April 2, 2015 (Thursday)

Time: 8am-4pm (8)
Hours completed (IST): 117/135
Hours completed (Kara Robinson): 15/15
Accumulated on-site hours: 132/150

When I first got to the library today I borrowed a book cart from the circulation department and went about selecting books out of reference for the BIs. We have several volumes that dealt specifically with pop culture but I also grabbed several others that were more specific but still related to the topic: volumes on graphic novels, music, general US history, and even baseball.

The first BI went well for the most part. The class itself was very quiet and very resistant to participating much. I managed to get a few people to answer questions and, though less interactive, to laugh a little and raise their hands a few times. Generally, they seemed to understand the information well and during their workshop time I was able to witness several students using the tools and strategies that I suggested for them. The faculty member asked a few questions about how the students could go about getting help from the library: I glossed over that too quickly early on. I think I was worrying about time too much.

After the session was over Tammy told me that everything seemed to go well but she had a few areas that I needed to work on:

• I needed to explain the VPN in greater detail, mainly to distinguish that students only needed to download the software once but need to activate it every time they want to connect to resources off campus
• She mentioned how I needed to better explain the ways that students could contact the library for help. She was pleased that the professor saved me on that one but I needed to remember to do it myself.
• My lesson plan for using the two searches (general and specific) works really well; however, in my hypothetical "I am a fellow student" presentation I called myself an "bad student" when explaining the general search. She rightly reminded me that might be off-putting to students. She suggested that I reframe it as being undecided about my topic which is much better and much closer to what I am trying to explain to them.
• I need to remember to show the students how to find the subject databases even if they aren't going to be using them during the session. She explained that this may be the only time a student gets library training for a long time, if ever, and it's important to introduce them to these tools when we have the chance.
• I need to spend more time talking about the tools available in Discovery: email, permalink, folders, etc.

Between sessions I worked on internalizing Tammy's notes but I also decided to work on a new specific search. One thing that we discussed in the first session was that it may be difficult to find scholarly works on certain topics just because they are so recent. I wanted to integrate that into my presentation so I could show the students how to broaden the search if they run into this problem, which seemed highly likely.

Search Example #3

Topic: Gamergate (A recent dispute in the video game community that revolves around female representation and media ethics; it's entire to complex to explain here)

Search String:   video (game* OR gaming) AND (gamer gate OR gamergate) AND (media OR journali* OR review*) A quick note: I used (game* OR gaming) because truncating to (gam*) would likely add bad hits.

video (game* OR gaming) [4,332,871 hits]
(gamer gate OR gamergate) [333 hits]
(media OR journali* OR review*) [122 hits]
SPRJ (limiter) [2 hits]


First I explained the necessity of the second part of the string (gamer gate OR gamergate). If I just enter it as "gamer gate," the way that it makes sense to write, then there are no returns. This is because the term is typically written as a hashtag (#term).

I also was able to explain that two hits is likely too few and suggests that the search is either too limited or that there just is not enough out there in the scholarly community. So I showed them how to look for information that is related to their topic but is expressed in entirely new terms. For example, Gamergate is, at least in part, defined by feminist critique:

Search String: video (game* OR gaming) AND femin* AND (media OR journal* OR review*)
SPRJ (limiter)
2010-2015 (date range limiter)
English (language limiter) [218 hits]


This small change provides a much strong base from which to work. In fact, we could still limit this further using Subject limiters. What I wanted them to see was that there were ways to modify searches to get results that will work despite a search not going so well initially. Of course, in this case the initial search may work because the minimum number of scholarly resources needed is two.

The second session went very well, though this group was even more adamant to not participate than the last. I managed to make the changes Tammy suggested and the new search example seemed to make sense to students and, if nothing else, started a lively conversation between myself, Tammy, and the professor.

In a way I like "making mistakes" in front of the students. We spend so much time search databases and so much time preparing for our instruction sessions that we can make searching to effortless or, worse, like magic. People make those comments to me quite often. By show that things can go wrong and that there are ways to fix the situation when it does, I think we make the students less intimidated and, hopefully, more receptive.