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ACADEMIC LIBRARIES ANDCOMMUNITYSusan Taylor Column Editor aa Ball State University , Muncie, IN, USAPublished online: 20 Oct 2008.

To cite this article: Susan Taylor Column Editor (2002) ACADEMIC LIBRARIES ANDCOMMUNITY, Public Services Quarterly, 1:2, 1-3, DOI: 10.1300/J295v01n02_01

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ACADEMIC LIBRARIES AND COMMUNITY:MAKING THE CONNECTION

Susan Taylor, Column Editor

This column is a forum for exchanging ideas related to community-buildingprojects. If you have developed or are involved in or aware of a programthat connects a library to the community surrounding it, please contact Su-san Taylor at susantaylor68@hotmail.com.

One way in which academic libraries can connect with their local com-munity is to open their doors to students in area grade schools. By makinglibrary resources available to them, academic libraries are providing a ser-vice to schools with understandably fewer resources. In addition, studentswho have a positive experience on campus may decide to attend that uni-versity later on, thus benefiting the university as a whole. For this column,I’d like to put the spotlight on one interesting collaborative program, link-ing students from a private middle school with teaching faculty and the li-brary at a public university.

Jenny Presnell is a Humanities/Social Sciences Librarian at MiamiUniversity of Ohio, located in Oxford, Ohio. Although her typical audi-ence is college freshmen, she has taught local high school students how tofind information by visiting their high school or leading sessions on cam-pus. These have been one-shot presentations to students with whom shecannot build a rapport over time.

For the past four springs, however, Presnell has had the opportunity towork closely with young students from her region of Ohio. Since 1998,sixth graders from Miami Valley Middle School have visited the campusof Miami University of Ohio for a unit their teacher, Tana Eikenbery, calls

Susan Taylor was formerly Instruction Librarian at Ball State University, Muncie, IN.

Public Services Quarterly, Vol. 1(2) 2002http://www.haworthpressinc.com/store/product.asp?sku=J119

2002 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved. 1

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Egypt Expedition. The students, from a private school, come to campusfor four days and three nights as part of the program and meet with severalfaculty members in addition to receiving library instruction. Working ingroups, students research various topics related to Ancient Egypt.

The first summer that Eikenbery asked for Presnell’s participation in theprogram, she allowed time for only one session in the library. But Eikenberyand Presnell quickly realized that these highly motivated and gifted studentscould handle more complex and extended activities. Each summer thereafterPresnell has had three 90-minute instruction sessions with the students. In be-tween learning from professors in the Departments of History and of Anthro-pology and talking to the Curator of the Anthropology Museum, the sixthgraders receive instruction from Presnell in how to do quality research with aspecial concentration on Internet searching.

After leading a tour of the King Library and the Center for InformationManagement (a facility with cutting edge software and technology),Presnell starts the students off with some of the same activities she useswith college freshmen to give them a sound foundation for doing research.After asking the students what a magazine is, she asks them to comparetwo articles, one from a magazine and one from a journal. Presnell thenleads them in discussing the difference between a magazine article whichreports on the research from a journal article, and the actual journal article.She encourages them to think about the difference in the depth of informa-tion.

On the second day, Presnell concentrates on Internet searching. She in-troduces search engines and directories, pointing out how they are differ-ent and when it would be helpful to use one or the other. She also discussesthe importance of evaluating the information they find on the Internet, us-ing two contrasting Martin Luther King sites as proof of how some Internetsites present information in a biased way. (See http://www.martinlutherking.org/ compared to http://www.thekingcenter.org/.)Presnell hopes the students realize that there are documents on the Internetthat are well researched and those that are not. At least she wants to exposethem to the idea that they need to be active in evaluating Web pages theyintend to use in their school papers.

During their third session in the library, Presnell asks students to searchfor a site related to Egypt that they would recommend, using search en-gines and directories. The students then make presentations to the rest ofthe class, showing them their favorite Egypt site. Presnell says that therereally are many sites out there on Ancient Egypt, “including one that letsyou adopt your very own dog mummy.”

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The past two years Presnell has created a Web site, which she adds toeach day of the program. (Visit http://staff.lib.muohio.edu/~presnejl/egypt01/main01.html and http://staff.lib.muohio.edu/~presnejl/egypt/main.html.) As the students come up with recommended sites, Presnelladds them to the Web site. If anyone comes with a site they would not rec-ommend, that gets added to the Egypt Expedition site as well. She in-cludes evaluation criteria and an evaluation exercise, too. But the Web sitealso establishes a sense of community for the unit. At their first meeting,Presnell takes a digital picture of the group and puts it on the site, as wellas photos of each of the research groups. She asks students to tell hersomething about themselves and what they want to learn about. Populartopics include hieroglyphics and mummification and “what [Egyptians]do in their spare time.” These short statements are also added, and Presnellfinds students are pretty excited by the site.

Presnell said that she concentrates on teaching Internet search tech-niques to these students for several reasons. First of all, the Internet is anatural place for many of them to search for information, and Presnellwants them to be armed with appropriate search strategies. Secondly,however, there are limits to the resources they could use in the library,since they are not old enough to acquire a library card from the University.By focusing on the Internet, Presnell knows she is showing them how touse a resource they can also access from their school library.

In considering her goals for the three library sessions, Presnell said, “Ihope that these middle school students learn that they must be active andcautious researchers and form their own informed conclusions. I also hopethat they learn that they have choices in how and where they gather theirinformation. It’s really fun to see them ‘discover’ their research skills.”

When asked what advice she might give to someone else planning a simi-lar program, Presnell said it has been great to have more than one session withthe students. “They come back the second day with questions and thingsthey’ve thought of.” Even if it means having shorter sessions, she recom-mends multiple meeting times. Arranging meetings with other faculty oncampus allows the students to get a sense of what going to college might belike, in addition to teaching them more about Ancient Egypt.

Such programs involving students from area grade schools can be seen asbeneficial not just to the library, but also to the university. Presnell admitsthat the program could be seen as an opportunity to recruit freshmen a fewyears down the line. But since the program participants are six years awayfrom choosing a college to attend, the program’s success in that area cannotyet be gauged.

Academic Libraries and Community: Making the Connection 3

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