A lot depends on whether the course you’re working with is really about something or whether it’s a how-to-be-a-successful-student course. I’m sure both have value, but the former is much more likely to be a place where students can engage with the library.

I think it is ill-mannered that the speaker used the podium to engage in criticizing colleagues. And it is even more ill-mannered that a faculty member gave a rude response.

Nevertheless, in attending probably four or five of the FYE conferences in recent years, I have not seen a public display of disdain towards librarians, but I have often witnessed public expressions of appreciation for what librarians offer. And, I know the FYE staff has been very supportive of librarians. John Gardner, the founder and prime mover behind the first-year experience movement is, in fact, educated as a librarian. The FYE folks published this past year, at John’s strong encourage, the book I edited on “The Role of the Library in the First College Year. So, I don’t think any expressed negative attitudes towards librarians at the FYE conferences are systemic. I also have received positive responses when I was attending the Council of Independent Colleges conferences as the ACRL liaison to that organization, even when I attended the new deans’ workshop on Saturdays and was the only librarian in the room.

So, are there people that engage in boorish behavior? Yep. Do some librarians (including myself) have room to improve in their presentations? Yep. Do classroom faculty members have a responsibility to help ensure that the librarian presentation are relevant, timely, so students find them of more interest? Yep

Beyond that I don’t think there is a need to be too upset about the bad behavior of a couple of individuals. I would hope that the blog readers don’t think such behavior is characteristics of attendees of the FYE conference. About 30 academic librarians attended the recent FYE conference, and I think there were 9 presentations at the conference by librarians. As part of my report to ACRL, I polled most of the librarians who attended the conference, and the vast majority found it a very positive experience.

Larry Hardesty
ACRL Liaison to the National Resource Center to the First-Year Experience and Students in Transition
Interim University Librarian
Winona State University

My own experience with library instruction for lower-level undergrad students (and specifically with FYE programs) has been mixed. I’ve heard librarians say that freshmen (or even all undergrads) don’t need to learn research skills, because their assignments focus exclusively on their course texts. I’ve also heard librarians pine for access to cross-curricular FYE programs, as a way to get students’ attention early on in the course of their degrees.

I wonder where the “Librarian of the Year” idea fits in here–i.e., those programs that assign a librarian as a liaison to a particular graduating year, for instance the librarian of the class of 2010. I haven’t seen much research about how successful these programs are, but they may be one way of modeling a successful relationship with FYE programs and lower-level undergrads in general.

Another is that often an FYE course that teaches content as well as the intro-to-college may also run into trouble with the library component because the students are being taught to write from sources, document them, and use the library before they’ve really gotten a handle on the subject matter or on college-level writing, so it becomes a catch-all assignment that frustrates students and professors alike in ways that more advanced research-and-writing assignments don’t. And they are less well-thought-out and extensive than what Anne-Marie sketches out, but just one assignment among many. A chore.

A third possibility is that a lot of the “we’ll talk really fast and show you what you need to know about the library in fifty minutes” sessions for first year students really are dull, boring, and useless, at least often enough to be problematic.

If we aren’t any of the above, but still have an image problem, it may be partly because learning how to use the library in the first year is only a starting point. What happens as student move on is what matters most, and yet quite often an FYE course is treated as the one and only chance to reach all students with everything they need to know.