Internet Librarian

I was actually there for a symposium at Columbia University, where, among a number of cool things, I heard three great librarians from Cornell discussing a project I found exciting and energizing.

It began simply enough, as a podcasted library tour for alumni. Nothing particularly earth-shaking there, though it did provide staffers opportunities to learn about microphones, sound editing, and RSS feeds and took advantage of a variety of their subterranean competencies, including storytelling, poetry, and DJing.

This success gave rise to another idea: To make orientation tours for the following fall for incoming students. Pretty sober stuff, in honesty, but that move led to another, which drew even further on previous work: An animated student-film project with a charming retro, Jazz-age feel, called Library Limbo. They decided to give vodcasting a shot.

Thinking about the tone they wanted to strike, they settled on “humorously serious,” based on what they knew about the information-processing habits of freshmen (primarily, the need for something short, no more than 90 seconds at a go). Puree this all together and you get Research Minutes (search for this, or Library Limbo, on YouTube to have a peek).

The topics the librarians chose to begin with are fairly basic, but they’re also—as anybody who works with this population knows—important and not straightforward to get across: What’s a “scholarly article” and how do I get it, and how do I identify substantive news articles? These came from the librarians’ own experience as well as those of student assistants, some of whom star in the videos along with the staff, as well as from an analysis of tutorial Web traffic.

This has been the stuff of innumerable research guides, handouts, classes, workshops, presentations, and so on for generations. The challenge here was how to convey it in an interesting, entertaining, and quick way, and the group rose to the challenge admirably. Look for articles that include abstracts, author affiliations, and citations, search in ProQuest or EBSCO or MLA Bibliography, click the little “scholarly” box, and if you need help, ask a librarian. Not bad for 90 seconds.

That first vodcast took quite a bit of time to complete—the better part of a semester—but of course they learned a great deal along the way, and subsequent ones come more quickly and easily. Posting to YouTube also facilitates embedding the videos into course guides.

So what’s new?

Is this a simple instance of “everything old is new again”? Honestly, there’s nothing all that shocking here, and the content is not that radically different from what could have been in a flyer at the reference desk 15 years ago.

So I think not. But they did more than take an old notion and spin it new, they poured and recast that idea in terms of the information environment we inhabit today. What I really appreciated was the creativity and the cooperative learning among staff with varying levels and kinds of experience—people new and not-so-new to the technology with a mix of bibliographic and technological talents, building something no individual could have.

One wonders what other great old ideas are hanging around waiting to be rediscovered and reawakened (pathfinders?) . . . but that’s another story.