Pondering post-secondary

While our schools have evolved from solely preparing students for post-secondary to helping them become engaged citizens who carefully and critically use information to meet their needs, I would be failing in my role if I did not make every effort to ensure that our students have mastered some key basics before heading off to college/university.

I find inspiration for this through work done by many members of AISL, offered through this blog and at annual conferences (research conducted by Courtney Lewis being particularly helpful), and also through visits to academic libraries. My family and friends know that if I’m travelling to a new place, I’m going to be reaching out to university librarians in that area. Besides being good fun, being able to reference recent conversations with academic librarians can enhance my ‘street cred’ with students and faculty.

I was fortunate to visit 3 universities on two of the Canadian coasts this summer: Halifax, Nova Scotia, and Vancouver, British Columbia. What I found was immensely ‘do-able’ and reassuring.I don’t think this is because I’m nailing it, rather that despite constant changes in technology, some key tenets remain the same:

  • Arriving at school with the knowledge that support and resources are available from a magical place called a library puts them ahead of the pack
  • Knowing a particular citation style is not as important as them knowing when and how to cite
  • Information/media literacy is key – students who are used to looking at sources critically, considering potential bias, will be best set up for success

What do they see lacking in their first-year students?

  • Having the ability to read deeply, and with intention
  • Knowing how to back-plan for time-consuming reading & research
  • Recognizing that theft in a larger community is real – don’t leave your laptops/phones unattended in the library!

Based on all of this, I’m feeling good about having gotten our long-stalled library orientation off the ground again this year; resuming my winter sessions with grads to prepare them for using academic libraries; and implementing NoodleTools. I need to ramp up my PR on working with teachers on information literacy and continue modelling deep reading.

I remain enormously grateful to be part of a profession which happily blurs “divisions”. I have never had an academic or public librarian be less than enthusiastic about meeting with me to look at how to better support students, and I happily keep a stash of school-crested gifts and thank you notes to show my appreciation.

4 thoughts on “Pondering post-secondary

  1. Thank you. It’s helpful to know what we are working towards academically, but at the most practical level, my students leave their stuff everywhere! I never thought this this is something I might need to mention before heading off to the post-secondary world!

  2. “While our schools have evolved from solely preparing students for post-secondary to helping them become engaged citizens who carefully and critically use information to meet their needs, I would be failing in my role if I did not make every effort to ensure that our students have mastered some key basics before heading off to college/university.”

    You just presented me with the opening quote to contextualize the library’s faculty meeting on September 12th!

    Laura Pearle from Milton also has a really great post on her blog with some infographics illuminating some survey work she did (and, I believe, Courtney’s work).

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