Scientific Literacy Skills for Non-Science Librarians: Bootstrap
Training
Christina Peterson
Life Sciences Librarian
San Jose State University, California
peterson@email.sjsu.edu
Sandra Kajiwara
Physical Sciences Librarian
San Jose State University, California
sandrak@sjsu.edu
Abstract
Adding scientific literacy to the skill set of permanent non-science and
part-time adjunct librarians became a major focus of a staff development
program at San Jose State University Library. The Library's one reference
desk is busy, and librarians field questions from all disciplines.
Changing staffing patterns in the Reference Department have necessitated
the use of more adjuncts at the reference desk. A proliferation of
web-based scientific information sources was overloading students and the
librarians who serve them at Reference. In order to determine our most
pressing training goals, we administered a survey to all reference
personnel, discovering that librarians in the social sciences and
humanities and adjunct librarians felt a knowledge deficit in chemistry,
health sciences, and engineering, among other disciplines. The adjuncts,
in particular, wanted to be brought up to speed in several aspects of
science and technology librarianship, including the nature of science and
its literature, typical undergraduate and graduate science students'
information requirements, how to use both electronic and print sources in
the sciences, and when to refer questions to science librarians. We put
into place Bootstrap Training, a program for integrated groups of
full-time and adjunct librarians. In this paper we describe an initial
training-needs questionnaire distributed to all reference personnel, the
implementation of a staff development program with scientific literacy
goals, evaluation of the program, and implications for replicating the
training in other library settings.
The Setting
Many college and university libraries have general reference desks staffed
by librarians with specific subject expertise, but no general reference
desk can be staffed by reference librarians in all areas of expertise at
any one time. Thus, at any hour of the day, in-depth subject knowledge
available at the desk changes drastically. San Jose State University
Library (SJSUL) has one general reference desk, full-time reference
librarians with subject specialties and major off-desk responsibilities
such as collection development and instruction, and a cadre of part-time
adjunct librarians who work reference desk hours only. We implemented a
series of staff development programs for adjunct and full-time reference
librarians so we were all able to offer more uniformly excellent service
to any student who approaches the reference desk.
The library literature is a treasure of information on training specialist
librarians in various subject fields, on new databases, or new data and literature
(Mendelsohn 1999; Spang, 1996; Berkov et al 1990). There are also articles on training librarians to
provide good reference service in all types of libraries (Kalvee
1996; Winston 1995). But there is little written on training
non-science librarians in-house to provide a level of help for science fields for
which they have no background. The literature also shows that specialized subject
training offered is for an extended time period (days or weeks) or at special
seminars, usually held at distant points, or for particular databases or areas of
literature (Huber & Baysinger 1997). However, it is rare that a
subject specialist for political science would attend a seminar for chemistry,
because that training is aimed at people who already have a basic understanding of
the discipline. This article describes in-house training for non-science librarians
and non-science adjunct librarians where length of training time is a limiting
factor, and gathering all librarians together for training is problematical. We
called the program, "Bootstrap Training" because we used readily-available in-house
talent.
Why the Bootstrap Training Program?
SJSUL, in common with many others around the United States, has been
changing rapidly with the advent of new technology which alters the face
of library research almost daily (
St. Lifer 1996;
Noble 1998). There has been an influx of web-based
scientific databases of differing types, some bibliographic, some for
data, some more encyclopedic in nature. Asking non-science librarians to
become instant experts in these resources has become a tall order. Add to
that SJSUL's increasing reliance on part-time or adjunct librarians, and
the problem became more complicated. We wanted to create a program of
training that more fully integrated adjunct and full-time librarians and
also took into consideration our limited amount of time and money.
Surveying for Training Needs
To start off the training program we administered a survey to all
librarians, fulltime and adjunct, and to reference staff who serve on the
directions desk next to the reference desk (see
Appendix
I). The survey asked about training needs in the areas of specific
sources, subject areas, library organization, working with patrons,
maintaining a climate of civility, work pressures, as well as appropriate
timing for the training sessions. Results indicated that science subjects
and databases were among the most highly requested. Other needs included
how to work with patrons with low levels of subject knowledge and library
basics, and when to refer a student to a specialist librarian. We used the
survey data to fashion a series of training sessions in subject
specialties, vendor demonstrations of heavily used databases and
platforms, and discussions on topics such as working with patrons with a
wide range of abilities and teamwork on the reference desk. This paper
focuses on the science training sessions in which we incorporated material
on what our students need and how to work with them.
Implementing the Bootstrap Training Program
Our training program relied on our own full-time librarians as trainers,
using their individual knowledge of particular science areas to share with
the non-science librarians. The audience was all full-time or adjunct
librarians and library staff serving at any reference point who felt they
could profit from the scientific training. Our library was able to pay the
adjunct librarians for the extra hours they spent in the training
sessions.
We determined through our initial survey the hours that would be most
convenient to the adjunct librarians and finally settled on Saturday
mornings as our best compromise. We held the training sessions in the
library classroom and on Saturdays provided coffee, bagels, and other
morning fare. Our full-time librarians were trained during regular
department meeting times. No food or drink was offered at these sessions.
Sessions were designed to be two hours but usually ran closer to three
hours because of extensive questions from the audience.
Introducing Scientific Literacy
Why is it easier for librarians to work with the humanities and the social
sciences than with the science and engineering disciplines? The answer to
this question formed the crux of how we chose to design our training
sessions.
The educational background of a graduate of the United States' K-12 system is
filled with required courses in English and Social Studies for grades 7-12; English
and Social Studies are emphasized in the lower grades as well. Most teachers are
themselves more familiar with the humanities and social sciences from their own
education and are more comfortable spending time on these subjects in elementary
schools. The sciences are usually better taught with special apparatus and supplies
which most school districts have trouble providing due to limited budgets. Also,
teachers in the K-12 system less often have an educational background in science
than in a field of humanities or social science. So the educational system
perpetuates a dearth of people versed in the sciences. Of the K-12 science teachers
themselves, a recent National Science Teachers Association survey revealed among
science teachers,
four out of five (78 percent) of the 80 percent
involved in science education reform efforts report experiencing barriers,
including lack of adequate time for planning and working with other teachers (81
percent); a shortage or science materials, resources and facilities (58 percent);
and lack of financial support for relevant professional development (45 percent).
Furthermore, 49% of the science teachers "are not at all confident
that elementary schools are providing students with the kind of quality science
education they will need in the coming century, and 29% and 23% report the same
lack of confidence about middle and high school science education, respectively."
The Third International Math and Science Study (TIMSS) unfortunately shows, "U.S.
middle and high school students performing substantially below those of leading
countries in math and science" (
NSTA 1999), validating the worries
of the science teachers.
Our future librarians come from this system into the college environment
with very little understanding of science and perhaps even a fear of the
unknown. So, training librarians to provide good science reference help
starts with a large deficit in their knowledge base. Most librarians are
ill at ease with the science disciplines; fear of science is not unusual
for people who did not take science as a degree major or minor in college.
Science, more than most disciplines (excepting perhaps music), has a large
and incomprehensible vocabulary which becomes a barrier for a non-science
librarian who is trying to answer a science question. Because of this
barrier, we developed a program to give librarians a fast, but focused
view of a particular science field and its organization, tying that to the
literature for that field. We wanted to give the non-science librarian
enough information to be able to determine in a basic way, how to guide
the science student to material he or she needed and when to refer a
question to a subject specialist.
Two initial training sessions were offered for chemistry and for the
health sciences. We started each session with a very basic introduction to
the subject field. Obviously there is not much one can cover in a two hour
session which will make a non-science librarian an expert in a science
field, but expertise is not always necessary. If the librarian can become
more comfortable with the databases because s/he now understands the
rudiments of a field, this may be all the training needed for the
librarian to be successful in finding information for a patron. For
example, giving a librarian a clue about whether they are seeing an
organic or inorganic chemical compound goes a long way in helping them
choose where to direct a patron.
How difficult is it to teach a science in capsule form? How does one
decide what is important and what is too much? Teaching a new science
discipline in the classroom is easier because there are many class hours
to detail the basics. When one has two to three hours for instruction, one
must pick the basics that will enhance the librarian's experience at the
reference desk. We were teaching a science area completely new to most of
the librarians so starting with the simplest foundation was necessary.
What we found was that the librarians really enjoyed learning a little bit
about science because it was presented simply and related strongly to
their experiences at the reference desk. Not only was it pertinent to
their work, it gave them the feeling that they could now succeed with
areas that previously had given them grief.
Explaining Scientific Literature Literacy
We stepped back from the show and tell stance of teaching about available
databases and their attributes, back from the student query, all the way
to giving a mini-seminar about the subject field itself. We hoped that
teaching librarians about the science subject itself would help give them
enough knowledge and confidence to decide which databases or reference
tools would be most applicable.
Building on their new basic knowledge, our second design was to gather the
most often asked science questions for the discipline and connect the
questions with the most likely sources to search. We wanted the learning
situation to be very pragmatic and tied closely to our own students'
needs. At this point, we asked the librarians to send us frequently asked
questions they dealt with; the trainers also included questions experience
had taught were often referred to them from the non-science librarians.
The specialist trainer librarian melded into the lecture the basics of the
discipline that were necessary for working with the students and the
questions most often asked.
Part of the understanding necessary to learning about a science field's
literature is knowing what forms of literature a discipline finds
important and how their literature is organized. For example, the
engineering fields have many handbooks filled with important data. The
chemistry field has a strong dependence on journal literature with
additional basic data in many multi-volume reference works. Primary
literature in the sciences means something different from primary
literature in history. The trainer used the frequently asked questions to
show the relationship of the questions to the major types of literature
common to the science field being discussed. This connected the subject to
the literature in a way the librarian was familiar with -- formats for
research tools.
Characterizing Science Students
In a user-centered reference environment, patrons and their needs are
primary indicators of how librarians should structure a reference
interview and choose sources, so we incorporated information about typical
science students and other patrons with science questions. We discussed
students' ability to read and understand science literature as well as
their knowledge of typical sources. Student understanding of science
subjects differs among general education classes, undergraduate major, and
graduate courses. Fear of science can be exacerbated when non-science
librarians work with non-science majors. Neither party has an extensive
subject background and neither may be able to formulate flexible search
strategies. Choice of database and use of features like limits and
clickable subject headings are key to successful searches in this setting.
Non-majors researching a science topic and needing primary sources must be
steered carefully; the more comprehensive bibliographic databases such as
Compendex,
Medline, and
GeoRef will
be too daunting. We recommended the use of less-comprehensive science
databases and the utilization of limiting features to match patrons'
needs. Wilson's
General Science Abstracts,
Applied
Science Index, and
Biological and Agricultural Index
were suggested as more appropriate for non-majors and even some lower
division undergraduate science majors. Also, many general
interdisciplinary databases such as
InfoTrac Web offer the
ability to limit to research articles or refereed journals. The non-major
who might have trouble determining if a paper is a research report from a
citation or abstract can use this limit feature. Undergraduate majors are
beginning to grasp the important concepts, theories, and vocabulary of
their field. They are easier to work with at the reference desk.
Librarians can probe for alternative search strategies, broader and
narrower expressions, and technical language. Graduate students and
faculty frequently need comprehensive literature reviews or conversely,
that one specific paper on their topic. We recommended the major databases
such as
Medline,
Chemical Abstracts, and
Compendex for these searches. In these interactions,
librarians supply the searching skills and patrons supply the subject
knowledge and vocabulary. We emphasized that successful science reference
transactions are based on librarian understanding of the level of patron
need. In-class exercises (
Appendix II) strengthened
this concept.
Recognizing Faculty Goals for Students
We knew that certain science departments and individual faculty members
have information competency goals for their students, such as learning to
find and use scholarly scientific papers and evaluating web-based
information for authority and appropriateness. These goals were explained
during training sessions, usually as relevant electronic sources were
demonstrated. We also discussed the difficulty some students have when
they first encounter electronic indexes to the scientific literature and
ways to help them, i.e., carefully reading an abstract and following
subject headings. We wanted to anchor the information sources within the
specific environment of our College of Science, and while some of what we
taught seems self-evident to science librarians, it needed to be
articulated in the training sessions.
Conclusion
This Bootstrap Training program was originally set up to address reference
librarians' frustrations at too many new databases in too many fields with
inadequate training time and deficiencies in subject knowledge that
somehow show up more glaringly when helping a student with a subject
database. The librarians themselves chose the fields they wanted more
training in, and the science subjects were at the head of the list.
Post-training evaluation indicated that while learning about appropriate
subject databases was valuable, exposure to the basics of the science
discipline as well as student characteristics and needs was highly
appreciated. After each training session, we distributed evaluation forms
which were filled out anonymously by participating librarians. One
response we received was, "Since I was a total novice, this workshop
proved to be a "GodSend". The very next day I got a question masquerading
as an engineering question which I helped answer using my newly acquired
chemistry information". This type of training program lends itself to any
subject field. Philosophy, religion, music, history, and others all have
content with which some librarians may not be comfortable. Whenever the
discomfort level is reached, frustration and anger can't be far behind.
Some understanding of the field and typical students may be all that's
needed for the librarian to confidently offer assistance in the general
reference desk situation.
References
Berkov, E. & B. Morganstern. 1990. Getting to the
core: training librarians in basic reference tools.
Reference
Librarian 30:191-205.
Huber, C.F. & G. Baysinger. 1997. Training the trainers: creating a workshop on teaching chemical information. Issues in Science and Technology Librarianship 16 [Online]. Available: {http://www.istl.org/97-fall/article1.html} [October 25, 1999].
Kalvee, D. 1996. Successful reference training on
a shoestring. Library Administration and Management 10(4): 210-13.
Mendelsohn, J. 1999. Learning electronic reference
resources: a team-learning project for reference staff. College and Research
Libraries 60(4): 372-83.
Noble, C. 1998. Reflecting on our future.
Computers in Libraries 18(2) [Online]. Available:
{http://www.infotoday.com/cilmag/feb98/story2.htm}
[October 25, 1999].
NSTA. 1999. Nation's science teachers register concern over U.S. science education in new survey. [Online]. Available: {https://web.archive.org/web/20100109034558/http://www.nsta.org/publications/surveys/survey19990419.aspx} [October 20, 1999].
St. Lifer, E. 1996. Net work: new roles, same
mission. Library Journal 121(19): 26-30.
Spang, L. 1996. A staff-generated cross-training
plan for academic reference librarians: the TQM approach at Wayne State University
libraries. Reference Services Review 24(2):77-85.
Winston, M.D. 1995. Cultural sensitivity; or how
to make the library a better place: training reference librarians for a pluralistic
environment at the University of Arizona. Reference Services Review
23(3): 7-12.
Appendix I: Training Needs Survey
Is
this how our patrons see us at the Reference Desk? The Reference Department wants
to ensure consistently excellent patron service by offering training opportunities
in reference sources and communication skills to all librarians serving at the
Reference Desk. Please assist us to plan training sessions that will be of use both
to adjunct librarians and to you also. This survey is to remain anonymous.
- SOURCES
- Web-based databases
(list specific titles)
- CD ROM databases
(list specific titles)
- Reference collection materials
(list specific titles)
- Technical aspects of working with electronic sources (e.g.
downloading, printing, Windows platform):
- Others (list specific areas or titles)
- LIBRARY
ORGANIZATION (list specific areas if you wish)
- Library operations and procedures:
- Library departments, people, and referrals: training___
- Other (please be specific)
- PATRONS (list specific areas of concern)
- Level of patron knowledge and information competency:
- Working with international students
- Working with students with disabilities
- Working with students with limited English
- Other (please list specific concerns)
- MAINTAINING A CLIMATE OF CIVILITY (list specific
concerns)
- Managing a busy time at the Reference Desk
- Dealing with difficult patrons
- Working with uninformed patrons
- Working with patrons who have minimal technical proficiency (e.g.
using computers, downloading, using a mouse)
- Remaining courteous even on a bad day
- Working as a team on the Reference Desk
- Other (please be specific)
- SUBJECT AREAS
- In which subject areas would you like to receive training?
- PRESSURES
- All SJSU Reference Librarians are feeling job-related pressures.
Which conditions cause the most stress in your work at the SJSU Reference Desk?
- List some coping skills and techniques that you would like to
learn.
Appendix II: In-Class Exercises to Determine Patron Level of Expertise
Pair off all class participants; within pairs, one is patron and one is reference
librarian. Each patron has the same question: "I want to find out something
about cancer."
Each patron has a different background:
- Person whose grandmother has breast cancer and wants to know if it is contagious.
- Person who is writing a care plan for woman with ovarian cancer and needs to
see similar plans.
- Person who is giving a speech on smoking and lung cancer and needs "primary
sources" but doesn't quite know what a primary source might be.
- Person who is writing a grant to study cancer cell growth inhibition.
- Person who has been diagnosed with a certain type of carcinoma and wants
information to help cope with the diagnosis.
The job of the librarians is to determine through a reference interview, the level
and scope of information needed.
We welcome your comments about this article.