Peter Haxton

Open Horizons for Humanities Researchers

LI 835 Information Transfer in the Disciplines
Emporia State University

Proposals and Problems

Information transfer in the disciplines was investigated in this course in order to determine strategies and solutions for librarians interested in enhancing liaison, instruction, and reference services in academic libraries. In synthesizing interviews and observations with faculty in entomology and literature fields of study, I noted two distinct ways that the dissemination of information can be hampered. The greatest obstacle for the entomologist was the students’ inability to conduct effective or productive searches either in the library or online. This barrier is easily overcome with bibliographic instruction. A librarian could be sent to the class, or better the class to the library, and students could learn how to find the materials they needed. It would require effort on the part of the librarian to identify that need and willingness on the part of the professor to sacrifice some class time. However, the benefit would likely out way the cost in time or effort.

In contrast, the second obstacle in the literature course for facilitating effective information transfer was more of a reluctance on the part of the instructor to incorporating research materials because much of sense making in the study of literature is done by the individual. There is not, in the humanities, a tradition or expectation that researchers should present their ideas before their peers for review and criticism. Blazek (2000) refers to this as the “peculiarly personal and individualistic nature of humanistic research” (p.3). In part due to this lack of trial by fire scholarship, students also learn that they can create their own constructs in which to understand and make sense of the literature they are studying. Blazek (2000) further opines that:

[I]t is not necessarily the content of the scholarship in the humanities that leads to independent and solitary work, but rather that it may be that there is something different about the training and education of humanistic scholars that leads to the lack of collaborative work (p. 3).

A Plan of Action

”There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, [t]han are dreamt of in your philosophy.” Hamlet, Act I, Scene v.

As the quote may imply, the task then, is not just to teach an undergraduate how to query a database, but how to encourage a trained academician, if not an entire discipline, to begin to embrace the use of bibliographic assistance and outside research materials to a greater extent. Humanitites scholars are not alone in this idiosyncrasy and if librarians could encourage a change in perspective on the part of faculty to make greater use of research and teaching materials this would likely lead to an increase in the use of such resources by students.

In his 2000 book, Blazek contends that humanities scholars are less likely to seek or accept outside bibliographic assistance because the “interconnections within the researcher’s mind appear to be so subtle or complex that it is necessary to examine personally the (material) . . . to determine its actual relevance” (p.3). Another difficulty Blazek notes is the lack of controlled vocabularies and the nature of knowledge in the humanities.

Thus, this was a short summary of the obstacles or challenges that academic librarians need to understand prior to attempting to provide resource or bibliographic advice to professors in various disciplines. A plan of action might be to present faculty with a list of materials that could be used in the class to provide the professor’s students some alternate viewpoints or additional sources of information on the literature covered in their course. As an example, I created the following brief list of representative resources with my commentary gathered from Blazek’s (2000) The Humanities: A Selective Guide to Information Sources. These resources were selected based on Blazek’s descriptions and how well the resources appear to either meet the research needs of the students or the professor in a particular literature course investigated for this library course.

A Selective Guide to English Literature Resources

Baker, N. and Huling, N. (1995). A research guide for undergraduate students: English and American literature. New York: Modern Languages Association of America.
From a librarian’s point of view, this book may be very helpful, as it includes general reference for undergraduates on the use of the library and research, in addition to bibliographic information.

Bateson, F. W. (ed.) (1974). The new Cambridge bibliography of English literature. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge.
This is a five-volume work covering 1,300 years of literature in English. It has extensive lists of sources for each era of literature.

Coye, D. (1998). Pronouncing Shakespeare’s words: A basic guide from A to Zounds. Greenwood: Westport, CT.
This is a pronunciation dictionary for Shakespearean works. Some of the entries include definitions. In combination with using the online Oxford English Dictionary, it appears that enabling the student to understand the language they are studying might be important to the professor.

Liu, A. (2007). The voice of the shuttle. Accessed December 2, 2007 from vos.ucsb.edu/index.asp.
The Voice of the Shuttle website is the only one of these resources I have personally used. It is a compilation of articles and websites on all manner of the humanities. Of these resources suggested, it is the only gray literature source.
Marcuse, M. (1990). A reference guide for English studies. University of California Press: Berkeley.
This guide appears to be a strong general reference that the professor could suggest or guide students toward. It covers all eras of English literature, so it may be too general.
Various. Shakespeare survey: An annual survey of Shakespearean study and production. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge.
This annual survey series dating back to 1948 would likely be of special interest to a professor creating a course specific to this subject matter. The survey selects scholarly works on the Bard.

Conclusion

Many of the obstacles to information dissemination that librarians face can be resolved with relatively simple answers: teach students how to research, or find their books, or write a citation. Others, though, may require a little more maneuvering, such as in the case of faculty whose training as an English professor may have led to a predisposition against seeking bibliographic assistance or incorporating other works into research. In the professor’s defense, there was no apparent reticence to accept change, technology or outside resources. The faculty here serves more as a symbol of humanities academics, who may, because of the nature of sense making in those disciplines, not be so open-minded.

This paper brings up an interesting ethical issue for librarians, though. Although it is our duty to provide access to information, is it also our duty to try to change the information seeking behaviors in others? Blazek’s contentions about humanities scholars are predicated on the assumption that there is something there that needs to be changed. I am not completely sure of my feelings on the issue, but it does feel uncomfortably similar to 19th and 20th century Westerners seeing the need to “civilize” the “Savages.” Perhaps our obligation, then, is to find resources and present them, or have them available, for the faculty and students to use. The decision to change, if such change is needed or desired, then is solely at the hands of the patron.

Reference

Blazek, R. (2000). The humanities: A selective guide to information sources. Libraries Unlimited, Englewood, Colorado.

Return to the academic.emporia.edu/abersusa/835/projects.htm.