Creating the One‐Shot Library Workshop: A Step‐by‐Step Guide

Citation

Calvert, P. (2006), "Creating the One‐Shot Library Workshop: A Step‐by‐Step Guide", The Electronic Library, Vol. 24 No. 5, pp. 714-715. https://doi.org/10.1108/02640470610707303

The increased emphasis placed upon information literacy by most academic institutions has resulted in many librarians being called upon to deliver classes or workshops within the library. Unfortunately, there are many librarians placed in this situation who have no previous experience of teaching and almost inevitably they struggle to organise an effective class or workshop. This book has been written to give guidance to those faced with having to deliver a workshop but having little time to prepare – the “one‐shot” workshop of the book's title. The author has considerable experience of instructional design from the University of Minnesota, where she has coordinated user education.

Veldof has used the familiar ADDIE principles of instructional design as the basis of the book (that is: Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation, and Evaluation). So, there's nothing much very new here, but that doesn't matter; the emphasis is upon providing practical ways of developing workshops without having to take forever learning how to do it, and in that respect she has succeeded very well. It's a nicely structured book – itself is a good sign in a book on instructional design – that simply works through the reasons why this process is necessary and then the ADDIE principles, ending with evaluation. The text is complemented with diagrams, “tips” boxes, checklists, and even cartoons, all of which make it easy to read.

The book includes a useful bibliography. It isn't especially geared to teaching aspects of technology use, but it can be used for that purpose. For that topic specifically, I still prefer D. Scott Brandt's Teaching Technology: A How‐to‐Do‐It Manual for Librarians (Neal‐Schuman, 2002) which also used ADDIE. The Veldof book is recommended, and will work as an introduction to a more specific book such as the one from Brandt.