Just 3 days short of turning 13 months old (or 383 years old in people years), Gigi the stapler must finally give up her unprecedented tenure as a public servant in our library. She exploded some parts last night, hitting an unsuspecting bystander, and now her casing has come separated from her guts.
She will be sent to a quiet shelf to retire in peace and think back over her incredibly long career. We wish her well in her retirement.
For the past 5 years my department in the library at Carleton College have developed and engaged in an ongoing assessment project, the Information Literacy in Student Writing (ILSW) project. We published a piece in In The Library With The Lead Pipe in 2011, and this month Portal published our second article on the topic, “Situating Information Literacy Within the Curriculum: Using a Rubric to Shape a Program.”
Danya, Heather, and I asked for and signed a license with Portal that allowed us to keep ownership of our copyrights, so I’m able to provide the full text of that article, but you should definitely take a look at the rest of the issue. I happen to know that Catherine Pellegrino also has an interesting article in this issue, for example.
Jastram, Iris, Danya Leebaw, and Heather Tompkins. “Situating Information Literacy Within the Curriculum: Using a Rubric to Shape a Program.” Portal Libraries and the Academy 14, no. 2 (2014): 165–86.
Abstract: This article reports on a pilot study to examine undergraduate students’ help-seeking behavior when undertaking library research in online courses. A novel methodology incorporating elements of ethnographic research resulted in a small, but rich and detailed, collection of qualitative data. The data suggest that the methodology has promise for future, larger studies on students in online learning environments. The article includes a detailed discussion of the methodology’s strengths and weaknesses, and offers recommendations for modifications that will improve the research design.
I should note that I’m the first author only by virtue of the alphabet. This was truly a group effort.