Melissa Townsend-Crow
LIBR 230
May 1, 2014
Paper #2
Issues in Academic Libraries
New Roles for Academic Librarians in the Digital Age: MOOCs
The
Academic Librarian faces many challenges in the 21st century. Among
these are the competition for funding and the notion that libraries are
becoming obsolete with the instant information gratification offered by the
internet and search engines such as Google. How can academic librarians justify
funding and budget considerations with such easy access to so much information?
There is a saying making the round of social networks, roughly paraphrased,
that Google can find over 10,000 answers and a librarian can find the right one. Perhaps the greatest
challenge facing academic librarians in the 21st century is making
their value known and felt to the institution to which their library is
attached. One of the ways to accomplish this is for librarians to remain on top
of the ever evolving technology and to engage in ensuring that the students and
faculty of the institution do the same. Information literacy is a key to
academic libraries remaining relevant among such subjects as Google, MOOCs, and
Open Access.
From
Gutenburg’s printing press to Project Gutenburg, people have sought to make
information accessible to the greatest number of people possible. Since the 17th
century, academic libraries have been the repositories of such information.
Now, in the 21st century, we have the internet which facilitates
“do–it-yourself” reference through search engines such as Google. According to
instructing librarian, Erika Montenegro at East Los Angeles College Helen
Bailey Miller Library in Monterey Park, California, the faculty at that
community college feel that the students rely too much on internet search
engines and not enough on other resources which may provide more relevant and
accurate information. However, there are some students who may not have the
benefit of access to an academic library who must rely on Google or even
Google’s library project. These are students who are participating in massive
open online courses or MOOCs.
According to Barnes, “The main features of such courses are that:
. there are no formal entrance requirements;
. participation is free;
. they are delivered entirely online; and
. they are massively scalable, being
designed for thousands
of users” (Barnes, 2013, 163).
MOOCs
have been around since about 2008. MOOCs have been called a disruptive
technology in higher education. They are born digital modes of disseminating
knowledge which primarily use asynchronous video lectures to teach (Wu, 2013, 577). These classes are mostly not recognized for
credit, although many top universities such as MIT, Stanford, and the
University of Michigan sponsor them. Although sponsored by these universities,
among others, many of the libraries attached to these institutions do not allow
access to their databases to anyone other than registered for-credit students;
their subscription licenses do not permit it. Many classes rely on suggested
reading lists for curricular support of the material presented to students.
Some ask that students purchase textbooks which seems, to this student at
least, somewhat unreasonable for a non-credit course. According to Wu,
From a strictly “access” point-of-view, modern
academic libraries and MOOCs seem to stand on opposite sides. After all, MOOCs
aspire to offer education and related study
materials for free to anyone in the world. Libraries,
however, are legally bound by license agreements with vendors to ensure that
only eligible users (faculty, staff, registered students, and sometimes alumni
or public patrons within the library building) can access the proprietary
electronic journals and online databases that cost millions of dollars a year”
(577).
According to Becker, “As of March 2013 iTunes U has surpassed 1 billion downloads,
60 percent of which originate from locations other than the United States”
(Becker, 2013, 136).
Some
of the MOOCs are beginning to offer certificates or partial college credit for
a fee, but it is at the discretion of the institutions to either accept or
reject the credits earned through MOOCs (Wu, 578). This begs the question, what is the benefit
of taking such a course or courses? Wu outlines the attraction:
MOOCs
draw students not only from all over the world, but also all walks of life,
from high-achieving high school students ready for more and working
professionals wanting to pick up new skills, to career-changers desiring to
explore a different path and retirees with an abundance of curiosity.
MOOCs
are never full, even those taught by the most popular instructors. Unless one
wants a “verified certificate” (e.g. those on Coursera’s “Signature Track”),
one can “un-enroll” anytime for whatever reason without any administrative
hassle or financial consequences. Course load is entirely up to the individual.
The degree of freedom offered to learners is unprecedented (578).
Wu goes on to say that with the high demand for
certificates and credits, things could change. MOOCs could “grow from
individual courses into complete course tracks and eventually full degrees”
(577-578). Barnes (2013) says, “Librarian participation in MOOCs offered by some universities in
Canada and the United States has been limited or even non-existent. Realistically, librarians probably do not
have much of a role in some MOOCs” (165). Yet, there seems to be huge
potential for the role of librarians, especially academic librarians, in this
area of higher education. As Katy Mahraj (2013) states, “Librarians offer
expertise in organizing and managing information, clarifying and supporting
people’s information needs, and enhancing people’s information literacy skills.
There are innumerable endeavors today in education, health, business,
government, and other domains that draw heavily on information resources”
(360).
Barnes shares the opinion with
Becker (2013, 135-138) that librarians be involved with their sponsoring
institutions in developing MOOCs and outlines possible roles that academic librarians
could play in MOOCs. For example, in the area of copyright clearance, librarians are qualified
and have the experience to negotiate licensing with third party copyright
holders. Librarians can point out
to publishers that licensing materials for MOOCs can be mutually beneficial to
both copyright holders and users. According to Barnes, publishers “are slowly
figuring out the marketing advantage they gain by allowing small excerpts of
books and textbooks to be made available freely”(167). MOOCs can be designed
around these excerpts. When licensed materials are not available, academic
librarians involved in the development of MOOCs can make developers aware of
open content materials or materials available under the Public Domain. This can
be accomplished by live meetings between librarians and content creators,
however, because the nature of MOOCs may make this difficult to impossible,
perhaps a more efficient way of assisting developers might be for librarian to
create web-based guides for content developers. They would contain links to
Open Access or public domain materials germane to the course objectives. Part of these guides for MOOC developers
should address accessibility for all users including those who require
assistive technologies. According to
Barnes, “It is likely that librarians will play an essential role in negotiating
with copyright holders for the permissions required to modify content for users
of assistive technologies” (Barnes, 166) because facilitating access to
information is what librarians do. Mahraj
outlines some of the ways this is being accomplished,
Connectivist MOOCs pave the way in this
respect by experimenting with varied approaches to teaching and learning and
empowering participants to forge their way through the material. Coursera is
working to implement best practices in mastery learning, peer assessment, and
active learning (Coursera, n.d.-c) (363).
Despite the various discussions about fees being implemented in
MOOCs, the appeal they offer is still a free education. As such, it makes sense
that librarians would encourage the use of Open Access or public domain
materials in these courses. The Open Access Initiative makes materials
available by funding them in one of two ways,
BOAI-1: creating institutional OA
archives and self-archiving their published journal articles in them; or
BOAI-2: creating/converting and publishing their articles in OA journals
(journals that recover their costs by charging the authors’ institutions for
publication rather than by charging users’ institutions through subscriptions
or licensing tolls for access) (Bosc, 2005, 960).
Open Access materials are especially suited to MOOCs since,
“Over time, however, the work of OAI has expanded to promote broad access to
digital resources for eScholarship, eLearning, and eScience” ("Open
Archives Initiative"). The Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI) website
(www.budapestopenaccessinitiative.org) relates the history of open access. The
advent of the internet makes possible access to peer-reviewed scholarly
journals. To summarize, in December of 2001, a group called Open Society
Foundations (OSF) met in Budapest to find ways to use the relatively “new”
technology through the internet to make scholarly and academic materials
available. To quote the website,
An old tradition and a new
technology have converged to make possible an unprecedented public good. The
old tradition is the willingness of scientists and scholars to publish the
fruits of their research in scholarly journals without payment, for the sake of
inquiry and knowledge. The new technology is the internet.
The
result is peer-reviewed scholarly articles and academic journals available to
anyone with internet access and without an expensive subscription or per
article download fee. Open Access
materials seem like an ideal complement for MOOCs, and academic librarians
would be the ones who would facilitate access by assisting users to locate the
relevant materials germane to individual courses sponsored by their
institution.
Part of facilitating access includes ensuring that users know
how to find and use materials. Information Literacy is a domain of the academic
librarian. Mahraj writes,
Kop et al. (2011) emphasize skills
in information seeking,
evaluation, synthesis, and
management as critical to successful learning in today’s information-rich, self-directed,
digital environments. These are the skills that librarians have in abundance
and are trained to teach. Kop et al.’s concern that adult learners may not yet
be capable of these skills should be a rallying cry to librarians to get
involved (365).
Although Mahraj proposes
that “the most straightforward way for librarians to engage in MOOCs is to
start a MOOC ourselves” (364), she also states that the most effective way for librarians to be
involved in MOOCs is “to serve in creative, collaborative roles in and around
the MOOC environment, bringing our expertise to all MOOCs regardless of topic”
(Mahraj, 365). Barnes states that
“Librarian inclusion in MOOC project teams is now regarded as best practice at
many Coursera-affiliated institutions” (Barnes,166) In other words, embedded
librarians working with MOOC developers to create courses which use open access
or public domain materials and incorporating information literacy in the
learning by actively participating in discussions and providing reference in
the context of the course. Barnes posits ways in which the embedded librarian
approach facilitates learning and information literacy:
- Embedded librarians typically participate in online
discussions, respond to student posts, offer classroom-type instruction
using web conferencing, and even troubleshoot problems using desktop
sharing software
- librarians begin by providing MOOC designers with links to
existing library tutorials and research guides on the Library site
- provide “information literary skills self-assessment tools” and
create “online information literacy tutorials” designed to meet the
specific needs of MOOC participants (168-169).
There is a growing trend among people, particularly
younger people to engage in a “do-it-yourself” mode of reference and research.
Internet search engines provide people with immediate information gratification
that many users find satisfying, however, there is an increased chance of
inaccurate or incomplete information at the end of such searches. Since the first academic library was
founded on the premise of curricular support, academic librarians have been
facilitating student academic success. They do this through providing access to
information and by ensuring that students are information literate. The ways they
accomplish these things have evolved with technology, from card catalogs to
OPACs, from print journals purchased through subscriptions to digital versions
of the same, to open access materials. A university education may be
financially out of reach for many people, however massive open online
courses or MOOCs may allow those who cannot afford a traditional degree to
educate themselves. Academic librarians have the opportunity to ensure the
success of these students as they do with traditional students and, since MOOCs
are sponsored, for the most part, by universities, the librarians attached to
their institution are in a position to offer support to all of their students,
traditional and independent through MOOCs. They can accomplish this through creating
and developing their own MOOCs to teach information literacy. Researchers
believe, however, that the better way to accomplish this is by being involved
at the outset in developing the courses. Librarians can also provide support
through the role of embedded librarian and participating in discussions and
live, albeit distance (as opposed to face to face), reference, by creating
guides for professors of MOOCs and students to find and use open access
materials when licenses for copyright materials cannot be made available, and
by negotiating licenses for materials to be altered for assistive technologies.
Although the role of the academic librarian may not be well-defined in the
context of MOOCs at this time, research into how their role may be expanded is
ongoing as the technology evolves.
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