Making Meaning in the Liberal Artsin the 21st Century

AMICAL Conference

Cairo, Egypt

May 30, 2006

Susan L. Perry

Senior AdvisorThe Andrew W. Mellon Foundation

Director of ProgramsCouncil on Library and Information Resources

Making Meaning in the Liberal Arts

Faculty, Librarians and Instructional Technologists

Working Together

‘New Eyes Each Year’

New eyes each year So youth and age

Find old books here, Like ink and page

And new books, too, In this house join,

Old eyes renew; Minting new coin.

Philip Larkin, February 1979

A liberal education helps us to begin to know what we know, to be receptive to what we don’t know and to make connections between the two. It helps us to pose interesting questions, exercise curiosity, reserve judgment, gather opinion, answer questions intelligently and communicate articulately.

A Liberal Education

Inspired by Sale, Roger. A mind lively and at ease. In New Perspectives on Liberal Education, edited by Herbert Costner. pp. 3-23. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1989.

The OCLC Environmental Scans

Pattern Recognition.http://www.oclc/membership/escan/default.htm

Perceptions of Libraries and Information Resources. http://www.oclc.org/reports/2005perceptions.htm

“The landscape has changed and the maps have not been published yet.”

Three Trends from Pattern Recognition

• Self-Service--people love to find things for themselves using the web

• Satisfaction--people are happy with what they find using the web. 78% of those surveyed say the open web is providing most of what they need.

• Seamlessness--” the separation of academic, leisure and work time is fusing into a seamless world aided and supported by nomadic computing and information appliances that support multiple activities.”

Three Trends from Perceptions

Attitudes--Users do not trust purchased information over free information.--Search engines are rated higher than libraries as satisfactory sources of quality and quantity of information.--Most respondents agree that the library is a place to learn.

Three Trends from Perceptions

Behaviors --Increased reliance on search engines to begin information searches (84%); 90% satisfaction level with search engine results.

--Search engines fit consumers’ lifestyle better than physical or online libraries.

Three Trends from Perceptions

Knowledge

--Most information consumers are not aware of libraries’ electronic information resources.

Four other issues that will impact libraries

• Disaggregation

• Collaboration

• Distance/online education• Changes in Scholarly Communication

Two Stories

Technopedagogy

Student Interviews

George Mason University

“Teaching Across the Curriculum”

‘You know, we write an awful lot of papers!’

Students involved in the

Technopedagogy Workshops

George Mason University

Embedding Technology in the Curriculumhttp://cas.gmu.edu/tac/

Conversations with…

Student Interviews - movie

What Do 21st Century Historians Need To Know?

How will they learn it?

The Valley of the Shadow

University of Virginiahttp://valley.vcdh.virginia.edu/

American Memory

The Library of Congresshttp://memory.loc.gov/

Historical Atlas Project

Mount Holyoke Collegehttp://www.mtholyoke.edu/courses/rschwart/hatlas/atlas/

Arab World

NITLEhttp://www.nitle.org/index.php/nitle/collaborations/al_musharaka

Alexander Street Press

http://www.alexanderstreet.com

Resources

Bert Lott’s article: “An Editorial on Grading Student Work in Multimedia” (nyp) jolott@vassar.eduEDUCAUSE Review March/April 2003 article by Elizabeth Daley http://www.educause.net/ir/library/pdf/erm0322.pdf

EDUCAUSE Review July/August 2003 article by Diana Oblingerhttp://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/erm0342.pdf

ECAR Study of Students and Information Technology; Volume 5, 2004

Thanks to…

Tamra Hjermstad, Mount Holyoke College

Bert Lott, Vassar College

Bryan Alexander & Sarah Lohnes, CET, Middlebury College

Andrea Nixon, Carleton College

And the students who were willing to share their opinions and their time