http://blogs.princeton.edu/librarian/

Given the information glut that we are facing today, there is an urgency for researchers like us, those who are consumers of information in large quantities, to turn to our friends, the academic librarians, for help.

A competent academic librarian is a “gift from God.” Until we get to heaven and have the capacity to see God face to face for direct answers, academic librarians are the next best source for reliable information for now. They seek and do actually find, answers to research questions, that is. It’s their job! However, matters of life and death, of course, we would have to refer them to the Almighty. Mortals have their limits. Otherwise, we would be asking too much from our friends, the academic librarians.

Academic librarians have played an important part in both my academic life and in my personal life throughout my years at UBC. Allow me to indulge and share with you some fond memories of my librarian friends.

During my first year as an arts undergrad, my “prayer partner” and spiritual “big sister” was Winifred Ho, now the University Librarian at Hong Kong Polytechnic University. She gave me advice on everything from biblical knowledge, “boy problems,” to practical life matters. She even brought me food and drove me around when I was down with the flu and working alone in Hong Kong. Winifred Ho was the “sister” I wished I had at home.

It was also at UBC in a Continuing Education photography class that I met the late Ann Smith who served as Acting University Librarian at UBC once upon a time. She was an extraordinarily kind person and she took an interest in me, a neophyte at the bottom of the “food chain.” She asked me “what I wanted to be when I grow up” and took me to the Faculty Club for lunch just to see how she can help me get to where I wanted to be. At the end of our lunch, she told me she would give the Fine Arts Librarian a call. Before I knew it, I got a job shelving books there for the next few years until I finished my undergrad degree. This was a job that other students had to line up to apply for and I was “in” with only one phone call from Ann to Melva Dwyer, the Head of the Fine Arts Division at the UBC Library. Perhaps Ann was eyeing me to become one of the library school recruits. Who knows? I love books. I love to read them, buy them, and give them away as gifts to friends. I am not sure I like to take care of them, books, that is, as a life long career, admirable though that be as a profession.

It was from Melva Dwyer that I learned how to scrutinize a book. She taught a course in the bibliography of fine arts. It was a rather “dry” course but we truly did benefit from learning a thing or two about how to judge a book beyond its cover.  Of course, the highlight in that class was that, at the end of the year, Melva would always take her students to the Faculty Club for a fancy lunch. That was a treat we all looked forward to.

When I went on to do graduate work in the Faculty of Education, LERC (Language Education Research Center) became my “home.” Because I did my M. Ed. In less than 2 years, I practically “lived” in LERC and as a result, I got to know Dorothy Sharrock, the librarian there, very well. My most memorable experience at LERC had nothing to do with books but it had everything to do with a dead deer! I still remember how Dorothy told me to look into the garbage bin outside the library with a mischievous twinkle in her eyes. What came next was a big scream from “yours truly.” I was frightened out of my wits while Dorothy and Dr. Margaret Brown looked on with amusement. Those were the days at UBC, a much gentler time when people were more relaxed and playful.

Many years later, when I returned to UBC to do my Ph.D., I was really blessed to have Jo-Anne Naslund’s help at the Education Library. Jo-Anne is amazing. She seems to know everything. Jo-Anne is really devoted to her job but I know that the changing landscape at UBC is wearing her out at times. We love you Jo-Anne! Keep up the great work.

When I finally finished my Ph.D. (still alive and breathing, thank God!), my mind turned to the inescapable fact that if I don’t want to teach at UBC, I will not be able to enjoy the  same library privileges I had as a student. Without being connected to an academic library, I cannot keep current. So, I spent the next six months after graduation, before setting up my private practice, getting to know the library system at UBC to find a solution to my problem.

During this period of intense “searching” for a way to keep current when my UBC library card runs out (The analogy is Cinderella in a hurry to go home before the coach turns into a pumpkin!), I tried many things and consulted many people. In the back of my mind, I was thinking that with the technological advancement of today, there must be a way that I can be alerted to new publications and new developments in my professional field. My academic librarian friends are probably laughing at me right now for being so ignorant, but honestly, struggling to stay alive during those miserable Ph.D. years left me with little energy to extend myself beyond my thesis work. I actually thought that “literacy” is only restricted to learning how to read and write, which is my area of professional specialty.

The breakthrough came when I, by chance, sat next to Dean Giustini, academic librarian of Google Scholar fame. Dean is the Biomed Branch Librarian at Vancouver General Hospital and he specializes in health and hospital librarianship. In 2007, he was the recipient of the Canadian Hospital Librarian of the Year Award.

It so happened that Dean was the person who wrote the library instruction sheets on how to set up RSS feeds at UBC.  Of course, I went to the originator of the instruction sheets and the rest is now history! Currently, I have several hundred RSS feeds streaming into my Google Reader. That is how I keep up with my field! I hope my clients appreciate the efforts I make to stay current in my field of specialty.

For the last year, I followed Dean’s work on the web and learned his techniques on the blog. Now I know that the blog is a really useful educational tool.  Inspiration for my current blog and podcast on my website actually came from Dean’s work. Indeed, Dean became my Google Scholar teacher and a friend by default, thanks to the Open Access movement. The best things in life are, well, free!

I have extended an invitation to Dean Giustini, my Google Scholar teacher, to be a guest blogger here at some point in the future. As you know, wading through the glut on the internet is a problem for today’s information consumer. One of the concerns I have as a special education professional is that I have known desperate parents who have “googled” themselves into a commercial trap set for them by advertisers of unhelpful and expensive interventions.

I would love to see Dean give teacher, parents, and the general public, some pointers on how to evaluate information on the internet. Teaching “information literacy” is an important aspect of an academic librarian’s work and Dean does it with flair and finesse. It would be great to have Dean enlighten us on the art of “search” and how to avoid being mis-informed. Too many innocent parents have gone astray before us.

And so, I say, “Come save us, our dear academic librarian friends. Deliver us from the booby-traps set by evil advertisers of false interventions for dyslexia. God loves academic librarians!”

Tags: Education
Posted in Blog