ACRL New England Chapter News Online

ISSN 1527-0106

Spring 2006, Number 108

In This Issue (Home):

President's Letter

Annual Conference Summaries:

C & B Committee Report

Legislative Report

Interest Group Reports and Announcements:

Board Meeting Minutes, March 10, 2006
Calendar Listings

New England Ingenuity

Dorie McKeeman, MLIS Candidate
University of Rhode Island

Here’s a sampling of the smorgasbord that was “New England Ingenuity: Poster Presentations” at the ACRL/NE annual meeting:

“Choosing a Major: What’s Information Literacy Got to Do With it?”
Cathy Rowe, Reference and Instructional Services Coordinator
Laura Kohl, Reference Librarian
Salve Regina University, Newport, RI

Working with the university’s Career Development Center and Academic Advising office, librarians at Salve Regina have created a semester-long interactive program for the New Student Seminar, which is part of the university’s First Year Experience Program. Using the ACRL Information Literacy standards as a framework, librarians show students how critical the library’s resources can be as the students begin the process of choosing a major. The Career Interests Game, for example, asks students to identify their personal characteristics, and then locate what kinds of jobs require those traits. Locating, evaluating and organizing information as they research a topic that is important to them is an effective way to introduce information literacy as a concept and give it meaning that can be enhanced throughout the curriculum and beyond the first year.

“All Health is Local: Introducing Go Local Massachusetts”
Sally Gore, Project Librarian, Go Local Massachusetts, Lamar Soutter Library
University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester, MA
Brenda Collins, MLS, CHIS Librarian, Wilkins Library
Cape Cod Community College, West Barnstable, MA

The MedlinePlus website, a service of the National Library of Medicine, has begun creating online programs for each state that provide assistance in finding local resources for health-related issues. Called “Go Local,” the program has 14 sites up and running, with “Go Local Massachusetts” new this year. Promoting the Massachusetts site became an adventure in movie making from screenplay to production for Sally Gore and a team of people at Cape Cod Community College, headed up by the school’s librarian, Brenda Collins. Ms. Gore wrote scripts and media students at the College acted in scenes at their library and the public library to create an instructional DVD that demonstrated how to use resources in several situations. The DVD is being distributed free of charge to community access television stations, other media outlets, libraries, health agencies across the state.

“Foundations for Learning: Integrating the Library and the Classroom”
Jennifer Hanson, Coordinator of Instruction /Reference Librarian
Emerson College, Boston, MA

The Library Instruction Team has been collaborating with the Freshman Writing Program at Emerson to more easily integrate information literacy skills into that program’s curriculum. Three library classes are scheduled throughout the semester, engaging the team of four full time and three part-time librarians for the instruction. A core text is the Bedford Researcher handbook, which provides an increased awareness of library resources and delineates the important link between the library and the research process. While some performing arts students might not immediately recognize the value of such a program to a career onstage or screen, Ms. Hanson shared a comment made by an acting student who appreciated the course. The student recognized that after landing a role, the next thing to do “will have to be research!”

“Research Paper Navigator Project”
Laurie Sobol, Library Instruction Coordinator
Anna Neatrour, First-Year Library Instruction Coordinator
Tisch Library, Tufts University, Medford, MA

Creating projects through collaborations between library staff who are developing their technology skills and faculty who are integrating technology into their curricula has been aided at Tisch Library by the receipt of grants. Their most recent project, the Research Paper Navigator Project, helps undergraduate students improve writing skills and develop better methods for completing library research. One of the elements of the program is a time management component in which the student identifies the start and end date for a research assignment in order to produce a customized research timeline. One aspect of the experience that Laurie Sobol particularly appreciated was getting to know the faculty better.