Managing scientific information and research data constitutes an important part of a researcher’s professional life. With access to so much information and technology, becoming information-literate and learning how to manage this information is of major importance for a successful career in science. Students will forget much of what they have learned in college but knowing how to find and manage scientific information will serve them well. Teaching information literacy is like scientific writing—you could do it in a boring way, or make it exciting. Teaching is helping students understand and remember, and also make them curious. In this chapter, the author shares her vision of a future role for academic librarians in creating an information-literate generation of students who are enthusiastic about learning how to find, manage, and use scientific information.
“Are you talking about EndNote?” asked the driver of the shuttle bus. “That was the most useful thing I have learned in this school.” Most of the shuttle bus drivers at the University of Maryland are students. The driver who asked this question had overheard a conversation I was having with someone on the bus. For several years, I taught EndNote workshops for the whole campus, and only hours after the announcements went out, new applicants had to be placed on waiting lists. Most of those who signed up for these classes were faculty and graduate students. In these workshops, attendees not only were able to learn the basics of a bibliographic management program but also searched databases in their own field, exported references to their EndNote libraries, and inserted citations in papers they were writing. I have applied the same model of integrating bibliographic management into information literacy classes taught in science courses. The results and the positive feedback from both students and teaching faculty have exceeded my expectations.
Years after I stopped offering these workshops, requests to offer them again continued to come. A recent e-mail from a student shows how much students appreciated learning bibliographic management and the way I introduced them to it:
I was in professional writing English class a year ago and for one of our meeting periods, we came to your workshop at McKeldin library. I am now writing a paper for my Conservation Biology class and just wanted to thank you for putting the time into making that handout. I had never heard of EndNote Web before attending your workshop, but now wish I had much sooner because it is a wonderful resource. It has been a while since the workshop, and honestly a while since I have had to write any large research papers. Due to this, I had forgotten a lot of what I had learned in the workshop. Thankfully, I came across a few old papers that I saved, including the Mastering EndNote Web Handout. It has been a huge help, so I just wanted to reach out and thank you for making it.
After the era of the EndNote workshops was over, I became interested in electronic laboratory notebooks (ELNs). This technology is now widely used in industry, but academia has been slow to adopt it. In my “previous life,” as a lab-bench researcher, I struggled with paper notebooks, just as researchers are struggling with them even today. Several workshops on ELNs for campus were followed by a pilot project to introduce the use of ELNs in a chemistry course. In a few months, I will be participating in an effort funded by a grant to introduce ELNs in two chemistry courses—a small one (with 50 students) and a large one with 400 students.
While these workshops attracted many people, some of my colleagues were wondering why I was doing that at all. Library administrators were asking me why I was teaching so much. I am glad I taught them, because they led to my involvement in many other information-literacy projects, writings, presentations, invitations for collaborations, and interactions with researchers and students. The workshops made me the “go-to” person for questions about bibliographic management tools and ELNs. Last year’s successful experiment in teaching information literacy sessions in a large chemistry course with almost 450 people will be replicated this year with a freshman chemistry course with 800 students.
It is amazing how quickly students, even in early chemistry courses, are able to learn to search complex chemistry databases. They find it fascinating to draw a molecular structure in SciFinder or Reaxys and discover the chemical compound this structure corresponds to. A student told me that when he was drawing a structure in these databases, he felt as if he was doing real research in the lab. Another student (in a 200-level chemistry course) was similarly impressed:
I thought this class and assignment were absolutely spectacular and critical in the develop[ment] of our science careers!!! Wow, how I wish I knew about these resources earlier!!! Show this to high school students, I am curious to the amount of hidden talent there when given these resources!!!! Thank you! This needs to be done in more science classes.
I am now going to say something that some of my colleagues (and library administrators) will not agree with: I see information literacy, in the context of how it is discussed in this book, as the most important and exciting area for librarians to be involved in. Look at the opportunity to teach 800 students how to search sophisticated chemistry databases, find literature and property information, and use bibliographic management tools to write papers, dissertations, and books. And then compare it with another possibility being promoted now in academic libraries—helping individual researchers prepare data management plans (there are templates for this now) or manage their research data (if they trust subject librarians who have no subject background to do it). What would be more valuable to the university (and to society, in general)? I realize that this could sound like heresy coming from someone who has just written a chapter on eScience and academic libraries. Time will show how priorities for librarians will shift in the near future and whether my enthusiasm for information literacy will subside.
Teaching information literacy is like writing or making a presentation—you could do it in a boring way or make it exciting. Teaching is helping students understand and remember and also become curious. They will forget much of what they have learned in their science courses, but if you have raised their curiosity and have showed them how to find and manage scientific information, they will be able to find their way. And how you do it makes a difference. Just focus on the content, not letting the euphoria about technology take you away from what is important for students to know.
Managing scientific information and research data constitutes an important part of a researcher’s professional life. Whether someone will be considered information-literate depends to a great extent on what type of information is valued in that person’s particular environment and area of study. A person considered to be well-informed in one culture may not be perceived this way in another. With access to so much information and technology, it is only a matter of personal effort for an individual to become information-literate and learn how to manage this information.