Image c/o Fr Lawrence Lew, O.P. on Flickr (used under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 license)
Unbelievably, I’m already approaching my second year as a subject librarian in HE. It seems hard to believe that I am about to do my second round of inductions but lo! It’s true. It being my second year of running inductions and literature searching sessions, I’m now more comfortable in knowing what needs to be done and, most importantly, how I can do it more effectively.
Last year I decided, to help minimise all the stresses that go with doing a new role in a new place, that rather than come in and scrap everything the previous subject librarian in my role did and start from scratch, I would simply take his work and tweak it only very slightly. Whilst the substance was largely unchanged, I changed a few things in terms of the style of the presentations (from Prezi to Powerpoint for a start). This made life much easier for me and meant I could ease into the whole induction process with one less thing to worry about (“is this going to even work?”). But now I’m approaching my second year and, well…
This year I’ve decided to re-write everything. Presentations. Handouts. Worksheets. The lot. Following a year of one-to-one sessions with students, I’ve decided to slightly shift the focus of the materials and presentations by focusing in on the development of keywords. I see this as such a fundamental part of the literature searching process that it warrants particular and more in-depth attention in my literature searching sessions. So my presentation now demonstrates how you break down a topic to develop keywords, taking students through it step by step. I’ve also incorporated the use of Mentimeter as a tool to get students to crowdsource keywords. I tried this a few months ago and it seemed to work really well with the session I delivered, so I’ve decided to incorporate it more fully as part of my presentation.
I’ve also re-worked my worksheets and added an additional worksheet into the mix. The main worksheet that had been used previously was streamlined and the focus shifted towards the use of keywords in the main databases. I also developed a secondary worksheet (with thanks to the awesome Emma Coonan at UEA) which again breaks down the keyword process and gets them to think about synonyms and related terms. This will be used in conjunction with the crowdsourced keywords element mentioned above. I won’t necessarily use both in my sessions, it might be that I use one or other depending on the group I am working with.
I’ve also rewritten a handout offering tips on finding journal articles. As well as the usual tips, I’ve made a determined effort to focus on alternative ways in which students can access the research they require (legitimate means only of course!). So I’ve suggested free searching online for the article title, emailing the author of the paper, searching CORE and the standard inter-library loan mechanism.
In terms of my sessions, I had considered just not preparing any slides at all for inductions and turning the session back onto the students, asking them to ask me what they want to know rather than me telling them. Of course, this would require a backup of the knowledge that needs to be imparted, just in case they didn’t ask me questions that led to imparting of crucial information. But…I think this would be interesting in terms of over-turning the hierarchy. It no longer being about what I think they need to know, but them telling me what they need to know. The session no longer being led by me, but by them. I’m not sure how this would work…I don’t think it would work with a large group, but maybe with a small one. And possibly better with refresher sessions than with first years. Equally: undergraduate or postgraduate? What would work best? I need to think on all this. Ultimately I’m probably not going to do this this year (although possibly as a one-off trial), but maybe something to try out next year.
We’ll see how it goes. Gradually I’m trying to re-orientate the sessions a bit and make them more distinct and “mine”. We’ll see how it goes when the first round starts in a few weeks time!
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