Show Your Librarian Some Love

Show Your Librarian Some Love / by Todd Gilman

Many academic librarians feel unloved and underappreciated on their campuses, and the main reason is that they sense they are viewed as second-class citizens by members of the teaching faculty.Certainly that sentiment will not come as news to librarians. I wonder, though, to what extent teaching faculty members know how their library colleagues feel.....

.....Many professors summarily dismiss librarians' earnest and repeated offers of research instruction or, at the very least, don't take full advantage of those offers. When prodded they may claim they have "too much to cover" in their courses to make time for a library visit.....

.....Your students need the library and the librarians in it. If your students didn't get enough exposure to research education before your course (and trust me, they didn't) you owe it to them to bring them in. Most undergraduates come to college having mastered only the most basic tools for research. They can use a dictionary. They can conduct a search in Google that yields results (5 million, in fact!). They may even be able to run an online search by author or title and then find the book on the shelf.....
....Better yet, why not work with that librarian to develop one or more assignments for a grade that will enable your students to apply what they have learned while the library is still fresh in their minds? That way they are sure to take the library seriously, reap the maximum benefit from their interaction with the librarian, and get practice using the library for something more than study space...

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