The New Librarianship

This video from EasyBib is a great example of the kind of conceptual research instruction that librarians ought to be doing.

For example, if I get requests from faculty to show students how to search, I’ll model a narrative very similar to the one from this video to prepare students for the process of searching. I’ve written and published about this – especially the stuff about the importance of librarians connecting course content to students interests – and what I like about this video is that it hints at the kind of narrative librarians can give in the classroom about developing research questions as a prelude to pointing and clicking. Anything that’s said in the video could be asserted and expanded on in a one-shot where I librarian was asked to “show the students the databases.”  My ideal session would be like 40% narrative; 10% pointing and clicking; and 50% student practice/individual feedback. This video is a great example of what the new librarianship – the minimization of pointing and clicking –  can look like.