Robbins Library Notes

Good morning, readers!

Today is the start of the Spring 2009 term, and I’m set and ready to help you with your information needs!

To get you started:

• Helpful cheat sheets on searching
• Useful databases for philosophical research
  

With what else can I help you?

Good morning, readers!  Happy Monday to you!

Some of you may not know about Project MUSE, a database of online journals maintained by Johns Hopkins University.  Project MUSE is a great database to use for research in the humanities, and especially in philosophy.

Last week, I was sent a link to a vodcast (video podcast), highlighting how to use the Library of Congress (LC) subject headings to refine your searching in Project MUSE, and, by extension, in library catalogs.  Here’s the promotion from Project MUSE:

A vodcast is a video podcast. The MUSE vodcast is a tool for both users and librarians and runs just over three minutes in length. Users can learn, on their own, what subject headings are, where to find them in MUSE, and how they help locate articles specific to a research topic. Librarians may find the vodcast useful as a supplement to instruction classes. The vodcast is a lighthearted approach to demystifying the notion of Library of Congress Subject Headings as they appear in MUSE.

On the MUSE website, find the link for the vodcast in the Training Materials section under the Tools & Resources and Librarians tabs, http://muse.jhu.edu/about/resources/vodcasts.html.

I’ve watched the video, and it is indeed amusing and funny, and very helpful in showing someone how to use the LC subject headings in Project MUSE.  It’s a good illustration of using search limiters to target a search and locate articles on the topic you’re researching.

If you’d like to learn more, please contact me to arrange a bibliographic instruction session.  I’d love to show you!

Good morning, readers, and happy Friday to you!

Looking ahead to Spring Term 2009, which begins in a few weeks, I want to remind my readers that I do far more than making scans and photocopies. For instance:

• Interested in learning more about the various resources available to you at Harvard, and how to maximize their use?  Contact me for a bibliographic instruction session.  One-on-one, small groups, large groups — I’m willing to tailor a session to your needs.  Want to include a session as part of your course?  Contact me and we can discuss.
• Need some help with research?  I’m happy to assist if you want a fresh pair of eyes on a search, or just some help so as to take pressure off your schedule.
• Would like someone to proofread your philosophy paper, or to offer some guidance on what to write?  I’d be glad to do so.
• Web site help — would you like to set up a personal Web page?  I can help you get this process started, and to consult with you on how to build and to design your site.

How else can I assist you with your information and research needs?  Please let me know!

Good morning, readers, and welcome back to Harvard readers who’ve returned for the start of term!  It’s gearing up to be another exciting year here in Robbins Library, and I’m glad that you’ve stopped by to read this blog.

Just a reminder of the many things I can help you with as a librarian:

• Reference & Research

Having trouble finding an article?  Need some help locating information or doing research?  Confused by the Library of Congress classification scheme?  I can help!

• Bibliographic Instruction

If you’re curious to learn about all of the resources available to you at Harvard, or if you want to learn how to search with greater skill and efficiency, I can show you how.

• Web site Set-up and Design

Looking to set up a personal Web page?  Need help with course iSites?  I’m happy to provide support

• Collection Development

Are there books and other items that you think belong in the Robbins collection?  Stop by, and we’ll discuss.

• Course Reserves

Would you like to put materials out on reserve in Robbins for a philosophy course?  Drop me a line, and I’ll arrange for them to be placed on the reserve shelf.

• Navigating the HUL labyrinth

Confused about how the Harvard University Library (HUL) system is organized?  Not sure which library to go to look for information?  I can help guide you through the maze.

All these things, and much more.  So, drop by Emerson Hall 211, send me an e-mail, or give me a call, and we’ll set up some time to chat.  I’m looking forward to working with you in the coming academic year!

*For those who may be too young to get the reference in the title of this post, all your questions will be answered here.

Teaching people how to find information is a big part of what I do as a librarian. Bibliographic instruction and the teaching of information literacy are hot topics that my colleagues and I discuss frequently, and read about in the literature.

Recently, my favorite site for philosophy-related articles — Bookforum.com — listed an article by Monica Hesse from the Washington Post, titled, “Truth: Can You Handle It? Better Yet: Do You Know It When You See It?”

This article caught my attention, and not merely for the obvious philosophical questions about the nature of truth. Why? My interested was piqued because of a question found in the first section of the article:

And all of them get at a big question: For the Google generation, what happens to the concepts of truth and knowledge in a user-generated world of information saturation?

What, indeed, does happen? Does truth, and knowledge with it, fall by the wayside, replaced only with consensus or opinion?

What is the difference between information and knowledge? Hesse offers the following, which I think are good, quick definitions:

Information is about tidbits, crumbs of data. Information can be carried around on a Trivial Pursuit card. Information says, “It’s currently 95 degrees in Anchorage.”

Knowledge is different. Knowledge is about context — about knowing what to do with accumulated information. Knowledge is saying, “Dude, based on what I know of Alaska, it’s never 95 degrees in Anchorage.”

Or, to take a philosophical example: you are writing about the history of atheism, and are curious to learn if philosophers prior to the modern era wrote on the topic, in order to make the point that atheism is, itself, not a recent innovation. In the course of your research, you discover that figures from the classical world, like Lucretius, e.g., did indeed write in such a vein.

Now, the information in this is that Lucretius was an atheist, and this outlook strongly influences his work, De Rerum Natura. Yet, please note well: this is just information. The fact that Lucretius was an atheist says little to nothing in and of itself. Knowledge is the next step. Knowledge is the synthesis of information — which, in this case, means studying this book, placing it within its historical context and classical conceptions of the divine, and not merely making a one-to-one comparison between Lucretius and the contemporary forms of atheism floating about in the world at the present moment. This means more than a quick Google search. This means some serious study and reading.

But, as Hesse goes on to write, students in the Google age are less inclined to consult books, or to even consider going beyond mere information retrieval. What does this mean, for librarians, for teachers, for democracy, for much that we claim to hold dear? Hesse concludes by writing:

There is a lot of information out there. It overwhelms us. It grows at a choking rate.

You wonder: Who is right?

The student who lives online? Or the lame teacher who thinks that books are a necessary component to a well-rounded understanding of how information works?

As students must absorb increasingly more information throughout their education, perhaps expecting them to assess whether it’s true is simply too much. Four errors to Britannica’s three ain’t bad — and probably good enough for the research the average person does on a daily basis.

Yet, I wonder myself: is “good enough” sufficient? That may work when you’re trying to finish your term paper under deadline, with four other papers screaming for attention. But, what happens when our student leaves academia and enters their working life? Does “good enough” still suffice when a project is on the line that may affect others? And what of the functioning of democracy? Is “good enough” sufficient to sort out lies and propaganda from truth? And what about confirmation bias, which Hesse refers to in her article, though not by that term? There is so much information out there, that we often tend to only read that which confirms what we already believe or think we know. What happens to critical thinking, in this case?

In answer to her own argument, Hesse cites one of the teachers whom she interviewed:

Grill, the AP government teacher, listens to this argument thoughtfully before offering one of his own: “The lessons that come through understanding a process should never become a thing of the past,” he says. The question of truth in a user-generated world isn’t about the accuracy of information so much as it is about an appreciation for the intricacies of the search, for understanding that truth can be elusive, but the fight for it can be rewarding.

I agree — and add to it that we need to emphasize that “good enough” isn’t always sufficient.

So, readers, if you’d like to move beyond mere information retrieval to developing knowledge, please let me know so that we can set up a bibliographic instruction session. There is a lot of information out there, and knowledge, too, if you know where and how to look. And faculty — if you’d like to include a bibliographic instruction session as part of your course, please let me know. I can help you with this, so drop me a line if you’re interested.

Does chasing down information and research materials sometimes feel like you are herding cats?

Stop by my desk for a bibliographic instruction session. I can help you get your herd under control.

At right: A portrait of Samuel Johnson, by Sir Joshua Reynolds; this portrait is sometimes called “Blinking Sam.”

Greetings to my new readers! I find that traffic to this blog has picked up a bit in the last few weeks — I will permit myself unjustified optimism and hope that this increase in visitors is the result of real persons and not spambots. Thank you for stopping by.

I have decided that the effort of maintaining a list of the most recently arrived periodicals is not worth the time and trouble to update, even on a monthly basis. So, if you’re burning to know if your favorite philosophy journal’s latest issue has arrived, drop me a line or stop by the library. Or, I can show you how to set up e-alerts, so that when the electronic issues come available, you’ll be notified immediately — contact me to arrange for a bibliographic instruction session.

I will keep the Current Periodicals page up for the time being, but with a notation that the page is no longer being updated.

For those of you wondering why Samuel Johnson has made a second appearance on this blog, there are two answers.

The first is that I came down with a cold during the latter part of my vacation last week, and was bedridden. I passed much of the time reading James Boswell’s Life of Johnson, and found myself very much liking the good Doctor.

The second is that Harvard is the home of the The Donald and Mary Hyde Collection of Dr. Samuel Johnson, a trove of Johnsoniana and other early modern materials. So, it seems apropos to include him on a Harvard-related blog.

I leave you with this thought of his:

“Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it. When we enquire into any subject, the first thing we have to do is to know what books have treated of it. This leads us to look at catalogues, and at the backs of books in libraries.”

— Samuel Johnson (Boswell, Life of Johnson)

Do you feel overwhelmed by all of the information that you find when researching? A new survey indicates that you’re not alone:

National Workplace Survey Reveals American Professionals Overwhelmed, Headed for “Breaking Point”

NEW YORK, NY, February 26, 2008 – A national workplace survey reports that more than seven in ten American white collar workers feel inundated with information at their workplace, while more than two in five feel that they are headed for an information “breaking point.” The survey of 650 white collar and knowledge workers found that employees across virtually every industry are affected by information overload, but that the problem is particularly acute in the legal profession — with almost eight in ten legal professionals saying they are increasingly overloaded with information.

The 2008 Workplace Productivity Survey, commissioned by LexisNexis – a leading global provider of business information solutions – is the first of this scope to look at the rising problem of information overload for the U.S. legal and professional fields.

More information about this study can be found in the press release from Lexis-Nexis.

If you do need some help sifting through research, or would like some instruction on how to search, or where to look, please don’t hesitate to contact me to set up a bibliographic instruction session.

A hat-tip to “American Libraries Direct” for this survey.

In previous posts, I’ve written about using multiple search strategies and adjusting your search strategy as the situation and results (or lack thereof) warrant. It’s very important to keep these concepts in mind as you go about your research, as it will help you to respond better to your varying research needs. For instance, retrieving an article from a journal is a very different sort of search from gathering and evaluating research for a dissertation. If you use the same strategy, pattern, and methods for both searches, then you’re like to wind up only frustrated and without what you need.

Over the course of my tenure here at Robbins, I have heard constantly the refrain, “Well, I couldn’t find it on JSTOR, so that’s why I came to you…” As I’ve written about JSTOR, it is a great database to use, but only in certain instances by itself. You’re better off, in general, searching JSTOR in conjunction with other databases. To pick JSTOR as the only tool to answer every research question you might have is like reaching into a toolbox for a hammer every time you need to fix or build something. A hammer is a very useful tool, but not for every repair or construction task you might have.

The reason that I am revisiting the idea of “thinking differently about searching” stems from a notification that I received last week from the ALA. The note listed a post on ACRLog, the blog of the Association of College & Research Libraries. This post, titled, “Why Students Want Simplicity And Why It Fails Them When It Comes To Research,” outlines how students often come to college with certain research skills that are quick, easy, and deliver simple answers. These skills are well and good for the sort of research done from elementary school through high school, or for many of the general information needs you might have in daily life. Nonetheless, when students arrive at college, they quickly find that Google can’t answer every question, nor will it help them write their papers if it is used in the fashion to which they have grown accustomed to using it.

Why is this situation the case? The problem is that research at the college level and beyond is often far more complex and chaotic than the research which these students have been used to doing. Typing in a search string and getting a list of results is not the same as evaluating, synthesizing, and presenting information in a coherent manner. This is especially so when questions are complex and open-ended, with no clear “right” answer, or means of getting at an answer. As a result, their research methods, while helpful and useful in certain contexts, are not up to the task of answering these complicated questions.

The post concludes with a discussion of the need for adjusting bibliographic instruction and information literacy courses in light of this fact. While this portion of the post is likely to be of less interest to my readers, the notion of having to learn and practice more complex search strategies and skills alongside the simple strategies that they’ve learned previously is one worth considering when doing research.

Moreover, this broadening of researching skills and strategies extends beyond the college years. The writer of ACRLog post cites “A Leader’s Framework for Decision Making,” by David J. Snowden and Mary E. Boone, an article from Harvard Business Review 85 (11) November 2007, pp. 68-76.* Snowden and Boone, using the Cynefin Framework, apply the idea of utilizing different responses and methods to different contexts to business leadership. It’s not a far leap to see how the analytical skills developed in researching can be applied to other contexts and situations beyond writing college papers.

Hopefully, I’ve piqued your interest in learning more about how you might think differently about searching. I am more than happy to help you when doing research, whether as a sounding board to bounce ideas and search strategies off of, or in actually doing the research. I’d also love to offer you bibliographic instruction sessions, to individuals, groups, classes, whomever — please contact me and let me know that you’re interested.

—————————————————————————————————————————

*A Harvard ID and PIN are needed to access this article.

Is anyone interested in some bibliographic instruction? I’m happy to provide individual and group tutorials on how to locate materials in the library, use databases, and the like.  I can also work with you to include such instruction as part of your courses.  Just let me know if you’re interested.