Web Reading – or should we say skimming?

On average, online readers are actually skimming  information on webpages.  Web page visitors apparently spend as much time “reading”  as trying to figure out how to navigate the page and checking out the images.  The eye movement while skimming the material differs from that of in print.  Online, eyes follow an F Pattern,  first in a horizontal movement across the upper part of the page, then a second horizontal movement followed by a  vertical movement. All in all, users have now taken in a mere  20% of the material!

Source: http://www.nngroup.com/articles/how-users-read-on-the-web/

Copyright for Faculty

How does copyright law apply to you as a faculty-member  when distributing copies of articles, placing items on reserve, or sharing  your own published material? Copyright on Campus provides basic information  for faculty in an animated format -  from the Copyright Clearance Center.  The six-minute video  provides a thorough introduction  to Fair Use issues.  You’ll need to register first before viewing. Additional information on copyright is  also available by clicking this link: UConn Copyright

Are students reading?

Pew Report indicates that young Americans are still reading

More about young people reading… and the good news is that print and electronic materials are  co-existing in our world.

• 40 percent of surveyed Americans under 30 regularly read newspapers
• subjects under 30 who read electronically were more likely to read books on a cellphone or a computer
• 23 percent of Americans under 30 used an e-reader and 16 percent used a tablet.

Here is the link for the report,

http://libraries.pewinternet.org/2012/10/23/younger-americans-reading-and-library-habits/#src=hispanic-footer

http://pewresearch.org/pubs/2397/younger-americans-reading-library-habits-electronic-digital-ebook-ereader-books-online

Rethinking How Research Is Taught to Today’s College Students– “…begging them to fake it”

“I think many first year writing instructors teach the research paper as a survival skill, knowing it’s a kind of writing students will be asked to do, though really they would learn more about writing if asked to compose in other forms – perhaps putting together background briefings, writing a letter to the local newspaper, as contributions to a class blog or to Wikipedia – saving research for upper division classes in the major, where students can feel more at home in the conversations going on in the discipline, more ready to use the discourse conventions of the field. Otherwise, we’re begging them to fake it.

http://www.projectinfolit.org/st/fister.asp

So, what about the library?

Brief video introducing FYE students to the library.

Student assignments don’t always address academic needs

Why are students asked to write as if they were doing an article for JStor instead of the New York Times Magazine? Then we wonder why they can’t effectively paraphrase and avoid plagiarism.
http://www.insidehighered.com/layout/set/print/blogs/library_babel_fish/sources_of_confusion      
http://projectinfolit.org/st/howard-jamieson.asp

Not so savvy searchers

Higher Ed article indicates that a “two-year, five-campus ethnographic study examining how students view and use their campus libraries: students rarely ask librarians for help, even when they need it. The idea of a librarian as an academic expert who is available to talk about assignments and hold their hands through the research process is, in fact, foreign to most students.”

“Librarians and professors are also partially to blame for the gulf that has opened between students and the library employees who are supposed to help them…”

http://bit.ly/qYOOum