Matt Holland wrote:
> >I can't imagine forcing/encouraging our students here to use multi-
> >disciplinary information skills packages. They come here to study
> >engineering/maths/brewing/whatever, and many have very little
> >interest in understanding information skills. They have no time for
> >such things anyway - and I rather believe that information products
> >should not require a knowledge in order to deliver. This is not the
> >angle taken by many information professionals, but I don't believe
> >in forcing information skills on students. Maybe I'm over-stating
> >that.
>
> Perhaps, there are plenty of taxonomies of information skills as well
> that expand the definition beyond just the use of databases. Need also
> to remember that these skills are applicable in the workplace so in many
> careers they are added value.
That's often the case, but I think that there are also plenty
situations where it isn't applicable.
I come into contact with a lot of Engineering MSc students - some
are distance learners - many have paid large amounts of money to
take their course, many have very limited time in that they are still
in full-time employment. In order to do a literature search for their
dissertation they do not want to have to learn information skills.
They may never need such skills in the future. If we may be
expecting these people to go through skills training in order for
them to use tools in order to find the information they want, then I
think we are failing them.
In other words - the retrieval tools themselves should not require
too much of an investment on the part of the students in order for
them to find what they want. At the present time, multidisciplinary
databases are often pretty poor in this respect.
The situation is probably quite different to other disciplines and at
other levels. As an udergraduate humanities student myself, I saw
some need to understand information retrieval.
Roddy
Roddy MacLeod <[log in to unmask]>
Senior Faculty Librarian
Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh EH14 4AS
Tel (0131) 451 3576 Fax: (0131) 451 3164
<http://www.hw.ac.uk/libwww/libram/roddy.html>
|