Thursday, May 13, 2010
Instruction, Rehearsing
Always rehearse your search demonstrations before you go into a classroom so as to avoid stumbling upon any of the nuances and idiosyncrasies that your patrons will actually encounter once they begin their own research. Taking the time to prepare can spare you the excruciating experience of explaining all the different ways your link resolver sucks.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
6 comments:
I prefer to let the link resolver issues give me an excuse to tell the students how crappy our library website is...
or...you could just admit they know more about computers than you do and let them play on fb...
I always have comment sheets avaialble for complaints...encouraging the customers to insist we get a better website and technology!
Gave a fabulous tour of our website once... the morning after the entire site was reloaded with a completely new structure. Not a single demo, handout, or example actually worked (rehearsed less than 12 hrs previous). Wow. It was stunning. I mean, I was stunned. Speechless.
Knowing about computers is NOT the same thing as knowing how to search efficiently. Studies have proved that the Google Generation are the least effective at searching.
Also, you need to test your searches in case you accidentally click on a link that appears to be a diagram of the bones of the foot to find that it is, in fact, an explicit foot fetish site.
Becca, planning a foot fetish "mistake" is a great way to get the class re-engaged.
...Just saying.
Post a Comment