[Teaching_Composition] Librarians and research

[Kathy Fitch]

Ah, Fred--so much different at a CC, where they're *all* doing those
"exotic" bits of research, and the librarians are cool with that--and,
indeed, the library is as much a community resource as a college one.

Universities.  Gosh, they'll be the very death of education  . . .

Kathy

-----Original Message-----
From: teaching_composition-admin@mailman.eppg.com
[mailto:teaching_composition-admin@mailman.eppg.com] On Behalf Of Kemp, Fred
Sent: Tuesday, March 20, 2007 3:45 PM
To: teaching_composition@mailman.eppg.com
Subject: RE: [Teaching_Composition] Librarians and research

My wife is a library administrator who has been in academic libraries almost
as long as I have been teaching and administrating composition, some 30
years, and our many years of dinner-table conversation about who messes over
whom more, libraries or writing programs, has been interesting.  It seems to
boil down, on the library side, to (1) the teachers' apparent disregard for
the financial problems libraries have maintaining holdings and transitioning
to digital resources, and (2) a repeated lack of any practicality in the
library assignments that composition teachers give freshmen.  On the
composition side, it seems to boil down to (1) library staff who feel their
real duty in life is to support faculty and graduate students and are not
all that friendly to the admittedly naïve questions (and sometimes slouchy
attitude) of freshmen students -- who often enter a library with all the
enthusiasm of someone mounting the gallows, and (2) lack of user training
aimed at a freshman!
  audience for all the new digital resources.  Over the years, groups of
WPA's that I've been associated with have attempted powwows with library
administrators, but (with the exception of my wife) I think academic
librarians are just about as hardheaded as English professors.  The kind of
research that freshmen do is not the sort of exotic scholarship that most
academic librarians want to be a part of.

Librarians, like IT people, like to say "just tell us what you want," but in
lieu of some sort of collaborative development of new efforts, too often the
results of such requests is "sorry, we can't do that."

I'm hoping that digitalization and role redesign on both sides will open
things up.

Fred Kemp
Assoc Prof of English
Texas Tech  

-----Original Message-----
From: teaching_composition-admin@mailman.eppg.com
[mailto:teaching_composition-admin@mailman.eppg.com] On Behalf Of Jennifer
Nutefall
Sent: Tuesday, March 20, 2007 12:39 PM
To: teaching_composition@mailman.eppg.com
Subject: [Teaching_Composition] Librarians and research

I think it's exactly this difference in ways of thinking that make it
important for faculty members to talk to librarians about what they really
want - and to find ways to start this conversation. At conferences of
librarians I'd heard many times the complaints of librarians who say just
request them to do what they usually do. Which obviously makes it much more
difficult for us to get involved in the process.

Many librarians are certainly grounded in the "what can I find" mentality
instead of "what is the conversation going on". However, when we really know
what you're trying to accomplish with a research project and what research
the students need to do in order to get there, we do understand.

This is also where I'd stress the importance of team teaching - the happy
"marriage" of writing and research.  In almost all the sessions I teach for
our first-year writing program, we plan and teach the session together.

One question I'd be interested in seeing discussed is what you see as the
best way of starting this conversation between faculty and librarians -
either on an individual basis or as a group.

And I love the idea of a dream team!

Jennifer

Jennifer Nutefall
Instruction Coordinator
Melvin Gelman Library
George Washington University
2130 H Street, NW
Washington, DC 20052
Phone: 202-994-9863
Fax: 202-994-1340
_______________________________________________
Teaching_Composition maillist  -  Teaching_Composition@mailman.eppg.com
http://mailman.eppg.com/mailman/listinfo/teaching_composition

To unsubscribe, please visit
http://mailman.eppg.com/mailman/listinfo/teaching_composition and update
your information.

_______________________________________________
Teaching_Composition maillist  -  Teaching_Composition@mailman.eppg.com
http://mailman.eppg.com/mailman/listinfo/teaching_composition

To unsubscribe, please visit
http://mailman.eppg.com/mailman/listinfo/teaching_composition and update
your information.