures that she didn't consider. Jessica: Right, exactly. Like libraries aren't improving in a bubble. There's a lot of institutional context, there’s societal trends and climates that guide that decision a little bit. And you know, even if that’s misguided, maybe the administration is trying to attract new students because of low enrollment right? And they're trying to go for the shiny things. That is misguided but it also doesn't imply that students want “normal libraries”. And you know, she mentioned that there was a makerspace at Macalester College and she quotes...she says quote “that it resembles that of many tech companies”. So isn't that a valuable resource then? A job preparation resource for students? So that I thought was a little interesting to say that but then say it wasn't valuable. Amanda: Yeah yeah yeah. And I don't think that's very far pff. You said that I had a 3D printer, right? Jessica:Yes, right. Amanda: A lot of libraries have printers. 3D printers. Especially, a lot of public libraries and I think they, there has been a lot of great programming built around um, these types of technologies that I don’t think a lot of people dig into or think about. Jessica: And one thing that a lot of people had issues, with the most, with a lot of the things in the article, were the citations that she used to prove her points. Like the citation about the maker space one was an article written by a student in the student newspaper about what they see the library as. So that's one person. That's not really a good sample size. And the other citation was a Cengage study of 3000 students who were asked, What do you do when you're at your college library?” Which is great but “use a makerspace or digital technology lab” wasn't even an option to select so how do you gauge whether or not they want technology or not if you're not asking them that. So that again was a little bit of a problem. Amanda: Yea, I mean that's not a fair assessment. If it’s not even on the survey. Jessica: Right. It goes back to our episode last week about asking the right questions! Amanda: Absolutely! I totally agree with you. So moving on to another argument she makes is that students are, something along the lines of students want print. They want books. And I think it's a very short-sighted argument. I agree that e-texts, you know, it's not always the student’s preferred option but there are other factors again. One in external pressures for e-textbooks from both institutions and vendors. And now at the state level in New Jersey at least there is this initiative that all of the colleges and universities have to show how they are making textbooks open access. They have to have a plan. So that example that she uses, that a student drove to another campus to get access to that print book, yes, that’s a valid point. Because it’s still preferred but it's also external pressure that she - this woman - did not take into consideration. Jessica: Right, that’s true, exactly. And then there’s the textbook argument but also the print argument. Like at the beginning she was talking about that Charles Gosnell who felt like...And it was a historical example but she was talking about how this person Charles Gosnell felt like too many books were being weeded and too many important titles were being taken out and its students want to be in that environmental print books. That was one of her arguments and then the other was about um...What was her other argument? Oh, her other argument was about print versus e-book comprehension. So that students understand and take in information better when it’s in print. But if you read the article, the study author actually states that she's not suggesting that we moved back to print but that we should really improve student’s digital reading and comprehension skills moving forward. Which would really help everyone and I think that makes a little more sense. And I think that the study author also said that the differences weren’t really that big between the comprehension between print and ebook. That it wasn't a ginormous amount. So you know let's make ourselves more adaptable rather than shifting backwards. Amanda: Yeah, and then also just to touch on that point at students want to be around books. It doesn't necessarily mean that they want to check out books. Jessica: Right! Amanda: So think that also goes to, you know, when libraries have an opportunity to redesign their space they look at their circulation. They look at what is getting checked out the most, how can we weed our collection so that it’s currents and fresh and also make space for things that we know students are going to use within a library. Jessica: Right. And how do we do that? We have to ask her students what they use. I think that was one huge issue that I had with the article, too, was that it talks about students in this way like they're one huge group and they're all the same. But we know that they're not. I mean based on institution. Based on race, gender, prior experiences, where we’re from. You know, all of that. Accessibility. All of that affects how we learn, how we study, what we want out of the library. So we can talk about students as a capital “S” students. There are so many differences and we have to be talking to all of our students in our populations. Amanda: Yeah...I also want to talk about the title of the article because...what does that even mean? A normal library? You know...like why label it that way? What is this…you know? What is normal? Even in general, what is normal? You know? To just say, “students want a normal library. I don't know. I honestly can’t believe that that got published. Jessica: Right, ‘cause to me, I could see thinking of back to historically what maybe libraries used to be before there were so many different types. But even then why choose normal? That's such a value word. There almost like a positive connotation that doesn't need to be there for normal. Even in psychology, psychologists don't believe that normal exists so why you trying to put that on libraries. Amanda: She could have said traditional. Jessica: Yes, right! Amanda: Traditional. That would have been more of a word people could relate to and understand but normal was just an odd choice for me. I think it automatically put me on the defense. Jessica: Right. Amanda: So if you don't offer only traditional services, your library is not normal. Jessica: And maybe that was why they put it there so that we would click on it. Amanda: It’s also very click-bait-y. Jessica: Darnit! Amanda: So the next point that I want to mention, really pushed my buttons and I think, you know, you’re going to talk a little bit about this, too, is that part in the article where she talks about the fancy instant messaging. Jessica: Yes, exactly (laughs) Amanda: I mean we do such a significant number of chats and instruction on our chat service! And you know if she had done her research she would have known that chat service is something that is pretty much standard across public and academic libraries. And that, you know, it extends our services. And if offers students who have library anxiety because, yes, library anxiety is a real thing, a way to use our services that they're comfortable with. I mean, I don't know how many times I’m chatting with a student that’s IN the library. But they chose to interact with the library in that way because that was their preferred comfort level. Jessica: Right. So why should we judge that? Amanda: Exactly. Jessica: Right. You know that that was my pet peeve with this article, too, because you know, I’ve studied and written about virtual chat reference which the more accurate name. Not fancy instant messaging. And it can be incredibly useful for students, including non-traditional students who can't make it to campus. Maybe students who are entirely online. She does reference a Duke survey where students were asked which of the following services is important to you, select all that apply. And so she, she kind of minimized how important chat reference was to the students. 30% of the students in the survey said that it was still important to them. And that's still a valuable amount and if that's how as you said those students prefer to interact or it's the only way that they can because of their job or their lifestyle, then serving 30% of students that way. That's really important. And even if it's only 30% important to Duke students, if we surveyed Berkeley students, I'm sure the number would be much higher because that's just again, going back to what's important for the population. So it's not a “fancy instant messaging system” it is a method of reference that works for a lot of people. Amanda: Agreed. Huge missed opportunity there for sure. One of thing that kind of struck me and I think someone might have tweeted about it is why can't we be both? Why can't we offer a traditional library services but also innovate and provide new programming and tech and other resources? I just don't understand why we can't be both. Jessica: Yea, I think there can be a balance and part of it comes down to understanding why the updates are happening. Are they just happening because? Are they happening to just, you know, get people to work more? Or show that we're working more? Are there negative reasons behind the updates or are they really to serve the students? And that again kind of goes back to a little bit of what we talked about before and surveying our students. I read an interesting article a couple of weeks ago in, in the Library with the Lead Pipe. It was called “Towards a Critical Assessment Practice” by Ebony Magnus, Maggie Faber and Jackie Belanger. And they really discuss how librarians can do institutional and educational research in a more nuanced way that really takes into consideration your students, the power structures within our institutions to make sure that we’re being inclusive with the questions that we ask, with the data that we use. Making sure that we're getting all of our students included. so I thought it was a really interesting read considering the citations that were used in this article and that they don't capture the full spectrum of students. So I’ll definitely link that in the show notes, too, ‘cause I think it can be helpful for understanding how this article could have been approached differently but also how we can prevent these unnecessary updates from happening at our libraries in the future. Amanda: Yea, that’s, I look forward to reading that article that you linked. It sounds really interesting. I know inclusion is such a big thing right now and I know it’s something we should all be focusing on, honestly. One other thing that I guess in a way related to this article in a, in a broad sense was that programming was always tough for me. So when I first read the headline and it you know, it made me think of when I was a reference/instruction librarian and I used to do all these programs and I’d get disappointed because the participation would be low or nonexistent. I mean, I used to do programs that were like 10 minute programs. I used to have this one program that I would do called 10 in 10, 10 things you need to know “insert your topic here” in 10 minutes. And I would get very low participation and I personally thought it was important to offer these programs and there were some points where I felt like maybe this wasn’t just the audience. Maybe my student population, they just need to traditional offerings and not “glitz”. Jessica: Mhmm Amanda: And so you know, it was deflating but I think it was also the practical part of me because when I was a college student, I didn’t have time to go to programs. I never went to any programs because I was you know, taking 23 credits, working 3 jobs and I just did not have time. So you know, I mean, that was the only thing that kind of touched on my personal experience but I don't think that’s where she was going with this but that’s how I related to it. But I think, like I said before, there’s room for both. There are students who do appreciate the glitz or the fun scavenger hunts and the programs. And then there’s students who just come in there for a quiet space or to check out, you know, materials. And I think that’s fine. I think we can be more, for other, I think we can be different things to different people. We don’t need to be one thing. Jessica: Exactly. It's striking that balance between what, what we want to provide and what our students needs are. Amanda: Yeah yeah. So those were my thoughts. Do you have any other thoughts that we didn’t touch on yet? Jessica: No, I think we covered a lot. My problems with the article really were with the data that she used to support the things that were claimed And kind of the lack of context to the broad issue. You really can't use the term quote/unquote college students and then expect to cover their needs in a two-page printed article without missing so much of the nuance. So I think the headline isn't really that students want normal libraries, the headline is really that libraries need to implement things that are relevant to their students and create authentic mechanisms for really finding out what that is. So like we said, getting to know your students. And that doesn’t mean only surveying your current users or only students in certain classes that you hand pick but a full spectrum of your student population and also taking into consideration your institutional factors. Like you said, there may be some times that it's out of the library's hands. And I actually saw that a bit on Twitter when I was looking around to see people's responses. Some people were kind of agreeing with what she was saying about the unneeded updates to libraries. That they had study room space or other spaces pushed on them and that’s entirely possible but that also wasn’t addressed in the article as a reason. And so that was a missed opportunity for that discussion. Amanda: Yeah yeah it made it sound like it was just the library’s decision to be glitzy. Jessica: Yes! Amanda: It was just like, like these things don’t get discussed in budget meetings. You know, like other people in the institution are not looking at these things, you know? But like you said I think there were just so many missed opportunities in this article. I would really love to know who her audience was. Who was she writing this article for? Did she not...You know, what did she hope to get out of it? People to get out of it, honestly? And I just think that librarians were probably not really happy about this article. I know I wasn’t. Jessica: Right. So I was trying to think what positive do we take out of it and maybe it's just that we realize a) how we’re seen by certain people so we can be prepared to refute those ideas as usual. But also do a little self-reflection too of like how can I prevent this from happening in my library? Is it happening at my library? Are there things that I can do to make sure that we're representing our students? And honestly I feel like so many libraries are doing that they’re probably rolling your eyes at me right now. But at the same time, if we’re not, if, if we can do better than let's do better right? Amanda: Right, exactly ! So now we're going to get into our weekly segment and the past two episodes we have done our work Triumph and Fail, but this week we wanted to try a new segment called Tweet of the Week. And we are going to read to tweets by Rachel Stein who @Proferachstein. And we just really liked that she kind of summed up our feelings about the Atlantic article pretty well. So she says quote, “Interesting that no teaching librarians seem to have been interviewed for this. Maybe if you're going to write a piece like this, ask librarian.” End quote. And then her other tweet was quote, “Let’s not shame our students by expressing shock that they've never looked for a physical book in the library and let's also not jump to facile conclusions about what college students want in ways that obscure what really goes on in libraries.” So that was definitely what I really liked, too, was what we talked about too, the fact that there's so much more going on than these minor conclusions that the article comes to. So that was, those were my favorite tweets of the week about this article. Amanda: Oh, those were really great tweets. Thanks for sharing those! I mean, it was hard because there were a lot of people that were tweeting about this particular article. Both tweeting at the author and tweeting, you know, retweeting the article. But these were really good ones. Jessica: Yea, I think they kind of summed it up. So that’s it for episode number 3! So you want to say where you find us? Amanda: Absolutely! So you can find Jessica @Librarygeek611 and you can find me @Historybuff820. You can email us your comments or questions or work triumphs and fails at [email protected]. We are also now available on iTunes so please be sure to find us there, subscribe, download and rate the podcast. Jessica: Definitely! We want your feedback, questions, and encourage you to share anything that you’d like about your library instruction with us. Thank you so much for listening! Amanda: Thanks! (Upbeat music)
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About the podcast:The LGT podcast is hosted by two instruction librarians interested in sharing their experiences teaching information literacy, discussing current trends, and having meaningful conversations about librarianship. Archives
May 2021
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