Recent articles: transfer students; one box search; wesite usabilty

Seeing the latest issue of (priced publication) Reference Services Review made me realise I hadn't blogged the previous one, so I will do that first. Volume 45 issue 3 included:
- Guiding choices: implementing a library website usability study: Troy A. Swanson , Tish Hayes , Jennifer Kolan , Kelly Hand , Susan Miller (pp. 359 - 367)
- ARL instruction librarians and the one-box: a follow-up study: Ellen L. Rubenstein , Cheryl McCain , Kristal S. Boulden (pp. 368 - 381)
- Through three lenses: transfer students and the library: Anna Sandelli (pp. 400 - 414)
- Transfer student analysis and retention: a collaborative endeavor: Trudi Jacobson , John Delano , Linda Krzykowski , Laurie Garafola , Meghan Nyman , Holly Barker-Flynn (pp. 421 - 439)
- Ensuring a level playing field: creating an information literacy exam for transfer students: Vonzell Yeager , Anne E. Pemberton (pp. 454 - 471)
- Bridging the gap: Developing library services and instructional programs for transfer students at Appalachian State University: Kelly Rhodes McBride , Margaret N. Gregor , Kelly C. McCallister (pp. 498 - 510)
- Connecting information literacy instruction with transfer student success: Mark Robison (pp. 511 - 526)
- Assessing and meeting the information literacy needs of incoming transfer students: Implementing ACRL’s assessment in action program: Karen Stanley Grigg , Jenny Dale (pp. 527 - 539)
There were, in particular, other articles about transfer students, which were a special focus of the issue. Table of contents at http://www.emeraldinsight.com/toc/rsr/45/3
Photo by Sheila Webber: boat on Lake Ashi, Japan, 2005

College and Research Libraries: student success; social media use; one-box

The last 2 issues of the open-access College and research libraries include:
- Cook, J.M (2014). A Library Credit Course and Student Success Rates: A Longitudinal Study. College and research libraries, 75(3), 272-283. ("The University of West Georgia’s Ingram Library has offered a fifteen-week two-hour credit course since 1998. In a longitudinal study covering twelve years, the library analyzed the progression and graduation rates of over fifteen thousand students. Students who took the class during their undergraduate career were found to graduate at much higher rates than students who never took the class.") http://crl.acrl.org/content/75/3/272.abstract
- Gibson, C. and Jacobson, T. (2014). Informing and Extending the Draft ACRL Information Literacy Framework for Higher Education: An Overview and Avenues for Research. College and research libraries, 75(3), 250-254. http://crl.acrl.org/content/75/3.toc
- Kim, K., Sin, S. and Yoo-Lee, E. (2014). Undergraduates’ Use of Social Media as Information Sources. College and research libraries, 75(4), 442-457. http://crl.acrl.org/content/75/4/442.abstract
- Kulp, C., McCain, C. and Scrivener, L. (2014). Teaching Outside the Box: ARL Librarians’ Integration of the “One-Box” into Student Instruction. College and research libraries, 75(3), 298-308. ("One-box" means Google-like search tools that present the searcher with just one box into which the search is typed). http://crl.acrl.org/content/75/3/298.abstract
Photo by Sheila Webber: Hydrangea, July 2014

Information Literacy and Summon Day

Proceedings of the 2013 Information Literacy and Summon Day (Summon being a federated search service) are available. They includes:
Emma Coonan: Going beyond ‘find’: a Summon before-and-after snapshot
Tim Leonard: Information Skills at UCO using Summon
Sandy Buchanan: The platypus and the sausage: teaching Summon across diverse subjects at Sheffield Hallam University
plus several other papers.
Go to http://www.proquest.com/blog/2014/Teaching-not-Telling.html
Photo by Sheila Webber: ladies mantle leaf and spider, June 2014

Show me your search strings!

A short article describes analysis of 20,000 searches of the federated system at the University of Tromsø, Norway. They found that "60% of all the searches ended up with no hits at all", with incorrect spelling and misuse of boolean (e.g. ANDing Norwegian and English versions of the same word) accounting for many of the problem. I'm not sure about the conclusions, though; don't the results show that you can't just rely on allegedly "user friendly" systems? The article concludes as follows: "Should the library provide the actual searching for the patrons, or is it simply more cost efficient to increase focus on user instruction? So far, the debate has leaned heavily on the second solution. With library systems becoming increasingly user friendly (we hope) it is quite difficult to see how we could persuade library patrons to learn more about searching. To justify spending a large part of the library budget on databases that users find difficult or even unnecessary requires us to sit down and properly discuss the library’s role in information searching and how to best assist students and staff in their research process."

Lokse, M. and Magnussen, M. (2013, November 14) Show me your search strings! Information today. http://www.infotoday.eu/Articles/Editorial/Featured-Articles/Show-me-your-search-strings!--93283.aspx
Photo by Sheila Webber: Cherry blossom, Sheffield, April 2014

User Behaviour in Resource Discovery

Apologies for not blogging for a few days: I felt a bit ill on the last day of the CKVI conference, and then had a hectic time presenting sessions at Lund University on Monday and Tuesday: I'm back in Sheffield now. I have a half finished post about Andrew Whitworth's keynote from CKVI and then will wrap up with a final post.
In the meantime, I noticed a mention of a presentation at the ALT-C conference: Electronic resource discovery systems: do they help or hinder in searching for academic material? by Hanna Stelmaszewska et al.
(PowerPoint at http://altc2010.alt.ac.uk/attachments/0001/1818/alt-c-pres-bb.ppt and the paper is in the proceedings which is in one large pdf at http://repository.alt.ac.uk/797/2/Conference_Proc_web.pdf )

The presentation was picked up in this article, which simplifies the message somewhat:
Spencer, D. (2010) "UK: Students shun expensive library services." University world news. September 12. http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=20100911065234821
They do, though, mention one of the final recommendations of the presentation: "Embed information literacy at subject (module) level."

The research is reported in full in the JISC report published at the end of June:
Wong, W. et al (2010) User Behaviour Observational Study: User Behaviour in Resource Discovery Final Report. JISC. http://www.jisc.ac.uk/publications/programmerelated/2010/ubirdfinalreport.aspx
Photo by Sheila Webber: Autumn roses in Lund, Sweden, September 2010

Search engine wars: let battle commence

Karen Blakeman, a UK information expert, talked about the warring search engines and developments in search at the INFORUM conference in Prague, from which I am selectively reporting. In the early days of the web I used to do regular seminars on business information sources and search engines, with detailed handouts. Karen's concentrated burst of updated information reminded me that I've got lazy, since I've stopped noticing all the changes on search engine screens, and thus probably haven't been using all the features.

Karen concentrated first on the "big 3" of Yahoo, Bing and Google. She started with focus on Yahoo, highlighting to the way it gave options for refining your search on he left hand side. It now uses Bing as its underlying search engine (a change). She liked the fact that it gave you a simply-presented search results page. However some people feel that it may not be developed much in future.
Bing, Microsoft's engine, by contrast, has had a lot of development. However, a lot of special features are only available on the US version. Special features include "recent tweets" "top shared links" and "related searches". Results tend to be more consumer-oriented. For Karen, who does business-related searches it was "information hell", since apart from the consumer-orientation, the search commands worked unpredictably.
Google adjusts results according to what you searched for in the past and searches also vary depending on the country you are searching from (I certainly noticed that searching here in Prague!). Features include "latest news" and if you are logged in to your "social circle" (social media) then results for that will be filtered in too. Various search options are shown down the left hand side after you have searched. Karen also talked about the wonder wheel function. (this is something about which I noticed very lively debate on the ili (US information literacy) list recently: people were suggesting using it to get people to think about search strategy). Karen identified issues with the refinements to do with the timeline feature, in that Google essentially grabs a date that looks prominent. These features were talked about in more detail by the next speaker at the conference, Vilem Sklenak.
Summing up: results are getting messier, in the engines' efforts to deliver more refinements. Social media results are increasingly being included, but are not comprehensive.
Therefore Karen talked about some alternatives: iseek - clusters into categories, and there is an "education" option; Biznar real time federated search of selected business sources, and it also organises into categories. It is a bit slower, but it is looking in the deeper web, so that is understandable. More specialised still were http://www.search4oil.com - oil and gas exploration; Chemspider; Healthmash (Karen was concerned that it filtered results too much and was doubtful about its top hits); http://www.guardian.co.uk/world-government-data "a better way of searching government statistics sites!".

Karen recommended Phil Bradley's powerpoint on searching social media sites at http://www.slideshare.net/Philbradley/social-media-search-engines(which does indeed look excellent and was presented a couple of weeks ago. She did pick out silobreaker.com, search.twitter.com and twazzup.com

Karen's slideshare is at http://www.slideshare.net/karenblakeman, her blog is at http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/ and her website with its information sources guide at http://www.rba.co.uk/
Photo by Sheila Webber (photoshopped): coffe and cake in Prague

Discussion on European IL meeting and ILI

Today there was a discussion in Second Life, the virtual world, in which I gave a brief report about the meeting I attended in Madrid, and Ishbel Hartmann (Vickie Cormie in RL) gave a brief report on Internet Librarian International, which also took place last week, highlighting a few presentations she had found particularly interesting. That is her in the first photo (and yes, that is a virtual squirrel by her feet, but I have now relocated it to the SL island)

The full transcripts are online. The one for the discussion about the Madrid meeting is at http://sleeds.org/chatlog/?c=144 and the one about sessions at Internet Librarian International is at http://sleeds.org/chatlog/?c=145 I am Sheila Yoshikawa in these chats, of course.

There were notecards for each of these sessions, which you can pick up in Second Life if you visit the CILR office. I have given the web references of the ppts from Vickie's notecard, below:

Who are the users and what are they doing? John Law, ProQuest (USA) http://www.internet-librarian.com/
Presentations/B203_Law.pps

Virtual Libraries Kitty Pope, Alliance Library Systems (USA)Barbara Galik, Cullom-Davis Library, Bradley University (USA)Guus van den Brekel, University of Groningen (The Netherlands) http://www.internet-librarian.com/
Presentations/#Monday_TrackA_PM

New Varieties of Search Tony Hirst, Open University (UK)
http://www.internet-librarian.com/
Presentations/C202_Hirst.pps

Closing Keynote: Facing the Challenge of Web 2.0 as a Disruptive Technology
Phil Bradley, Internet Trainer and Web Designer, SearchEngine Land (UK) http://www.internet-librarian.com/Presentations/
ClosingKeynote_Bradley.pps

Recent articles, mostly academic libraries

Stevens, C. and Campbell, P. (2006) "Collaborating to connect global citizenship, information literacy, and lifelong learning in the global studies classroom." Reference Services Review, 34 (4), 536 - 556.
"The purpose of this paper is to critically examine the concepts of lifelong learning, information literacy, and global citizenship, making explicit connections among them via theories of social capital. It then presents a model of librarian-faculty collaboration that relies upon information literacy as a framework for fostering lifelong learning and global citizenship." (I thought this paper was particularly interesting, and it describes the tasks and assignments in some detail.)

Boyd, J. et al (2006) "The One-Box Challenge: Providing a Federated Search That Benefits the Research Process." Serials review, 32 (4), 247-254.
Five US librarians briefly describe comment on their institution's implementation of federated searching, including some observations about the relationship with information literacy.

Harrison, J. and Rourke, L. (2006) "The benefits of buy-in: integrating information literacy into each year of an academic program." Reference Services Review, 34 (4), 599 - 606.
"The purpose of this paper is to describe the integration of information literacy into each year of a Bachelor of Arts and Science (BAS) program at the University of Guelph, Ontario, and to explain the role of librarian mentors in this program. "

Jackson, L. and Hansen, J (2006) "Creating collaborative partnerships: building the framework." Reference Services Review, 34 (4 ), 575 - 588.
"The paper seeks to explore the nature of a collaborative relationship among school and academic librarians in order to enhance the information literacy skills of students as they matriculate to college ... [it] discusses collaboration among school librarians in Madison County, Illinois and one academic library."

Articles from ALIA conference

Sorry for the pre Christmas pause - have been on holiday in Vienna. Hereis something I found earlier . I mentioned the new librarians' conference a little while back, it took place at the start of the month. Papers are already archived with ALIA e-prints:

Blanchard, Libbie and Keleher, Jo (2006) "Federated Searching: Is the death toll sounding for Information Literacy? Do we really want to "Google" our libraries?" . In Proceedings ALIA New Librarians' Symposium 2006, The John Niland Scientia Building, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia.
http://e-prints.alia.org.au/archive/00000131/

Paul, Lisa (2006) "Librarian as Lecturer: how information literacy is paving the way for librarians to be integrated into student’s learning with advantages for both the student and your career." In Proceedings ALIA New Librarians' Symposium 2006, The John Niland Scientia Building, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia.
http://e-prints.alia.org.au/archive/00000144/

There are also papers and powerpoints linked from the conference site itself at http://conferences.alia.org.au/newlibrarian2006/programme.php

Photo by Sheila Webber: Sydney Opera House, June 2004.