首页
登录
职称英语
The Gulf Between College Students and Librarians Students rarely
The Gulf Between College Students and Librarians Students rarely
游客
2024-02-19
8
管理
问题
The Gulf Between College Students and Librarians
Students rarely ask librarians for help, even when they need it. This is one of the sobering truths the librarians have learned over the course of a two-year, five-campus ethnographic (人种学的) study examining how students view and use their campus libraries. The idea of a librarian as an academic expert who is available to talk about assignments and hold their hands through the research process is, in fact, foreign to most students. Those who even have the word "librarian" in their vocabularies often think library staff are only good for pointing to different sections of the stacks.
The ERIAL (Ethnographic Research in Illinois Academic libraries) project contains a series of studies conducted at Illinois Wesleyan, DePaul University, and Northeastern Illinois University, and the University of Illinois’s Chicago and Springfield campuses. Instead of relying on surveys, the libraries included two anthropologists (人类学者), along with their own staff members, to collect data using open-ended interviews and direct observation, among other methods.
The goal was to generate data that, rather than being statistically significant yet shallow, would provide deep, subjective accounts of what students, librarians and professors think of the library and each other at those five institutions.
Exploding the "Myth of the Digital Native"
The most alarming finding in the ERIAL studies was perhaps the most predictable: when it comes to finding and evaluating sources in the Internet age, students are extremely Internet-dependent.
Only 7 out of 30 students whom anthropologists observed at Illinois Wesleyan " conducted what a librarian might consider a reasonably well-executed search," wrote Duke and Andrew Asher, an anthropology professor at Bucknell University, who led the project.
Throughout the interviews, students mentioned Google 115 times—more than twice as many times as any other database. The prevalence of Google in student research is well-documented, but the Illinois researchers found something they did not expect: students were not very good at using Google. They were basically clueless about the logic underlying how the search engine organizes and displays its results. Consequently, the students did not know how to build a search that would return good sources.
"I think it really exploded this myth of the ’ digital native,’ " Asher said. "Just because you’ve grown up searching things in Google doesn’t mean you know how to use Google as a good research tool. "
Even when students turned to more scholarly resources, it did not necessarily solve the problem. Many seemed confused about where in the constellation (云集) of library databases they should turn to locate sources for their particular research topic: Half wound up misusing databases a librarian " would most likely never recommend for their topic." For example, "Students regularly used JSTOR, the second-most frequently mentioned database in student interviews, to try to find current research on a topic, not realizing that JSTOR does not provide access to the most recently published articles. "
Unsurprisingly, students using this method got either too many search results or too few. Frequently, students would be so discouraged they would change their research topic to something that requires a simple search.
"Many students described experiences of anxiety and confusion when looking for resources—an observation that seems to be widespread among students at the five institutions involved in this study," Duke and Asher wrote.
There was just one problem, Duke and Asher noted: " Students showed an almost complete lack of interest in seeking assistance from librarians during the search process. " Of all the students they observed—many of whom struggled to find good sources, to the point of despair—not one asked a librarian for help.
In a separate study of students at DePaul, Illinois-Chicago, and Northeastern Illinois, other ERIAL researchers deduced several possible reasons for this. The most basic was that students were just as unaware of the extent of their own information illiteracy as everyone else. Some others overestimated their ability or knowledge.
Another possible reason was that students seek help from sources they know and trust, and they do not know librarians. Many do not even know what the librarians are there for. Other students imagined librarians to have more research-oriented knowledge of the library but still thought of them as glorified ushers.
Influence of Professors and Librarians
However, the researchers did not place the blame solely on students. Librarians and professors are also partially to blame for the gulf that has opened between students and the library employees who are supposed to help them, the ERIAL researchers say.
Instead of librarians, whose relationship to any given student is typically ill-defined, students seeking help often turn to a more logical source: the person who gave them the assignment—and who, ultimately, will be grading their work. Because librarians hold little sway with students, they can do only so much to reshape students’ habits. They need professors’ help. Unfortunately, faculty may have low expectations for librarians, and consequently students may not be connected to librarians or see why working with librarians may be helpful.
On the other hand, librarians tend to overestimate the research skills of some of their students, which can result in interactions that leave students feeling intimidated and alienated (疏远的). Some professors make similar assumptions, and fail to require that their students visit with a librarian before carrying on research projects. And both professors and librarians are liable to project an idealistic view of the research process onto students who often are not willing or able to fulfill it.
By financial necessity, many of today’s students have limited time to devote to their research. Showing students the pool and then shoving them into the deep end is more likely to foster despair than self-reliance. Now more than ever, academic librarians should seek to "save time for the reader". Before they can do that, of course, they will have to actually get students to ask for help. "That means understanding why students are not asking for help and knowing what kind of help they need," say the librarians.
"This study has changed, profoundly, how I see my role at the university and my understanding of who our students are," says Lynda Duke, an academic librarian at Illinois Wesleyan. " It’s been life-changing, truly. " [br] What is the most alarming finding in the ERIAL studies?
选项
A、Students’ ignorance of library resources.
B、Students’ prejudice against the librarians.
C、Students’ heavy reliance on the Internet.
D、Students’ poor command of search engines.
答案
C
解析
由定位句可知,这次研究最让人担忧、也是最能够预料得到的发现是:学生们在网络时代对网络极为依赖。C)中的heavy reliance on the Internet与原文中的extremely Internet—dependent属于同义转述,故为答案。
转载请注明原文地址:https://www.tihaiku.com/zcyy/3465607.html
相关试题推荐
Whatistherelationbetweenthecodeandculturewhichcreatesit,andwhic
Whatistherelationbetweenthecodeandculturewhichcreatesit,andwhic
Thedifferencebetweenaliquidandagasisobvious【C1】______theconditions
Thedifferencebetweenaliquidandagasisobvious【C1】______theconditions
Thedifferencebetweenaliquidandagasisobvious【C1】______theconditions
Thedifferencebetweenaliquidandagasisobvious【C1】______theconditions
Thedifferencebetweenaliquidandagasisobvious【C1】______theconditions
Thedifferencebetweenaliquidandagasisobvious【C1】______theconditions
Thedifferencebetweenaliquidandagasisobvious【C1】______theconditions
Thedifferencebetweenaliquidandagasisobvious【C1】______theconditions
随机试题
AsscientistsattheSmithsonianhaveobserved,theinstitution’srangeofscien
[originaltext]M:Takethepillthreetimesadayrightaftermeals,andeachti
家庭是社会的基本单位,其结构随着社会的发展而变化。在中国几千年的封建社会(feudalsociety)里,绝大部分家庭是几世同堂,家里的大事由男人做主
反义RNA
如图3所示,一物体分别从光滑的圆弧轨道和直轨道的上端P点自由下滑到Q点,关于两次
下列各味药,不属黄芪桂枝五物汤组成的是A.黄芪 B.桂枝 C.芍药 D.生
天海公司是一家小型播种机生产企业,该公司制造的天海播种机采取多环节销售渠道,主要
某五层档案库,采用钢筋混凝土框架结构,抗震设防烈度为7度(0.15g),设计地震
A.消除患者紧张心情 B.抑制呼吸道腺体的分泌和提高痛阈 C.消除因手术及麻
甲油田是增值税一般纳税人,以1个月为一个纳税期缴纳增值税和资源税,2021年5月
最新回复
(
0
)