I think the 'ladder' is bibliographic instruction _combined with_
interfaces that can serve a _range_ of needs and expertise, and allow
people to easily and seamlessly move up the ladder.
There is nothing _wrong_ with a search interface that is so easy to use
a high school student can use it, AND serves advanced research needs.
There's nothing wrong with this, if it is possible! We should indeed
make our interfaces as easy to use as possible.
However, of course it's not neccesarily possible.
The interface should serve the needs of someone on the 'bottom rung' of
the ladder, and then when that person realizes that they need more
research power, the interface should let them take one step up. It is
not the role of bibliographic instruction to browbeat students into
realizing that the single-search-box they have been using is not enough.
It is the role of the academy _outside the library_ to make students
want to be more powerful researchers. We can not do that. What we can do
is make sure that _when_ they want to be more powerful researchers, we
have the tools the accomodate them. And that they KNOW we have the
tools to accomodate them---this knowledge is in part imparted by
lectures in classes, but in my ideal world our interfaces themselves
would also subtly help students take the next step up the ladder when
they are ready.
By make sure to provide interfaces that also serve the users on the
bottom rung of the ladder, we can help the users climb the ladder. If
you instead provide a ladder that only has the tenth run on it, that
does not help students climb it! Even if you say you're going to
provide one lecture in every freshman class in high jumping.
Jonathan
Michael Fitzgerald wrote:
> At 11:34 AM 8/2/2007, Jonathan Rochkind wrote:
>> Instead, it's having systems that meet the users where they are at, that
>> work for the high school students AND the faculty AND provide the
>> 'ladder' to move from one to the other.
>
> And the 'ladder' is bibliographic instruction. It might (partly) be
> computerized, adaptive, and transparent or it might be (gasp!) an
> actual human librarian who has teaching skills in addition to a
> thorough knowledge of the relevant tools. You don't get from 'high
> school students' to 'faculty' without education. Just adding pizza
> and waiting six years time doesn't do it. Pretending that people will
> get smarter by using the lite version of the tools doesn't make sense
> to me. And trying to make the lite version give you everything that
> the real deal does simply avoids the issue. Academic libraries, at
> least, ought to be creating power users who can use the real deal
> effectively to squeeze the maximum out of the catalog. College
> seniors who are still always using the single search box (for
> research) have not learned what they ought to have.
>
> Mike
>
>
> mike at jazzdiscography.com
> www.jazzdiscography.com
>
--
Jonathan Rochkind
Digital Services Software Engineer
The Sheridan Libraries
Johns Hopkins University
410.516.8886
rochkind (at) jhu.edu
Received on Fri Aug 03 2007 - 08:25:42 EDT