Transitions: From High School to Academic Libraries

Presented by:

Randy Williams, Bishop Strachan SchoolMark Bryant, Humber CollegeCecile Farnum, Ryerson UniversityJeff Newman, University of TorontoDeena Yanofsky, York University

Who Are We …and What Do We Do?

Randy - Teacher-Librarian, Bishop Strachan School

Mark - Reference and Information Literacy Librarian, Humber College Library

Cecile - Communications and Liaison Librarian, Ryerson University Library

Deena - Reference and Instruction Librarian, Scott Library, York University

Jeff - Undergraduate Instruction Librarian, Robarts Library, University of Toronto

Who Are You …and What Do You Do?

Today's Agenda

This session will address the following questions:

• Who are we and why are we here?

• What are the major differences between the academic library and the school library?

• What do your students already know?

• What do your students need to know?

• How can we work together to improvethe transition from High School toUniversity?

Why Are We Here?

The Obvious…

Students making the transition from secondary school to college or university will encounter:

• More space

• More volumes

• More libraries

• More librarians

• More changes?

From High School …

• Single space/seminar rooms

• Smaller and varied staff composition

• Some computer workstations

• Collections geared to clientele

• Limited hours

• Dewey decimal system

• Citation styles?

… to the University Library

Robarts Library, the Humanities and Social Sciences library of the University of Toronto

University of Toronto• Located in downtown Toronto.

• Over 30 libraries; approximately 10 million volumes

• 57,000 FTE Students

• Circulated 4,038,471 books in 2004/2005

• 938 online databases

York University

• Founded in 1959, York's Keele campus is now the largest post-secondary campus in Canada.

• York's libraries are located in five buildings, and contain over six-and-a-half million items - books, print periodicals, theses, archival materials, micro-forms, maps, films and music CDs.

• At the Scott Library, we answer more than 100,000 in-person reference questions every year.

• In 2006-07, over 23,000 students participated in IL classes.

Ryerson @ a Glance• Located in downtown Toronto

• 21,000 students; 700 masters and PhD students

• More than 80 undergraduate and graduate programs

• Five Faculties: Arts; Business; Communication & Design; Community Services; Engineering, Architecture and Science

Humber College

• 2 campuses; 2 libraries

• 18,000 full-time students; 55,00 part-time students

• 350 programs

• 100,000 monographs,

• 40 databases (north campus)

The "Google Generation"

Some of the key problems include:

• Young people don't develop good search strategies to find quality information.

• They might find information on the Internet quickly, but they don't know how to evaluate the quality of what they find.

• They don't understand what the Internet really is: a vast network with many different content providers.

[http://www.jisc.ac.uk/media/documents/programmes/reppres/gg_final_keynote_11012008.pdf]

The next generation of college students, more wired than any other, might not be as good at Internet research as you may think.

Since You Told Us …

Librarians

Teachers

Boolean Operations

Popular vs. Academic

Library of Congress Classification

What do they need to know?

Jeff:– Google vs. fee-based databases, e.g., Scholars Portal– Academic or scholarly sources vs. popular

publications

Cecile:

– Journal articles, books, and other information sources– Dewey classification system to Library of Congress

Randy:

– Knowledge of Boolean logic

Deena:– Getting help, including services like askON.ca

Mark:– Knowledge of Information technology– Time management skills

Collaboration

So, where do we begin?

• Ryerson University

• York University Libraries

• U of T

• Humber College

Collaboration is an effective strategy that can help reduce student anxiety about the transition to university.

… to the Future