Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

What We Talk About When We Talk About Quality: A Librarian And Instructor Compare How They Assess Students' Sources, Elizabeth Pickard, Sarah Sterling

Collaborative Librarianship

This case study explores and compares how a librarian and an instructor evaluated the quality of bibliographies students produced for the instructor’s class. The ethnographic study attempted to unearth nuances in the respective practical approaches librarian and instructor took to assess a source’s quality as well as differences in what librarian and instructor might mean by “quality.” Themes emerged as indicators of quality that librarian and instructor applied differently in terms of frequency and weight. Findings also included that librarian and instructor looked to different aspects of citations to demonstrate common values, such as thoroughness, and to reflect the quality …