Rob Hallis presenting on Behind the Point-and-Click Discovery Tool: Integrating Critical Thinking in Finding Resources
History of discovery: silos of databases to federated searching to “pushed suggestions”. Pulled data = what you “pull” from a system; Pushed data = what a system (like Amazon) “pushes” at you. Is critical thinking an “autonomous activity?” I don’t think so! Move from a bibliographic paradigm to a constructive process where there is uncertainty and confusion. He is using “Seeking Meaning: A process approach to Library and Information Science” by Kuhthau. (http://vufind.carli.illinois.edu/all/vf-npu/Record/2557683).
Questions/Thoughts unrelated to the main presentation:
- Do we really know enough about how students think/learn through online searching in any form (OPAC, database, discovery)?
- He uses this metaphor for searching for information resources: online shopping. You know what you want and where to look – but you don’t click the first thing. You shop around. Is this a good metaphor? What’s a better metaphor/image to use?
- These presentations are really demonstrating the huge range of what falls under library “instruction” – from simple multiple choice tutorials to walking through a very complicated search processes. I wonder if that’s even a meaningful term at some point. How involved in the thesis creation process are libraries/librarians? It seems like this presenter portrays libraries as very active in the thesis/research process from the very beginning…but is that the case at our institutions? That seems like the role of the classroom professor.
- Many presenters use the passive voice or at least speak passively when talking about Discovery Services. For example, “the resources that the discovery services provide” instead of “discovery services provide resources.” I wonder what this reflects – a mistrust of discovery? A lack of understanding of what discovery layers do or how they actually work? Or is this verbiage trying to focus on the actions of the user over the actions of the discovery service?