i love searching the web. I really do. i punch in my holy-trio of that, this and other and then–heywhaddyaknow..? Shazam. Instant information.
so when i am asked by my one of my professors to consider how Internet technology has transformed library service, my mind goes through the usual: you can search for books online, you can see whether those books are available and where, and you can renew those same items from the comfort of your home.
but most folks today walk into a library and punch in their own version of the holy-three (you remember, dont you? that, this and other) and get frustrated by the result. and why? because searching the library catalog is different from searching the web. that is where two great instances of bibliographic instruction clash and collide: information literacy on the web versus information literacy in the library. it takes skills to search both and these are not always the same.
this has forced me to think of bibliographic instruction more as self-instruction than anything else. we teach ourselves when it comes to this technology. and i think this accounts for the really awful way in which searching is taught in universities today. the librarians at my school seem to think that is up to librarians to teach users how to search the library. but i remember precious few librarians (reference or otherwise) who actually taught me how do anything in the library. some imparted ideas, usually obliquely just because i was watching what they were doing, but i find few can actually said to “teach”. so that is partly why i think the idea of bibliographic instruction is so laughable. if that is what you call teaching (i.e. “instruction”) then, boy, you should try teaching that overseas or something. ‘cuz it sure ain’t getting working here.
inevitably, i end up teaching myself how to use these things: the difference between one database over another, the way controlled vocabulary effects the library catalog, the cascading effect that metadata has on future retrieval…
and it occurs to me that our field is trapped inside an information-bubble it can’t escape from. it is inevitable that the technology will change, that news of searching will emerge and this in turn will compel users to learn yet another way of doing more or less the same thing. and that will lead to more bibliographic self-instruction, and more time spent learning how to do something.
information coach? well, at least it sounds better than information teacher.