ACRL News Issue (B) of College & Research Libraries O ctober 1 9 9 2 / 5 8 1 W hat if we viewed library instruction like driver e d ?The W a y I S ee It B y G eo rg e W. B a in S tu d e n ts s h o u ld d e m o n stra te c o m p e ten c y in library use to g r a d u a te H ow many o f you under 60 years old w ere required to take driver training for driver education before you were allowed to driv automobile? I w ould w ager that the percentage is high, above 80 percent. But how many of you w ere required to demonstrate your com­ petency with library materials before you ob­ tained a baccalaureate degree? I w ould hesitate guessing how low this figure might be. To the extent that we can draw an analogy betw een these two, is it worth our while to do this? I believe it is. Certainly, as a colleague points out, demonstrating our com petency in operating an automobile is more of a life-and- death matter for ourselves and fellow motor­ ists than is true with showing our com m and of the Social Science Index. A larger percentage of our population drives than attends college, and insurance com panies are for good rea­ son insistent. Yet learning how to find perti­ n en t information in books and articles and then to make an effective, persuasive case statem ent is an essential matter for the ed u ­ cated person. To me, the difference is n o t in kind but in degree. So let us make our case— and do it forcefully! Learning to drive a car effectively requires strategy and practice. This, however, is not unlike other things w e learn. Certainly w e w ho can walk learned to do so over time, and then mastered new tricks w hen w e learned to run. We learned to speak first in w ords and then in sentences. We received a great deal o f instruc­ tion in our school years in how to read and write, all intended to help us be better readers e and writers as w e matured. We generally learn to do other things such as biking and swim­ ming more beneficially with instruction. I dare say this is also true with football and volley­ ball, or with cooking and carpentry, if w e have learned these. I dare w ager some among us w ould not have first sat behind the w heel with­ out the support of a driving instructor. an But w hat about the library? Does this not also require instruction for effective perfor­ mance? Certainly there is informal training in how to use libraries even in grade school. My children initially mastered the basics of the cata­ log card in the third grade. Yet my library in­ struction colleagues insist that many a first-year college student needs to be taught this. How many do w e miss even at this point? My experience from conducting tours at my university is that approximately 25 percent of first-year students have yet to use the Readers’ Guide. So it is better to forget tallying the num ­ ber we miss and dem and instead demonstrated levels of com petency from first-year students, upper-class students, and even graduate stu­ dents. Approximately two decades ago, before the flowering of bibliographic instruction, I obtained a doctorate in American history from a Big Ten institution without learning how to use federal government documents. But w hy is it that a beginning graduate student w hom I encoun­ tered this past fall, with a political science ma­ jor from another Big Ten institution, had never heard of PAIS? Given the prevailing reality, I suspect this must be regarded as excusable. But I still find it deplorable. The library, like the automobile, has evolved dramatically over this century. No doubt many of your classroom faculty could wax eloquently about the changes from Henry Ford’s Model T to the swept-wing fins o f mid-century on to the George W. B a in is th e h e a d o f archives a n d special collections a t O hio University 5 8 2 / C&RL News sleek cars with cruise control of today, and how highways have changed from rutted mud roads to the wonder of the interstate system. But can they also describe the changes in the library from the old card catalog and bound newspa­ per volumes (then newspapers on microfilm), to the impressive online catalog and slick CD- ROM full-text newspapers? With change so much a fact of life in our society, let us convert our academic deans to require that those who matriculate from col­ lege show they know current tools and basic strategies before they depart. “Driving” a CD- ROM station requires reading the “ow ner’s manual,” very much like driving an auto for the first time or driving a new auto off the lot. Information literacy, as we know, has to become seen as a skill needed over a whole lifetime. Over 30 years ago I found driver train­ ing to be valuable. I hope library instruction is as commonplace for undergraduates by the time my youngest child graduates a decade hence. Metaphors, the anthropologist Brenda E. F. Beck writes, are like bridges. “They are also mental detours,” she adds, “that sometimes help one to sneak around obstacles.” If the analogy I have developed is useful for sneaking around the formidable obstacles we face, then let us master the opportunity this detour presents now. Drive on! ■ Ten things you can do to help in the scholarly communication crisis The North Carolina State University (NCSU) Libraries’ staff frequently receives inquiries from faculty as to what they can do to help in the scholarly communication crisis. Some suggestions are: 1. R ed u ce th e v o lu m e b u t n o t t h e q u a lity of published research by publishing research results in one paper, rather than fragment­ ing them for publication in more narrowly focused journals. 2. Urge your Institution to re-exam ine current promotion and tenure policies, with the goal of emphasizing quality of research in a few key articles over quantity of published research (the Harvard Medical School and Stanford are among the institutions that have already insti­ tuted changes in this direction). 3. Send a signal to publishers b y protesting current pricing practices. 4. Resign from the editorial boards o f jour­ nals published by companies that practice ex­ orbitant pricing, or encourage colleagues on those boards to resign. 5. Educate colleagues in professional societ­ ies about the hidden danger in contracting with commercial publishers to publish society journals, which often results in higher sub­ scription prices for libraries. 6. E n co u ra g e y o u r p r o fe s s io n a l a ss o c ia ­ tions and societies to resist the temptation to raise prices based on the models of com­ mercial publishers. 7. E n cou rage u n iv e r s ity p r e s s e s to u n d e r ­ take the publication of scholarly, refereed jour­ nals. 8. I n s is t th a t p r iv a tiz a tio n o f fed era l g o v ­ ernment information be tempered with eq­ uitable access through the depository library network (the NCSU Libraries is a member) and that prices are not driven by the market alone. 9. Encourage abstracting and indexing com ­ panies to incorporate the contents of electronic journals in their products. 10. W h en su b m ittin g a n article to a jour­ nal, consider the journal’s pricing policies and select the one with the fairest policies.—-Jinnte Y Davis, assistant directorforplanning & research, North Carolina State University Libraries (Bitnet: jinnie_davis@library.lib.ncsii.edu.) ■ mailto:flnnie_davis@library.lib.ncsii.edu