January 15, 2015 (Thursday)

Time: 9am-10am; 11am-12pm; 12pm-12:45pm; 1:15pm-2pm; 2pm-3pm (4.5 hrs)
Hours completed (IST): 4/135
Hours completed (Kara Robinson): 4/15
Accumulated on-site hours:8/150

Today I observed two instruction sessions (9am and 11am) classes being taught by the same professor (the former was a 20000 level and the latter was a 30000). Though the class was at two different levels the themes and structures of the classes were very similar. The sessions began with a general introduction to the library's main page and discovery layer searches.  Discovery layer searches are the default on the main page which, because the discovery layer was recently implemented, makes showing how to search using discovery an important aspect of student instruction. Tammy then showed students various reference services and databases that would be helpful for the final paper that the students would be writing later in the semester. Along with the presentation of reference services was a discussion of resource authority to reinforce the difference between an appropriate resource that can be cited and, for example, Wikipedia.

Two major takeaways from observing these two bibliographic instructions were:

1. That the librarians has limited control over the session. The timing worked better for the professor to have this instruction occur at the beginning of the semester. Many students seem confused or might not have got as much out of the BI since they had yet to even choose their topics. This made it more difficult to tell them specifics. Additionally, the professor wanted the students to be shown both the graphic novel collection and special collection. This limited the total "class time" of the BI to about thirty minutes.
2. I took the opportunity to compare the instruction to the Information Literacy Plan for Undergraduate Education. The lecture touched on all the level one and most of the level two skills despite the small amount of time available. Tammy, in a meeting later in the day (2pm-3pm), explained that preparation and repetition helps in these situations.  By having a good relationship with the professor and a copy of the syllabus for the class she was able to craft the BI so it could provide the most useful information possible.

I also spent some more time working on the collection development project.