February 5, 2015 (Thursday)

Time: 2pm-4pm (2)
Hours completed (IST): 29.5/135
Hours completed (Kara Robinson): 8/15
Accumulated on-site hours: 37.5/150


The BI today was mostly straightforward and consistent with those which I had observed recently. Tammy, at one point, asked me to give a brief explanation of how I found the resources that we gave them on the additional handout. The students were left with about fifteen minutes at the end to workshop and a few asked questions.


The two things that stuck out were that the class was quiet and the professor insisted on leading the students into places they did not need to be. The first is self-explanatory: each class is "different" and part of doing a successful job instructing them is to pick up on what kind of class you have and to adjust accordingly.


The faculty member, on the other hand, was more difficult. She was insistent that we show a class of freshmen students how to find full-text theses and dissertations. Part of this was because she wanted them to see a proper abstract. We pointed out that the abstracts in databases should be more than sufficient as they either came directly from the author or were likely written by professionals. For my part I suggested that authors may not always write the best abstract themselves. This was just an awkward situation because theses and dissertations aren't appropriate resources for people in their first few years of school. This problem was further exacerbated when she asked us to search the thesis and dissertation database in front of the class because she was certain that many papers had been written on a topic that a student in her class was doing. It was something along the lines of General Custer and Manifest Destiny. The search returned many hits but there was nothing readily apparent on this exact topic. She asked Tammy to search a few more times and there was still nothing. The faculty member assured her student that it was there somewhere and after this let her students search on their own with the remaining time.


This was an awkward position to be in. First and second year students should not be diving into the dense morass that is graduate school writing but, at the same time, we were just librarians there to assist the class. It can be really frustrating to know what you're talking about but know that it's best to just smile and try your best rather than making an issue of it.


It was a difficult reminder to a hard-learned lesson.