Two librarians at the Daniel A. Cannon Memorial Library at Saint Leo University have received national recognition for an innovative program they created.
Jackie Bryan and Elana Karshmer recently returned from the American Library Association’s national conference in Las Vegas where they received the inaugural award for innovation in instructional programming.
(B.C. Manion/Staff Photo)
The award stems from a program the pair put together to help students effectively navigate the university’s library, learn about its resources, and meet its staff. They based it on the 1960s television series “Mission Impossible,” Karshmer said.
They called their project, “Mission Impossible: Free Fritz.”
“The whole point of this mission in the library was to go to different stations that we set up where they would actually practice information literacy skills, and then if they successfully completed those skills, they would get a letter,” Karshmer explained.
When they obtained enough letters to spell a particular word, it would free Fritz, Saint Leo’s mascot.
As students made their way through the stations, they completed challenges and had a chance to have fun, intended to reinforce the lesson they learned. In the upstairs stacks, for instance, students had to find a book. Once they found it, they hula-hooped, to reinforce the idea that the volume came from the library’s circulating collection.
The librarians conducted research and borrowed ideas from other places when they were creating their program, said Bryan, who is a reference and instructional services librarian as well as an associate professor.
“Gamification is a trend now in higher ed,” she said.
“A lot of these things are out of (kindergarten through 12th grade). They’ve been doing it forever,” said Karshmer, an instruction program and information literary librarian, as well as an associate professor.
It took several weeks to design the program, which included a number of games and a pair of videos. One video explained what the students would be doing in the library. The other covered the research process.
After watching the video about research, students visited the library and used the catalog, the databases and the library website.
The project reflects the university’s desire to help students get the best use of the university’s resources, Bryan said. Learning how to use the library when they start college helps give them a solid footing.
“It really sets the foundation for the rest of their academic career,” she said. “They may think they know how to find information, but there are so many skills that we can teach them to help find the correct information they need and how to evaluate it, as well.”
It can also help transfer skills to other subjects. Students who learn how to use a database for English, for instance, can apply those same skills for research in other disciplines.
Those skills are valuable beyond college, Bryan added.
“Say you’re doing a project for some company you’re working for, and you have access to the public library. These are still skills you can use,” Karshmer said. “And, you’ll want to use them because people are going to expect you to be able to find high-quality information no matter what you’re doing.”
Many students know how to conduct Internet searches, but haven’t learned how to do scholarly research, Bryan said.
“They’ll take the first results when they do a search, instead of drilling down,” Bryan said. It’s also important to know how to refine a search to obtain the information you need, instead of getting thousands of irrelevant results.
“You need to find credible resources,” Bryan said.
Brent Short, Saint Leo’s director of library services, said he knew Bryan and Karshmer were doing good work, but it was nice to see their efforts receive broader recognition.
“What we’re really trying to facilitate and encourage is the ability to read deeply and write deeply,” Short said. “One of the temptations for students now is they think they can get an instant answer.”
The library staff wants students to feel welcome, encouraged and supported, Short said.
“We do have some expertise to offer,” he said. “We can help guide them where they need to go, and really save them a lot of headache and wasted time.”
Published August 20, 2014
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