Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Student Information Use And Decision-Making In Innovation Competitions And The Impact Of Librarian Interventions, Heather A. Howard, Dave Zwicky

Libraries Faculty and Staff Scholarship and Research

At a large Midwestern university, librarians work closely with an annual undergraduate agricultural innovation competition to guide students through the process of conducting market research and assessing patentability. In 2018, the authors conducted an exploratory study using focus groups of students who had participated in that year’s competition in order to learn how students find and use information in a competition setting, to evaluate the impact of library support on the students’ success, and inform further assessment activities. Results showed that students used information from the library and from their own research, notably seeking out first-hand expertise, to practice evidence-based …

“What’S Up, Doc?”: Selling Digital Literacy To Academics, Marianne Sato, Kathleen Smeaton, Thomas Palmer

Proceedings of the IATUL Conferences

When academics receive emails that start with “Wassup bro?” and students think digital literacy means “computer skills for old people”, how does the library bridge the gap between students and academics? Increasingly, libraries play a pivotal role in supporting learning in this critical space. However, more could be done. Libraries need to advocate for digital literacy as a legitimate capability that should be embedded into the curriculum rather than an optional extra.

In 2018, The University of Queensland Library undertook a project to create digital literacy modules to enable students to develop digital capabilities that would “fit an individual for …

The Push-Pull Of Digital Literacy, Jo Coldwell-Neilson, Kat Cain

Proceedings of the IATUL Conferences

Digital literacy within higher education was originally grounded in Gilster’s (1997) definition that essentially framed it as information literacy using technologies. This has necessarily evolved over the past two decades in conjunction with rapid technological advances. Digital literacy concepts have attempted to match the changing landscape engendered by ubiquitous and ever more available technologies, where cybersecurity and accessibility, multimodal communication channels, and push-pull models of information delivery impact the way we learn, work and play. A dizzying plethora of digital literacy definitions has emerged, with no common understanding of what it means or what skills and capabilities it reflects. Concomitantly, …

Student Information Use And Decision-Making In Innovation Competitions, Heather A. Howard, Dave Zwicky

Libraries Faculty and Staff Presentations

At a large university in the Midwestern United States, librarians work closely with an undergraduate agricultural innovation competition. Librarians serve as entrepreneurial information guides, providing business information instruction and consulting with student groups to mentor them through the innovation process. The competition, with a winning prize of $20,000, focuses on developing new products from soybeans to foster environmental stewardship and reduce reliance on petroleum. Competitions are a form of experiential learning, allowing students to fully experience the product design process and practice making evidence-based decisions. In order to progress through this competition, the students’ inventions must be shown to have …

The Potential Of Industry Standards In Undergraduate Education, Heather A. Howard, Margaret Phillips, Alyson Vaaler, David Hubbard

Libraries Faculty and Staff Presentations

Industry standards have a significant impact on business as a means to eliminate waste, reduce costs, market products (e.g., for quality, safety, interoperability) and lessen liability (Thompson, 2011). Consequently, an understanding and the ability to use standards, agreed upon practices among interested or vested parties, is a critical workplace competency for those engaged in business and industry. To have a workforce competent in the use of standards, higher education curricula must be developed to integrate standards education at appropriate points within the curriculum. Despite the importance of standards, they are not universally integrated into the college and university curricula. Given …

Standards Collections: Considerations For The Future, Margaret Phillips

Libraries Faculty and Staff Scholarship and Research

Technical standards are a form of gray literature that describe consensus for a wide variety of applications. They promote safety, quality, and interchangeability of parts. In academic libraries, standards have largely been associated with engineering collections, despite having connections to many disciplines. Engineering and technology accreditation bodies and employers continue to expect graduates to have knowledge and experience with standards upon graduation. This article provides a brief history of standards collection development in academic libraries, discusses the challenges of standards collections, shares a case study of standards information literacy curricula integration, and offers considerations for the future of standards collections.