NOTE: Part of response to readings for week 5, Sep 24th 2004, LIS 501 (1 of 2 required courses) last fall.
Leckie gives us the "expert researcher" model to highlight the difference between faculty member and undergraduate understanding of the research process, particularly within a discipline. This understanding, although only a model, makes very good sense to me as I am constantly embedded at all points along the continuum between "expert researcher" and the typical "undergraduate researcher." I am involved in so many enterprises that involve wandering into various and divergent literatures and disciplines that my varied "research" attempts fall all along this continuum. I am unsure how well the model may translate to other situations; maybe if we take into account that some "literatures" are smaller, maybe more easily able to be learned, and so on, and are willing to collapse the continuum somewhat.
I enjoyed and could certainly relate to Gross’ article on imposed
queries. I am also taking LIS 504 Reference with Terry Weech and this
past week we were all struggling in the library trying to do our first
source exercise on bibliographies. Talk about classic imposed queries!
There was a concept in this article that I have not seen discussed much
that intrigued me. On page 4 she refers to a parent taking on the role
of "demonstrating the reference negotiation process" (I assume she
means intentionally on the part of the parent) and on page 7 she refers
to allowing children to experience "question negotiation, an important
information seeking skill." I have not seen this discussed anywhere and
while I do not doubt that question negotiation is an important
information seeking skill, I am wondering if I have it, and if so, how
and where did I learn it? Is it all tacit knowledge? Is it or can it be
taught? As for a parent intentionally taking on the role of modeling
question negotiation—I do not think so! Maybe one parent in every
couple of million? Possibly if the parent is an instruction librarian.
While I may have automatically, and for other reasons, done this for my
children it certainly was never intentional. Even if Gross meant that
this happens unintentionally, there are other (better?) descriptions of
what the parent is doing for the child than modeling a specfic type of
skill.
I also have to say that there was a statement in this article that
really upset me at first until I thought it through. On page 5, Gross
states that "All questions can be seen as as existing on a continuum
from the specific and objective to the ambiguous and subjective." I
immediately reacted with much vehemence when I read this statement
linking the ambiguous and subjective AND then placing them at the end
of a dichotomy with the objective. But after taking a breath or two and
reading a few more sentences and then re-reading them I realized that
from her viewpoint she is correct. There is no inherent or necessary
linking of the subjective and the ambiguous, or of the specific and
objective, nor are they necessarily a dichotomy. In fact, they are not.
But, now for the big ‘but,’ from the perspective of the question
receiver they are, or at least usually are, linked and dichotomous as
Gross states. They are not (but may be) for the questioner, but are for
anyone else. It is always nice to be offended by someone only to
discover that you really agree with them. I think that conflation of
these terms (subjective, objective, specific, ambiguous) by removing
the context of questioner vs. questionee in literature across many
disciplines may be the root cause of our current social uses of these
terms as dichotomous, when they are in fact dialectical. I have Gross
to thank for providing me that further insight.
Nardi and O’Day took an interesting look at corporate reference
librarians work as a means of informing automated information
gathering. One point of concern to me was the extremely rosy view of
almost-solved security and privacy issues (76). I wonder what they
might say about this situation eight years later and no closer to any
technological solution to the problem; while now living under the
specter of the Patriot Act. The second point that resonated with me is
that they may well have identified the root of librarians’ lack of
respect (84). If the librarian is, in effect, invisible to the client
how is she to be respected? I also must give the authors credit for
their "People should not be a footnote to technology" comment (84).
Citations
Gross, Melissa. 2000 "The Imposed Query and Information Services for Children." Journal of Youth Services in Libraries 13 (2): 10-17.
Leckie, Gloria J. 1996 "Desperately Seeking Citations: Uncovering
Faculty Assumptions about the Undergraduate Research Process." Journal of Acdemic Librarianship 22 (3): 201-208.
Nardi, Bonnie and Vicki O’Day. 1996 "Intelligent Agents: What We Learned at the Library." Libri 46: 59-87.
What strikes me the most about this article, and many within the literature are the same, is that although it directly identifies one of the fundamental problems in the academy it only addresses the symptoms. There is, of course, some reality in that attack—we have to deal with the patron in front of us at the moment. Leckie’s "expert researcher" model (202) assumes a view of research "as a non-sequential, non-linear process with a large degree of ambiguity and serendipity" (202). It clearly recognizes that research is a complex, messy, inefficient, and slow process. This is the exact opposite of what the typical undergraduate expects, or at the least assumes, even if they know better at heart. So although preparation of future undergraduate skills is not the focus of this article, it could at least be a stronger advocate for changing the underlying causes over the longer-term, not just on current "band-aid" fixes. I do agree that in some cases we could work better with the teaching faculty, and certainly vice versa; a proactive stance on this issue is exactly what Leckie advocates. But, fixing the problem by changing attitudes toward, and knowledge of, research practices at a much earlier age and stage of the educational process seems like a better tack. I certainly agree that Leckie’s type of intervention can be useful, and may be all we are allowed to do; but it is not a long-term fix.
