Alright, so it is 1 a.m. and I finally figured out how to post a blog. Needless to say I had a very difficult time finding the article by Dr. Jenson using the BSU Library website. I am really not looking forward to a semester full of online searches. As a non traditional student, that is, too old for all this, and definitely not experienced at all with this type of online research techniques, I feel the frustration every time I do research. My personal feeling is that with this technology, filtering the information that would be useful takes too much time. I am sure that I feel this way because I am not very good at it yet.
Although this article started by completely ignoring the factor of student diversity (i.e. age), I soon felt completely included in the category of students mentioned by Dr. Jenson. I believe myself to be computer literate which definitely does not mean that I understand the research terminology on line. I do believe that with time I will get better at it but it has been a challenge even after attending the Library's training session. The training session is a good thing, however, Dr. Jenson's suggestion of interpreting what you see on the screen as a group during training could definitely help. I have survived all these years doing research with the direct help of the librarian EVERY time I started a new project. Pretty embarrassing; she must think I'm a bit slow.
In my opinion, there should be a Core Curriculum course that addresses this issue with the objective of having students practice finding sources for a whole semester. Practicing over and over is the only way we can become "online research literate" enough to start our college years. For us that are in our way out, we need all the help we can get, this is confusing, overwhelming and time consuming. Wasn't this online thing meant to save time?
In some ways you have an advantage because you understand what all these electronic documents represent in material terms. But, yes, searching is difficult, and we need to rely more on experts to help us out on occasion. The databases may not save us time, but they do provide us access to information we would not have otherwise--although as I mentioned in class, that makes learning how to evaluate all that information even more important!
ReplyDeleteI certainly on the same page when it comes to using the library for "research".
ReplyDeleteJust give it time, things will come easier for you. It really isn't as hard as it seems. You just have to want to do it.
ReplyDeleteYes, practice would definately help students learn much easier. And by offering a course dealing specifically with searching the library for references, students would practically become experts in discovering these key items.
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