Future Teaching Roles for Academic Librarians

Citation

Morgan, S. (2001), "Future Teaching Roles for Academic Librarians", Library Review, Vol. 50 No. 5, pp. 261-263. https://doi.org/10.1108/lr.2001.50.5.261.9

Co‐published simultaneously as College and Undergraduate Libraries (Vol. 6 No. 2, 2000), all six contributors to this collection signal the central role that libraries can play in effecting change in higher education.

In the first – and longest – contribution, Allan advocates empowering the students to learn for themselves and considers the role of the librarian in helping with that process. He emphasises the importance of process over content. As he rightly point out, “the how, after all, can get you the what whenever you need it” (p. 8). Nothing very revolutionary about that, I hear you say. Is that not what student‐centred learning is all about? What is different about this paper is that the author manages to needlessly complicate matters by clouding the basically practical nature of the empowerment process with philosophical meanderings. He draws in – to no good effect, in my view – people such as Aristotle, Rousseau, Francis Bacon, Freud, Sartre, Socrates and Spinoza. I liked his occasional analogies in comparing, for example, librarians with pianists (rather than the more prosaic piano players) or student learners with football quarterbacks (about acquiring technique). Overall, I found it difficult to equate the philosophy espoused by Allan, “leading students into situations that call for thought …” (p. 22) with what one sees daily in the library environment, students finding the quickest and most painless route to the information with little evaluation of the quality of the content and the purpose of its collection. Things, however, get a lot better from here on.

You could say that Wilkinson’s paper is also about empowering students but in a down‐to‐earth practical way. The main thesis is that, without the collaboration of librarians, attempts to improve teaching and learning are less likely to succeed. Although the author invites the reader to skip some historical background, if they wish, I found it made interesting reading. The move from teaching to learning is put in a historical context. The transmission model (lectures, basically) is followed by the research model (active learning). This latter model – currently in favour – ideally involves library, information and media staff as well as other support agencies as guides or coaches in the learning process. Wilkinson sees librarians as admirably well‐equipped to enter into this changing pedagogical landscape and they should enter forthwith, as partners with the academic staff. The Follett Report advocated this approach almost a decade ago now and yet it is still not as easy as the sentence would have us believe. Practical suggestions are put forward on initiating project work with academic departments and the avoidance of “spoonfeeding” information to students. The key to success, as with many areas of education, is motivation of the student body. This paper also wins the prize for the best quotation – “[The research model] has to transform fluid moments into learning opportunities” (p. 40). Of course it does!

“Librarian as teacher: a personal view”, written by someone outside the profession, is a four‐page interlude which adds little to the collection but reinforces the librarian’s role as “teacher‐learning facilitator”.

The seamless learning culture (SLC) is the topic of Bell’s contribution. As I understand the term (and I’m not sure I do) the SLC is the deep learning that students experience from every part of the institution (and particularly outside the classroom). They may be traditional teaching staff, campus security staff (offering workshops on crime prevention, for example), dining services staff (contributions on nutrition and eating habits), finance officers, counselling staff etc. The key is to engage students in a variety of learning activities through an institutional ethos that promotes educationally purposeful activities in settings beyond the classroom. Bell goes on to clarify the librarian’s role in this approach, namely “to look at their facilities as labs for situational learning” (p. 53). An example of this would be providing better support to students at 1.00 a.m. when they are preparing their assignments in their hostels and where they are more likely to internalise research skills. Is this what we used to call supporting students “at the point of need”? In the USA there are some interesting experiments where “wheels of assistance” are being formed to provide networked support for students throughout 24 hours. The wheel consists of suitably trained students on call and co‐ordinated by library staff. It remains to be seen whether students’ information competency skills are improved as a result. Similar services are being developed in other universities including virtual information desks, staffed 24 hours a day. Clearly, such services have the potential to expand library beyond the traditional confines of the in‐the‐library user education session. In the end, as part of an institutional SLC, the library creates an environment that encourages and supports all forms of opportunities for learning. Some stimulating ideas.

The learner‐centred approach to information literacy is discussed by Donnelly in this penultimate paper. It represents an attempt at providing proactive support for students. Rather than waiting until students have difficulty using an electronic resource and ask for help, the learning‐centred approach anticipates that students will need to make information‐related decisions as part of an assignment and supplies the expertise before the student is frustrated or running late. The author recognises the challenges that establishing this ambitious approach will inevitably throw up. Getting the whole academic community “on side” is probably the biggest challenge. Plenty of examples of successful programmes are cited including details of courses, workbooks, online tutorials, course‐integrated modules etc.

MacAdam poses an interesting question to conclude this set of papers. “What if the instinctive way undergraduates do things is actually better suited than we think to successful work in the information environment of the future?” (p. 79). This paper I found one of the most stimulating and provocative in a long while. Its strategy – and very effective it is too – is to turn on its head the academic librarian’s assumption about the way a “typical” undergraduate uses information/libraries. In this way librarians may begin to understand why they need to reconceptualise their vision of a teaching library. Why do we ask students to jump through so many hoops? Why do we think that making students do something the hard way is inherently good for them? How often have you heard “students don’t pay attention in class and then expect us to teach them the basics every time they come to the desk!” The author offers some sound advice on redefining the teaching role of librarians in the light of this upside‐down perspective.

This is a thought‐provoking set of papers which deserves a wide readership amongst academic librarians (and even academic staff if you could persuade them!). It is also well timed since it appears to me that all sorts of fundamental questions are being asked – now more than ever – about the whole basis of user education/information skills training in the context of the electronic library. This is a welcome contribution to that debate.