The Self Study Report and demonstrating the role of the library

When writing this portion of the Self Study Report, it is tough to demonstrate how the academic library staff have made an impact on information literacy and transferring those skills to students. The link below to the article in Inside Higher Ed by Steve Kolowich sheds a lot of light on why students do not get to the library and when they do do research, these same computer whizzes, do not know how to do effective searches. But then in many cases their teachers have not kept up either. Information formats, search interfaces and database content is a rapidly changing arena, and we all need to do our part to keep up with the trends. You know the weakness of the system and the impact  google search has, when the library at University of Waterloo has a graphic logo on the library gateway page extolling the words "University-Level Research Requires More" pointing to a registration link for workshops beside a duck saying "Even I can search google."

And these librarians have a bricks and mortar campus as well as online, while my environment is solely online universities and thus my institution's library presence is entered from a tab and a link. So writing about the role of the library requires data and assessment and faculty engagement at the syllabi level.

What Students Don't Know http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/08/22/erial_study_of_student_research_habits_at_illinois_university_libraries_reveals_alarmingly_poor_information_literacy_and_skills