Engaging First-Year Students in Meaningful Library Research: A Practical Guide for Teaching Faculty

By Molly Flaspohler

Aimed at teaching professionals working with first-year students at institutions of higher learning, this book provides practical advice and specific strategies for integrating contemporary information literacy competencies into courses intended for novice researchers. The book has two main goals - to discuss the necessity and value of incorporating information literacy into first-year curricula; and to provide a variety of practical, targeted strategies for doing so. The author will introduce and encourage teaching that follows a process-driven, constructivist framework as a way of engaging first-year students in library work that is interesting, meaningful and disciplinarily relevant.

• Provides helpful advice and guidance for seamlessly integrating library research competencies into first-year courses
• Offers practical models and real life examples of successful student-centered, course-based library research assignments
• Is written by an academic librarian with nearly 20 years of experience in the field

• Language: English
• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Release date: Nov 9, 2011
• ISBN: 9781780632940

Molly Flaspohler

Molly R. Flaspohler is Special Projects Librarian at Concordia College, Moorhead, Minnesota where she has worked for 19 years. She has published and presented on a range of library issues including program assessment, information literacy in first-year composition courses, and librarian sabbatical leave trends.

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Introduction

Abstract: Today’s first-year undergraduate students are dreadfully ill-equipped to complete even the most basic academic research tasks. Citing real-life situations, this chapter introduces readers to the significant yet oft-ignored educational difficulties that such a lack of information literacy regularly creates. This chapter also outlines the pedagogical purposes of this text and offers further background about the variety of complex information obstacles faced by today’s incoming undergraduates. Finally, this chapter provides a brief outline of the book’s overall structural organization.

Key words: introduction, purpose, background, organization, library research, undergraduates, first-year students, novice researchers, Millennials, research paper failure, information literacy, teaching faculty, librarians.

Roughly two weeks prior to the end of this academic year, a young student reluctantly approached the library’s Reference Desk where I work a number of hours per week. The first thing I noticed was that she had nothing with her that indicated she was planning to spend any time actually working in the library. She had none of the usual student accessories: no backpack, no assignment sheets, no textbooks, no tablet, no writing utensils, nothing. She simply walked up to the desk empty-handed and asked in a small voice, ‘Can you tell me if this library has, uhm, like, a section on prejudice?’ The breadth of her query was more than enough to set off librarian alarm bells. But, figuring in the time of year at which such a vague question was being asked also meant that this student was likely to have only a week or less to complete what I eventually learned was to be a ten to fifteen-page research paper. This student should have been a great deal further along in her research process if she had any hope whatsoever of writing a paper that was anything more than a superficial data-dump.

A few days later, ten minutes before my final evening reference shift for the year ended, another student strode purposefully up to the desk and declared the following: ‘I’m doing research on homosexual men in China, with a primary focus on the decade 1960 to 1970 and I was, like, wondering if there was a book on that in the library.’ Upon seeing what must have been a relatively stunned look on my face (the academic library at which I work is small and the probability of locating a book with such topic specificity was unlikely at best), this student huffily added yet another criterion. ‘Oh, and will this book be located here in the library for me to check out; because I do NOT intend to spend ANY more time in this building