Sure, show her or him how it’s done — show ‘m where the clutch is and how it works ( where I live, most cars still have a standard transmission and a clutch ), show ‘r how to make a good left turn and even how to parallel park — but don’t think it’s really your role to tell him or her where to drive to, or even just how to get there.

My two cents, anyway. Thanks for listening.

OK, most anybody can buy into that way of looking at it, probably. Even I can. You’ve put it very nicely, Jim. So much having been granted, i.e. “how to use all of these tools”, I’m with you. Your point is entirely valid, as long as you stop more or less right there. But how many of us do that, and how many of us don’t ? Left and right, all over the place, you read ( even in respectable LIS journals ) all kinds of self-glorifying c**p about teaching library users ( students, and even professors and scholars ) “how to do research” ( as though that’s a matter of “how to use all of these tools” ), and — even more bizarre — “critical thinking”. Talk about good ways to make yourself and your occupation look ridiculous !

I’m happy to see you’re not resorting to that kind of rhetoric, far from it. But your last sentence ( “But if you don’t learn how to use these tools, you’ll waste lots of time and sometimes [ ... ] !” ), and the apparent mode of thinking behind it, does edge ominously in such a direction. I would refer again, as I often do, to an observation made long ago in one of his articles by James Rettig ( current ALA President, I believe ), a quote that in my opinion should hang prominently on the wall of ( at least ) every academic librarian : that “every information seeker should be free of the librarian’s expectations … and free from an intermediary’s judgments of the value of a bit of information to that individual’s purposes”.

I am myself a subject specialist who has a PhD in the field concerned in addition to seven years of undergraduate and graduate teaching and research in that field ( and thereafter many years of work for a major academic publisher ), but you won’t find me — I hope — presuming to know better than any given user how that person ought to be going about using the ( gigantic variety of ) resources we offer.

And thinking still, incidentally, of Olivia’s point about “libraries’ use of online social networking tools” : Haven’t I more than once read and heard librarians admitting that adopting such tools has indeed led to meaningful new contacts and interactions in the virtual environment — but for the most part with . . ., right, with other librarians.

( Preaching to the choir ? )

I don’t think this is anything new; I very rarely asked a librarian anything before I became one. Why? First, I thought I already knew everything when I didn’t, and second, I was put off by them. I was scared that they would judge me for the fool I thought myself to be.

In my IL classes now, I try to put it this way: learning how to use all of these tools isn’t magic. It’s like driving a car. Nobody is born knowing how to drive a car, and you have to learn from others who know. You aren’t born knowing how to use these tools. I’m like the guy showing you how to drive the car. But if you don’t learn how to use these tools, you’ll waste lots of time and sometimes you’ll find that you do the equivalent of crash and burn!

I don’t now if it works, but I do tend to get their attention.

“Ask any librarian who gets out to classes and speaks to students, who goes to their school events, who does a good job of outreach, and he or she will tell you more students are coming directly to their office – bypassing the reference desk – to get help.”

I can’t recall where I obtained the list of 8 characteristics of NetGen (or NextGen) students (usually I include that information in what I write down! — it may have been from this blog, actually…. an Educause article?), but one of them was the desire to customize and personalize things. Now, one could interpret this to mean Personal Portal Access To All Things, but I also sense in this a desire to have personalized service *in person*. And now I understand why I’ve been getting people coming into my office lately when there has been someone else sitting at the Reference Desk! I do eat in the dining halls, go to plays, work with student groups (Posse, etc.), and teach classes, both IL session and entire courses. I’m even on Facebook, though at this point I’ve only been “friended” by recent alums with whom I had close connections while they were on campus.

Perhaps at large universities like Minnesota becoming invisible has been a successful library strategy. At a small liberal arts college like Colby, it would be a grave mistake.

‘Reluctance or aversion to ask for help from a librarian’ ( _qua_ librarian ) is not a problem one can solve — or in my opinion should even *want* to solve. It’s a perfectly natural human discourse situation ( in the sociology of knowledge sense, roughly what Rorty meant by “vocabulary” distinctions ).

The problem for us — and the historical, epic failing of our profession ( if that’s what it in fact is ) — is then that we still haven’t been able to make asking a librarian a superfluous procedure. If there’s really a problem here for the educational enterprise ( and that’s the real, broader context in which one should speak of problems and possible solutions ) then that certainly isn’t going to be solved ( or even defined or effectively identified ) by using as a basis the world-view of librarians, as opposed to those of the respective communities of practice the supporting of whose endeavors provides our only legitimation.

I’m reminded of a faculty member’s statement from the 2007 University of Minnesota study on research behaviors and information resource and service needs : “The library has become successful by becoming invisible.” *That’s* what we should be working on, I’d say. That should be our great goal and inspiration. Only then have we got our heads on right.