Information transfer among disciplines is an appealing avenue for librarianship. I immediately think of the potential for academic librarians to collaborate with professors and students from all backgrounds of academic study. The lectures and activities in this library school course helped me to think about how I, as a librarian, can investigate information transfer and recognize information needs to better serve students and faculty. All three assigned course activities have focused on how information is transferred, first in my own life and then, in various academic disciplines known and unknown to me. While these activities were both comfortable and even uncomfortable to me, I now look forward to the challenge of finding resources and offering instruction in different discipline areas and situations. By synthesizing and summarizing these course assignment experiences, I have learned that librarians can educate and prepare to assist anyone by applying a useful strategy, no matter what the information need or discipline of study may be. A summary and synthesis of these course activities follow.
The first activity involved examining ordinary information and common information transfer methods. I created a blog that highlighted my lifestyle, hobbies, educational experiences, cultural heritage, and examined how information transfer impacts my daily life (li834carney.blogspot.com/2007/09/greetings-from-kansas-city.html). The purpose of this activity was to communicate and transfer information to others on what a typical day in my life is like. The challenge was to adequately express through text and images how I live my life and how I view the world around me. From a constructivist viewpoint, how I view the world is a synthesis of my personal experiences. To communicate how I perceive the world to another person is a challenge – he or she may internalize what I am trying to express differently than how I intended it to be. For instance, initially I noted that because my family heritage is Polish, I am subjected to Polish jokes. However, upon further consideration I decided to remove reference to this information because there was a chance it could be misunderstood and offensive to other people of Polish heritage. For me, it was better to communicate who I am as person rather than perpetuate others' stereotypes based on history and a surname.
I was able to work with the professor to create a pathfinder to help him in course preparation and his students with their research, which also helped me to complete a requirement for the final assignment of this course! My pathfinder was designed to help students with interdisciplinary search methods. This proved to be a perfect example of constructivism and sense making because if a student is unfamiliar with African American culture, art, and history, then how does he or she go about linking literature to visual art, music, and more? My goal was to help students make sense of their interdisciplinary research by giving them advice on how to approach their research project and information seeking needs.
The interview and observation were beneficial in evaluating the information needs of this particular discipline and overall, the activity was a great learning experience. As an aspiring academic librarian, I realized the importance of familiarizing oneself with interdisciplinary studies, especially in areas such as science where I have little experience. I learned how to prepare myself for any future tasks of assisting professors outside my academic comfort level. For instance, if I were a librarian assigned to the biology department to provide liaison services, I would research and study the different courses and syllabi offered by the biology instructors. I would probe to find ways that library services could help benefit the department and professors. Even though the particular course I observed had little need for gray literature, from this library course assignment I now have an awareness and a better understanding of what is classified as gray literature and how it is valued for teaching purposes.
However, I needed to find something specific to African American literature and interdisciplinary studies. I located The Oxford Companion to African American Literature (Andrews, 1997), which served as a helpful resource. This comprehensive volume covers historical and cultural contexts of African American literature and provides a systematic approach to research. The index not only covers authors and titles of works, but includes cross-reference to topics, events, and characters related to African American literature. I found it to be an excellent tool because it helps explain how to link literature to history, culture, and art – a perfect resource for creating my pathfinder!
The pathfinder was designed to not only serve as guide to locate helpful resources, but also contains information and tips on how students can create a search strategy to link literature to other disciplines. Another challenge noted by the professor of the African American class was that his students have a hard time locating primary resources such as artwork, photographs, and original manuscripts. Thus, the pathfinder contains a link to my del.icio.us account where several suitable websites are book marked to help students locate primary resources on the web.
References
Return to the academic.emporia.edu/abersusa/835/projects.htm.
Copyright 2007 Shelley Carney. All rights reserved. Webpage created: December 14, 2007.