THE IMPACT OF EDS ON INFORMATION LITERACY

LISA ROSE-WILES, SETON HALL UNIVERSITY400 SOUTH ORANGE AVENUESOUTH ORANGE, NJ 07079 USALISA.ROSE-WILES@SHU.EDU

COMMON COMMENTS FROM LIBRARIANS

+ PROS + • No silos – don’t need to find

and search many databases or catalog individually. • Designed for the end user• Fast and easy, familiar to

Googlers• Leaves more time for

“real” instruction and/or practice.

- CONS-• Too many results, often

irrelevant• Difficult to distinguish

source types• Unclear what is searched;

can miss important content• ‘Dumbs down’ searching;

does not foster IL skills

OUR WAY OR THE (INFORMATION) HIGHWAY?

LIBRARIANS

• Find the best information• Know what content is being

searched• Value precision & relevancy,

well crafted searches• Careful evaluation of results

USERS• Information rich, time

poor environment =• Make it easy, make it fast• Addicted to Google• Satisficing works for

most undergraduates

SETON HALL BACKGROUND• Private Catholic school, ~5,500

undergraduates, 3,500 graduate students (many part time/online; many in nursing and health professions)

• Information literacy is “core competency”, students must take “infused” classes to graduate.• A “soft launch” of EDS in April 2012; invited

user feedback but received little.• EDS moved to front of redesigned

library home page in fall 2012 – splashy party, low attendance.

SOME OF OUR INSTRUCTION DEBATES• Do we teach catalog, journals and subject

databases or EDS or both, and which first? • Should EDS include sources we cannot access full

text?• Are “one shot instruction sessions” better with

EDS?• How do we handle shift from “finding” to

“refining” results (without undermining EDS)?

• Teaching skills vs. teaching tools … teaching researching vs searching (is that our job or their instructor’s?)

ASSESSMENT OF ENGLISH 1201Online quiz, self selected sample (n = 69)

Common problems with completing tasks• Do not read /follow instructions!• Do not use limits even when directed to• Confuse different sources and formats• Don’t know how to retrieve full text• Think URL’s are citations• 55% believe they can get books and peer-

reviewed articles on Google.

ASSESSMENT OF ENGLISH 1202Instruction session focused on library worksheet assignment66 students in 4 classes.

• Students seem to “get” why not to use Google• Almost all correctly described scholarly articles• Almost all identified appropriate subject databases for

their searches but key words were often too broad.• Best student question: “How do I make my

research quick but effective”? • Over 45% of respondents gave “Boolean searching” as

the most useful thing they learned (that was a surprise!)

WHAT DID ENGLISH 1202 STUDENTS FIND MOST CHALLENGING?

EMBEDDED LIBRARIAN EXPERIENCEUpper level biology elective (n = 28)

• We used EDS and subject databases, ongoing librarian involvement and support• Most improved from first assignment to last: using

scientific sources and creativity• Least improved: spelling & grammar, integrating

sources.• Student feed back: no one ever taught us how to do

research before! They struggled with understanding and integrating scientific sources.• Equally divided between preferring EDS and subject

databases, many used both.

EMBEDDED LIBRARIAN EXPERIENCEThree first year biology labs Guided & graded use of scientific sources for lab reports, used EDS and (more focus on) subject databases.• Improvement from lab 1 to lab 5: Quality 22%,

Relevance 44%, Integration 38%, Citation 18% • Google sources decreased from 30% to 10%• Biggest issues were not “finding” but selecting and

integrating sources.

SO WHAT ABOUT EDS & IL?• No single answer – different users have different needs

and problems (1st year undergrad vs. grad students, specialized disciplines, professional schools, ESL)• The main benefit is saving time – for users and for

librarians giving library instruction (especially “one shots”)• “Too many results” does not seem to bother students

(most grew up with Google) and they like the facets (although ignore them unless shown).• Teaching with EDS needs to focus more on narrowing and

evaluating sources (pounding on “create good searches” seems ineffective).

DISCOVERY TOOLS DO NOT TURN GOOGLERS INTO SCHOLARS• EDS helps with “finding sources” (especially

undergraduates and generalists) but not with the larger problem that students do not know how to do research! • In my “embedded” courses, about half the students

preferred subject databases once they understood the research process better.• We hope EDS helps put students on the road from

searchers to researchers.

IS EDS WORTH THE EXPENSE?

• We have had a long fight to keep it (budget issues, moving to OCLC’s WMS which has a discovery tool “in development”) and need to justify our decision.• What do others think??

• THANK YOU!