On "online" research
Sep. 9th, 2008 08:33 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunnyjadwigaA faculty member in a metro area commented that they made their students include one resource in their paper bibliographies that wasn't online. I'm reposting my response:
We've had to beg our professors to REMOVE this requirement from their
papers-- we subscribe to 20,000-30,000 journals online through
electronic journal services and only about 4,000 in print, and we were
having to teach the students BAD research habits to find anything
related to their papers in our print journals. Bigger institutions
with larger research collections don't have this problem yet, but I
can see it coming down the pike.
Instead, we teach the students the difference between the subscription
services, with subject indexing, that we have, and the 'open web' and
it's worked out so far-- but that's because we catch them twice in
their first year of college. Changes in the "first year experience"
coming down *our* pike may mess that up.
If I could do one thing as a professional researcher in the SCA, I
would get SCAdians to find out what electronic resources their local
libraries offer, and have them USE those resources, and demand more.
Also, I run into a lot of people who think that once a journal is
electronic it's no longer accessible to non-academics-- but most small
colleges will let you come in and use a public-use computer in the
library to access their electronic journals.
A while back I ran into someone from the Midrealm who was allegedly
marked down for using "Early English Books Online" (a subscription
service) for her herbal research, because it was "Online." I couldn't
decide whether to laugh or cry-- these are scanned microfilms of
multiple versions of extant printed books from the Early printed books
period (1473 to 1700), so it was the closest to primary sources you
could get. In some cases, it's the ONLY way to get access to those
resources as they haven't been reprinted and are in closed special
collections. Only rather rich libraries have access to it, and it's
worth tracking down any libraries in your area that have it that will
let you use it on their computers.
We've had to beg our professors to REMOVE this requirement from their
papers-- we subscribe to 20,000-30,000 journals online through
electronic journal services and only about 4,000 in print, and we were
having to teach the students BAD research habits to find anything
related to their papers in our print journals. Bigger institutions
with larger research collections don't have this problem yet, but I
can see it coming down the pike.
Instead, we teach the students the difference between the subscription
services, with subject indexing, that we have, and the 'open web' and
it's worked out so far-- but that's because we catch them twice in
their first year of college. Changes in the "first year experience"
coming down *our* pike may mess that up.
If I could do one thing as a professional researcher in the SCA, I
would get SCAdians to find out what electronic resources their local
libraries offer, and have them USE those resources, and demand more.
Also, I run into a lot of people who think that once a journal is
electronic it's no longer accessible to non-academics-- but most small
colleges will let you come in and use a public-use computer in the
library to access their electronic journals.
A while back I ran into someone from the Midrealm who was allegedly
marked down for using "Early English Books Online" (a subscription
service) for her herbal research, because it was "Online." I couldn't
decide whether to laugh or cry-- these are scanned microfilms of
multiple versions of extant printed books from the Early printed books
period (1473 to 1700), so it was the closest to primary sources you
could get. In some cases, it's the ONLY way to get access to those
resources as they haven't been reprinted and are in closed special
collections. Only rather rich libraries have access to it, and it's
worth tracking down any libraries in your area that have it that will
let you use it on their computers.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
*nod*
Date: 2008-09-10 02:32 pm (UTC)It sounds like you're spending a good deal of class time on the stuff we try to hammer into them in our information literacy sessions. We suffer from the probable delusion that the time we spend on them-- and the instructors' insistence that they use *scholarly/academic journals*-- sinks in... But how much of it *sticks* once they get further on, we haven't figured out how to test in the upper levels yet.
(We did find out, last year, that they recognize and remember Academic Search Premier, the main general subscription journal index/full text database we pound into them... because when they heard it might be cancelled, they flocked to sign a petition. Made us feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Librarians: we're suckers for that stuff.)