Teaching the Internet to Library Staff and Users: 11 Ready‐to‐Run Workshops that Work

Citation

Smith, A.G. (2000), "Teaching the Internet to Library Staff and Users: 11 Ready‐to‐Run Workshops that Work", The Electronic Library, Vol. 18 No. 6, pp. 448-469. https://doi.org/10.1108/el.2000.18.6.448.18

Librarians are making the transition from gatekeepers to guides, from intermediaries to instructors. The Internet in particular is an area in which libraries and information services find themselves needing to supply training for staff and for their users. Developing good training programmes is costly in time and resources, but well designed materials have the potential to be shared and adapted.

Teaching the Internet… addresses this need, providing in one A4‐sized book a collection of 11 workshops, each designed to last one to two hours. The workshops were originally developed in the USA by Hollands. In this edition Bradley has adapted the workshops for the UK environment, but the workshops could easily be used in other countries. Each workshop consists of an overview (detailing whom the workshop is aimed at, what material is covered, when it should be delivered in relation to other workshops, and why the material is important), a model script for the instructor to follow (including detailed timing of the session), and handouts which can be copied and distributed. The workshops are action oriented: a mixture of demonstrations and hands‐on activities. Some workshops are aimed at library staff, to upgrade their Internet skills and assist them to train users; others are designed as training for library users. Although oriented to the public library environment, the materials could be utilised in academic and corporate environments.

Although “Anglicised”, there are occasional American cultural influences, for instance, the concept of spending “quality time” with trainees, and a recommendation to make eye contact and to sit on a desk to establish an authoritative position may not be appropriate in all cultures.

The collection starts with three “training the trainers” sessions – covering training principles, writing objectives. This is basic material, but succinctly covers important ground, and is specifically oriented to the teaching of the Internet. Particularly practical is the section on “nightmares in training”: “know it alls”, equipment failure, and so on. This section includes useful references to sites with information about training methods, and tutorials on and about the Internet. This is followed by workshops on specific aspects of using the Internet. First, on generic search tools, and then workshops on specific types of information: looking for information about books and literature on the Internet; looking for college and university information on the Web (this is UK oriented, but could be adapted to other countries), and business information. The final workshops are an introduction to HTML for library staff, which is useful because it enables staff to extend their understanding of the Web and to participate in maintaining the library Web site.

A danger with this type of material is that it will date quickly. However, the workshops have been kept at a sufficiently general level for them to be easily adapted as new tools appear. For instance, someone offering the workshop today might prefer to use Google instead of HotBot when covering search engines, but the principles are the same, and the workshop material could be easily adapted. One area that could receive more attention is critical evaluation – this only appears for five minutes in one of the introductory workshops, but the need for users to evaluate sources of information on the Web is greater than in more conventional media. As an example, the advice given several times to try guessing the domain name of a target site needs to be treated with caution. It is important to check that you’ve really got to a target site, and not an imitator, such as http://www.whitehouse.net/ which appears superficially to be the official US presidential page, but in fact is a spoof. Users of the workshops might want to include material from Tate and Alexander’s excellent site on evaluating Web resources at http://www2.widener.edu/Wolfgram‐Memorial‐Library/webeval.htm

There is a brief index, and an associated Web site at http://www.la‐hq.org.uk/directory/publications.html, although this requires registration (the reviewer did not receive a response to a request for registration). The handouts at the end of each workshop are designed to be copied, although it might have been useful to have had a clear statement of the extent to which the copyright owners allow copying of the materials. It might also have been useful to have had the handouts supplied on disk to allow updating of outdated URLs and new sites.

Overall, this is an excellent resource, and shows the value of two authors on opposite sides of Atlantic combining their experience. Even Internet trainers who have their own well developed programmes will want to acquire a copy, and it is a must‐have for any library involved in Internet training.