Archive for March, 2008
There’s More To “Finding” Than We Thought
A Pew Internet & American Life Project study about search engine users indicated that the vast majority of them expressed satisfaction with their search skills. According to the study, 92% of those who use search engines say they are confident about their searching and 87% of searchers say they have successful search experiences most of [...]
Posted: 26 March, 2008 in Information Literacy, Student Issues.
Tags: finding_versus_searching, research_skills
Comments: 3
An Overlooked Benefit Of Academic Librarianship
Aside from being passionate about academic librarianship, higher education and all the associated activities (reference, instruction, collaborating with faculty, working with students, paperwork (not)), the other reason I’d always want to work in higher education is the access to exercise facilities. Where you have students, you have sports teams, and where you have teams you [...]
Posted: 21 March, 2008 in Administration/Leadership.
Tags: exercise_facilities, physical_fitness
Comments: 3
Telling Our Story
When I look at other academic professions, it seems that most practitioners have a good sense of their own history. For instance, even undergraduate physics majors seem able to speak knowledgeably about Bohr, Curie, Einstein, Fermi and dozens of others who have made notable contributions to the field.
I don’t see that in librarianship, especially academic [...]
Posted: 19 March, 2008 in Administration/Leadership, Just Thinking.
Comments: 2
You Do Read Some Of Those Journals
Thanks to everyone who took 2 minutes or so to complete the completely unscientific survey instrument I created to capture some information about your reading habits when it comes to scholarly journals targeted to academic librarians. I learned that some of you do read these journals. Given the number of ACRLog’s overall readers the number [...]
Posted: 17 March, 2008 in Professional Development.
Tags: journal_survey, library_literature
Comments: 18
Free Culture Clash
Libraries think it makes sense to digitize theses and dissertations and have them web-searchable rather than have to rely on UMI publishing them. Having a few print copies on the shelf means hardly anyone will find that scholarship, and why would anyone go to the trouble to write all that if they don’t want it [...]
Posted: 13 March, 2008 in Copyright, Open Access.
Tags: electronic dissertations, electronic theses, Iowa Writers' Workshop, University of Iowa
Comments: 11
