Gerald Beasley, Concordia’s University Librarian, was instrumental in the campus-wide dialogue on open access that began more than a year ago. “I am delighted that Senate voted to support the recommendations of all four Faculty Councils and the Council of the School of Graduate Studies. There are only a handful of precedents in North America for the kind of leadership that Concordia faculty have demonstrated by their determination to make publicly-funded research available to all rather than just the minority able to afford the rapidly rising subscription costs of scholarly databases, books and journals.”

Further, the university has launched an institutional repository service called Spectrum. At present, it has approximately six thousand dissertations available. The repository is maintained and operated by the library. In reading the Spectrum Frequently Asked Questions, I also came across this statement explaining how open access improves research impact. This is an excellent point to raise as this is an important concern for many researchers.

Question: How does depositing in Spectrum increase research impact?

Research repositories benefit faculty members by bringing about broader dissemination, increased use and enhanced professional visibility of their scholarly research.

When work reaches a wider audience, it often leads to an increase in citations. According to Peter Suber, open access to research publications increases the audience for a work far beyond the audience of any priced journal, even the most prestigious or popular journal. Studies in many fields show a correlation between open access and citation-count increases from 50% to 250%. See this Open Access Citation bibliography.

Congratulations Concordia!

Related posts:

1. Harvard Business School Adopts Open Access
2. York University Adopts Open Access Policy for Librarians and Archivists
3. University of Ottawa adopts open access

Wikipedia poses another example of this issue in my thinking; many students like to use this resource but many instructors hate this. Why? The old, superficial way to think about this conflict is between the technologically savvy Generation Y student and the technologically unsophisticated instructor that barely tolerates technology. In my view, the real issue that professors and academic librarians have with Wikipedia is not technological, it is cultural. For some, the open nature of the editing process is a problem (though I would point out that the design of the system makes vandalism extremely easy to repair). For others, it is the lack of expert contributions. I can appreciate both those concerns, but the real problem is that the student isn’t being through enoug they’re just skimming the surface of available research and knowledge.

One of the outcomes of a proper university education should be to acquaint students with the vast universe of knowledge that exists out there and the skills to work through it. Simply telling them not to use a specific resource might help them with a specific assignment, but it does not build lasting skills. Even if I could, I wouldn’t want to provide students with a simple list of “do this” and “don’t do this”: they are capable of better. As a teacher of a friend once remarked, they should push for greater depth.

Related posts:

1. Lessons Learned: How College Students Find Information in the Digital Age (Report)
2. The state of today’s Ontario university students (Toronto Star article)
3. How to keep your skills sharp

Related posts:

1. Concordia University embraces open access
2. York University Adopts Open Access Policy for Librarians and Archivists
3. University of Ottawa adopts open access

The first session I attended, There’s a Library Here? Student outreach at the University of Guelph-Humber College, was a review and assessment of the marketing and outreach services recently employed at this Toronto institution. Guelph-Humber, founded in 2002,  has approximately three thousand students and faces the particular challenge of not having a dedicated library space. Nonetheless, Jennifer Easter and Caroline Stewart described Guelph-Humber’s outreach successes. One of the library’s strongest moves was to set up a student advisory committee which advises librarians on a variety of topics including how best to communicate with students. The decision to embed librarians in the institution’s Writing Centre has also been a great success as it allows for extended (30-60 minutes) consultations with students. The more I think about, the more I see a natural partnership between writing centres and librarians. The presenters also covered what didn’t succeed as well was the reference in student residence service; this came as no surprise since most library efforts to do this have not been highly successful. There was also a lively discussion of questions from those in the audience, including some from yours truly. I have written previously about marketing academic libraries; it is a topic of long standing interest for me.

During the extended lunch break, I went to see some of the poster presentations being provided. The sheer scope of projects undertaken was impressive; everything from research databases to developing cataloguing standards for video games was shown here. Of course, I went to see Meghan Eccelstone and Angela Hamilton, of York University, present on screencasting. They’ve found that videos over about five minutes tend to lose student interest. As I have something of an interest in German history and culture, it was also fun to see the German Canadiana in Ontario Bibliography project presented by Helena Calogeridis, Jane Forgay and William Oldfield of the University of Waterloo; it covers books, family histories, newspapers and other kinds of materials by and about this community. Two librarians from Queen’s University, Sylvia Andrychuk and Elizabeth Gibson, presented on some recent innovations that they have participated in. Their poster, From Annotated Bibliographies to Zines: Alternatives to the Research Paper, showed that humanities and social sciences teaching can go beyond the standard essay assignment. For example, there have been course assignments where students have been assigned the task of assessing and improving Wikipedia entries. I love the idea of actually having students improve the state of the world’s knowledge. They also told me that students tend to put more effort into their work, whether it be posters, zines or Wikipedia pages, when they knew it would be publicly displayed. The final poster I looked into was called, “Preserving PAc-Mac: Creating a Metadata Schema for Video Games,” by Max Dionisio and Sheila Mallahi Karai of the University of Toronto and it was enlightening. Unlike book cataloguing, describing and cataloguing video games is up for debate. There are many questions about what to include in catalogue records and how to organize it.

The attractions and challenges of providing 24/7 access to library services was discussed in another session I attended. Presented by Catherine Devion (University of Toronto Scarborough), Mark Robertson (York University) and Martha Whitehead (York University)) have all launched late night library programs over the last few years. In the case of York, student politicians actually campaigned for 24 hour library access and the library responded. In each case, it looks like late night library usage peaks between 11pm and 1am. From my perspective, it looks like academic libraries could justify closing from 2am-6am based on usage. In the Q&A part of the discussion, there were questions raised about whether it is wise to offer this kind of service since it may encourage students to adopt unhealthy work habits; indeed, some health staff at Queen’s expressed just this concern. From an administrative standpoint, it looks like the only real difficulty was keeping libraries clean; security was carefully thought out and there did not appear to be any problems on that front.

I ended the day by attending a stimulating session on reference called, “No Longer Just An Interview: Reference as a Relationship” given by Professor Mary Cavanagh and Luanna Freund. They both emphasized the importance of moving past the reference as transaction model that is suggested by library statistics. Indeed, Cavanagh points out that some library statistics claim that only about 20% of interactions are “real” reference questions but this is misleading. Many of the other interactions are necessary to build rapport and trust between librarian and library user in her view. Freund, who teaches aspiring librarians at UBC, approaches reference from a different angle; how can we teach a set of skills that is notoriously difficult to convey in any other way besides experience? She had some interesting ideas including encouraging people to study human-computer interaction more and learn more about information behaviour. In the Q&A portion, I asked about how one can build reference relationships using virtual reference or chat services. They both agreed it was a great challenge to do this; I think there are ways to change virtual reference technology to make it more conducive to relationships.

Related posts:

1. OLA 2010 Conference: Day One
2. Ready for the TRY Conference
3. Notes on the TRY Conference

The first session I attended, given by Janice Mutz of Lakehead and John Dupuis of York, led a stimulating session on the future of academic libraries. Some of the presentation was familiar to me from Dupuis’s other writings on the topic but the discussion was lively. One of the most challenging points raised is the perception or brand problem that students and faculty tend to think the library is for print books and little else despite the fact that libraries have many other services and collections. Other debates were a bit more theoretical but still interesting; what happens if the trend toward consolidation and monopoly in academic publishing continues and continues? Is it impossible to imagine a day where Google owns all the major academic publishers? It could certainly afford to do that. In my view, most of the challenges to academic libraries in the next ten years or so are solvable but it will require some unusual thinking. For example, I think there is an opportunity for librarians to take on a publisher role by running and maintaining open access journals.

The next session I attended was all about using the Census, a tremendously valuable resource by any measure but also a difficult one to use effectively. I’ve always wanted to know more about how to use the census better and this session helped. The presenters -  Sue Giles and Dan Jakubek from Ryerson  – demonstrated how the census can be used to answer questions such as “Is it true that many Toronto taxi drivers have PhDs?” (In short: no. About 10% of Toronto taxi drivers have university degrees but only about 0.05% have PhDs) and “What is the average rent in my neighbourhood?” The presenters also explained the complexities of access to Statistics Canada and the relative precision of what you can kind.

The third session I attended, “The Role of the Library in Student Retention,” was interesting and provoked me to think of questions. The central question posed by the session is whether or not the library/librarians have an effect on student retention. Student retention can mean a few different things; keeping students enrolled until they graduate, preventing drop outs, that sort of thing. The speaker, Lorelei Harris of the University of Lethbridge Library, introduced us to the different theories that explain how and why students stay and succeed at college and university. Evidence that the library plays a critical or definitive role is still inconclusive at this point. There are some tantalizing possibilities though; providing student jobs at the library may improve student retention, for example. This session, like the other two above, left me wanting more and what higher praise can you ask from a curious librarian?

Related posts:

1. OLA 2010 Conference: Day Two
2. WILU 2010: Lighting Strikes, Birds of a Feather and more (Day Two)
3. 10 Reasons To Attend the OLA 2010 Conference

The authors of the report explain that traditional modes of scholarly communication are likely to persist for quite some time as academic work environment tends to be conservative:

In all fields, many young scholars, and particularly graduate students, are especially leery of putting ideas and data out too soon for fear of thefy and/or misinterpretation. Given these findings, we caution against assumptions that “millenials” will change the social landscape of scholarship by virtue of their facility with cell phones and social networking sites. There is ample evidence, once initiated into the profession, newer scholars – be they graduate students, postdoctoral scholars, or assistant professors – adopt the behaviors, norms and recommendations of their mentors in order to advance their careers.

These are difficult questions to face if you are generally enthusiastic about the sharing ethic. The very unpopularity of putting ideas out there makes examples of it all the more interesting. For example, you can read all the papers, data and other materials that Chris Blattman, professor of political science at Yale, produces (sidenote: his website is also very well designed and appealing). Ultimately, it looks like not much will change until tenure decisions are modernized to recognize other forms of worthwhile academic activity besides publication in a high prestige periodical. Change will come but it may take a long time and it will likely be very uneven. Academic librarians need to understand the current environment and identify ways to improve it. I expect I will come back to this report several times to read it through more deeply.

Related posts:

1. Lessons Learned: How College Students Find Information in the Digital Age (Report)
2. Book Review: The Library PR Handbook: high-impact communications edited by Mark R. Gould
3. CLA Conference Report is up

1. The promise of free or marginal-cost open-source content, techno-hybridization, unbundling of educational functions, and learner-centered educational experiences and paths is too powerful to ignore. These changes are inevitable. They are happening now. Innovative private colleges like Southern New Hampshire and for-profits like Grand Canyon, upstarts like BYU–Idaho and Western Governor’s University, and community colleges like Foothill-De Anza represent the future.
2. However, these changes will not automatically become pervasive. Many existing institutions, especially those with the greatest reserves of wealth and reputation, will manage to remain outwardly, physically the same for decades, and to charge ever-higher tuition, even as enrollment shifts more and more toward the for-profits and community colleges and other places that adopt these changes.
3. In order to short-circuit the cost spiral, and provide access to appropriate education and training for people of all backgrounds, there is much hard work to be done in the way schools are funded and accreditation and transfer policies are set. College leaders need to have the will to change, as Chancellor Kirwan did at the University of Maryland, recognizing the central importance of efficiencies and changing the relationship between universities and their funders. Political leaders need to legislate change, as Senator Dick Durbin is by calling for open textbooks, and Bob Shireman by proposing to link funding for student loans to a college’s proportion of Pell-eligible students. Above all, learners and their families need to recognize that alternatives to the status quo exist and demand change.
4. The one thing that can change dramatically and relatively swiftly is the public perception of where the true value and quality of higher education lies. It’s no longer about the automatic four-year degree for all. Institutions can’t rely any more on history, reputation, exclusivity, and cost; we now have the ability to peer inside the classroom as professors are lecturing and see students’ assignments published to the world. So we have both the ability and the obligation to look at demonstrated results.

From: “Commencement”: An Excerpt from DIY U

Libraries and librarians are not mentioned anywhere, so some interpretative work is needed to make sense of this. Firstly, the prospect of “unbundling of educational functions” could be bad news for libraries. If the academic experience is broken down into a set of experiences unrelated to each other, much will be lost including some of the historical reasons for academic libraries. One possible future of the academic library might be to position itself as a student’s home base through their studies; they may take many different courses with different instructors but they will always have a librarian to turn to. Another option is to seek deeper connections with instructors and make the case that library skills in research and evaluation of information are crucial to both academic study and long term success. Kamenetz sees a future with a greater emphasis on outcomes, skills and projects. I think librarians are well posed to meet that change.

Related posts:

1. New iSchool Podcast episode is online: Open Education Round the World
2. Distance Education: How Can We Do It Well?
3. Neuroscience and what it means for education, work and more

• Only about 25% of instructors advise students to recommended a librarian to do course-related research.
• “The relatively consistent pattern of information usage suggests that most students in our study favored a risk-averse and predictable information-seeking strategy. The student approach appears to be learned by rote and reliant on using a small set of resources nearly each and every time.” – page 32
• We see a perfect storm brewing on some campuses: (1) many students have imperatives to graduate in four years or less, because of the weak economy, rising tuition costs, and pressure from the institution and family; (2) many students take a brimming course load each term, which may require more work than they are capable of completing; (3) many students develop a work style that tries to get as much done in as little time as possible and work expands to fill the time allotted; and (4) many studentsʼ information-seeking competencies end up being highly contextual, a set of predictable skills developed for passing courses, not for lifelong literacy and professional goals beyond college… As a result, we see the very important pedagogical goals of deep learning and critical thinking are at risk of being greatly impeded within the academy.” – page 34
• “We see a trend that concerns us: Students in our study developed information strategy that was learned by rote, applied with dogged consistency, and resulted in respectable grades. Many studentsʼ research methods appear to be far from experimental, new, developmental, or innovative.” – page 34

There is much for librarians to think about here, not least of which is the question of student information habits. It strike me as likely that many students form their information habits prior to starting university or college and that they often do little to change. The report also found that students typically start their research process with assigned readings and a handful of other resources. Inspiring students to learn more deeply is part of the challenge that academic librarians face and I’m not sure how that can be achieved. One option is to work more closely with faculty members, many of which no doubt share the concern that students are not learning critical thinking skills in much depth.

Thanks , K.G. Schneider, (author of the excellent Free Range Librarian blog) for pointing this study out.

Related posts:

1. Skills Over Rules: there is no royal road to information literacy
2. The state of today’s Ontario university students (Toronto Star article)
3. Young Learners Need Librarians, Not Just Google (Forbes)