IL for Faculty

Here's a document created by Bill Hord, Houston Community College. It's called How to Let IL Work for You and Your Students. I think it does a good job at pointing out how faculty can incorporate IL into their coursework while strengthening teaching and learning.

Information Literacy: Study of Incoming First-Year Undergraduates in Quebec

This 2003 study is widely referenced. The summary (pg. 5-7) gives you a very good idea of the results. The common wisdom is that the results would be similiar in most universities throughout Canada and the US at least.

Call Number Sort Tutorial

From the library of the University of Canterbury in NZ, this is a quick little activity to test people's ability to sort (and hopefully to find) books in LC classification numbers.

Is Google Making us Stupid?

“Most of the proprietors of the commercial Internet have a financial stake in collecting

the crumbs of data we leave behind as we flit from link to link—the more crumbs,

the better. The last thing these companies want is to encourage leisurely reading

or slow, concentrated thought. It’s in their economic interest to drive us to distraction.”

--- Nicholas Carr: Is Google Making Us Stupid? Atlantic July/August 2008:56-63

Winning Video

This is a great little video comparing Google to DePauw Libraries Visual Image Center. It won an award at the Computers in Libraries Conference for YouTube videos that creatively market library services.

Student Survival Guide to Writing a Good Essay

This is one of a number of audio podcasts from Cardiff University in a series called Student Survival Guide to Writing a Good Essay. I like the idea that it is done in cooperation with Information Services and the student radio station and it pitches the series as a question - Want to Maximize Your Marks? Check out the one for February 29 - Going beyond the reading list - finding good books and journals.

Assessing Classroom Instruction for Librarians

Here's a great little tool described as an Classroom Instruction Project Cycle. You click on any of the "pies" for some basic and helpful information on each step in the assessment cycle.

Guess the Google

There is a lot of talk about using games to teach and librarians who have gaming "cred" seem to attract media attention. Here's a simple game, called Guess the Google aimed at teaching keywords. I wonder how much time it takes to create something like this?