Are You Afraid of the Dark?

LIBE 467 - Theme 2 Blog Post:

Managing and Evaluating Reference Services

Times have changed in research

and if you are not using Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Wikipedia, Google, and the like,

you will be left in the dark.

- Steven Magee, American Researcher/Author @EnvironmentEMR

Fear of fallacies.  I like quotes because for me they can start queries.  Sometimes they ring true with me; sometimes I find they are tone-deaf.  Usually, I prefer the former because they align with my personal narratives; however, both possibilities can prompt interest as they can offer different perspectives.  Do I think students will be left in the dark so-to-speak if they do not use social media platforms in research such as those mentioned in the introductory quote? No.  Dichotomies are not part of my didactics.  In my experiences living in different countries, I found false dilemmas to be perpetuated in cultures where there is apathy for the middle ground.  Either, Or.  My Team vs. Your Team.  Black and White - No Grey Areas Here….  Am I afraid of the dark? No, because the darkness is the absence of light not of learning.  In my opinion, both printed and digital resources are beneficial for students; each offers its own literacy learning skill sets.  What are your thoughts?  

Advocacy and administration is part of the job of the school library media specialist.  As mentioned, the management and evaluation of reference services relates to this discourse.  Our course notes state:   

It is the teacher librarian’s responsibility to ensure that a resource is used and used well in an ongoing way. In order to ensure effective spending of budgets it is essential that the entire collection be used on a regular basis by students and teachers, and this includes the reference collection (Beaudry, 2018).

In managing and evaluating reference sources, there are the IRL challenges of providing references as noted by the theme for this unit.  One of those obstacles is pupil perception of printed non-fiction texts such as traditional encyclopedias:

TEENS REACT TO ENCYCLOPEDIAS

“Yup, boring already.”

“Ancient areas of our library, they have dusty books that look exactly like this.”

“It’s the Internet of books.”

“It was Google way back in the day. It was the worst of times.”

“The Internet saves my life whenever I have to write a paper.”

“That’s what bugs me about books. You can’t update ‘em.”

“Five whole minutes of my life is gone when I could’ve found it in .000098 seconds with Google.”

It is a comedic video.  Admittedly, I chuckled.  A Google search (pun intended) will yield similar sentiments about encyclopedias such as the cartoon image at the start of this blog post and, for example, the following:

But there are some poignant points.  The majority of the students were unfamiliar with using encyclopedias.  One student went meta and tried to look up YouTube but that platform started in 2005 and the World Book set that they were reacting to was from 2005.  Some of the construction criticisms relate to currency; “Dictionary revision is never ending: a major advantage of electronic dictionaries is rapid update” (Riedling, 2005* [individual irony], p.58).  Yet, there are advantages to knowing how to use print references; as one student put it somewhat succinctly: “Sometimes your Wi-Fi is slow or you got no Wi-Fi, so you gotta go old-school. You gotta go to books.”  I am unsure that books should be the last bastion of reference resources but there should be a balance of information.  They can be printed, digital or both.  Encyclopedias are available online; in this case, the medium is not the message - where the message originates is important.  

Solely relying on social media platforms for research information is simply problematic and I cannot imagine criteria by teachers requiring only these sources for research.  Have you encountered educators who allowed this equation?  Personally, I have not had an instructor in secondary and post-secondary that did not require academic sources for an academic paper.   The inaugural argument that the absence of information from these social media sites leaves the researcher at a disadvantage is more concerning.  Academic sources are essential to education with respect to research reports; social media sources can be supplemental.  The latter can definitely add layers to a project.  It is not a matter of either/or when it comes to managing and evaluating reference services but rather “[t]he bottom line is that correct information must be located for students in the most efficient and effective manner possible” (Riedling, 2005, p.103).  As a teacher-librarian, it not a matter of being afraid of the dark, but being brave in it - and knowing that your career is crucial for students and their studies.

References

Beaudry, R. (2018). Lesson 6: Managing the reference collection [Lecture Notes].

Retrieved from https://canvas.ubc.ca

FBE. (2015, July 12). Teens react to encyclopedias [Video file].  Retrieved from

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7aJ3xaDMuM

Riedling, A. (2005). Reference skills for the school library media specialist: Tools and tips

(2nd ed.). Worthington, OH: Linworth.

Stahler, J. (2014). It’s prehistoric googling [Online image]. Retrieved from

https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/283797213994576263/?autologin=true

Zakour, J. & Miller, K. (2007, March 16). Working daze [Online Image]. Retrieved from  

http://www.gocomics.com/working-daze/2007/03/16