Proceedings of the First National Joint Conference of Librarians of Color - 261

an interactive exercise designed to set the context for the students. Students tried to guess the price of common retail items along with scholarly journal subscriptions of comparable prices (an adaptation of the television game show “The Price is Right”). Many jaws dropped when they realized that a subscription to a scholarly journal could cost as much as an entire semester’s tuition. This activity was followed by an eight-minute video called, “Research for Ransom,” an informative look at the rising prices of scholarly journals featuring Michael Rosenzweig, the former editor of Evolutionary Ecology, who, frustrated with the rising costs of journal publications, left to create a more affordable journal called Evolutionary Ecology Research. The facilitator lead a brief discussion of the film and presented an overview of the state of scholarly communication, in the context of the library profession’s commitment to access to information and the importance of access to peer-reviewed research for students and faculty. The students then watched a fifteen-minute video on open access, created in a “point/counterpoint” format from interviews with two prominent names in scholarly publishing: Karen Hunter, Senior Vice President for Strategy at Elsevier, and Peter Suber, editor of the SPARC Open Access Newsletter. The sessions also included general information about the librarian recruitment program and details about the undergraduate internships. Although the subject matter was not as engaging to students as the civil liberties issues explored in the previous year’s USA PATRIOT Act sessions, they were genuinely interested in learning more about the rising cost of scholarly communication and they seemed to understand the impact it has on them. One student said, "I find it unfortunate that knowledge costs so much. I hope that things do change soon." Today’s undergraduates have many demands on their time, and – as a generation that has known computers its entire life – they often turn to the Internet as the fastest way to conduct research, and particularly Google, known for its simple interface, lightning-fast speed, and reliable results. The third round of broad-based programming that began in fall 2005 was therefore designed to explore issues related to Google. Through facilitated, multimedia, smallgroup discussion sessions, students and librarians examined Google’s book scanning initiative, as well as its scholarly research search engine. Lively discussions covered topics that included information literacy, copyright, privacy rights, and the importance of understanding a search algorithm in between. The sessions at each campus, facilitated by library staff, began with an interactive exercise designed to set the context for the students. The group was asked the following four questions: • “What do you love about doing research using Google?” • “What frustrates you about doing research using Google?” • “What do you love about doing research using the library?” • “What frustrates you about doing research using the library?” The answers to these questions immediately sparked a lively discussion of the role and value of libraries in a “Google world.” The activities also served as an ideal segue to a 15-minute video documentary featuring interviews with students, librarians, and faculty at the six participating institutions. The interviewees answered the four questions listed above but were also asked the following: • “Should Google come with a warning? If so, what would it be?” • “If you had to send a message to the world about Google, what would it be?” The students, librarians, and faculty featured in the video provided thoughtful and at times humorous responses which served as excellent points of departure for discussion about ways of accessing and assessing the reliability of information and the potential of this powerful tool. After the video and short discussion, facilitators led the groups through a demonstration of Google Scholar and Google Book Search. Students were impressed by the ability to find and link to scholarly articles through the simple, familiar Google interface. The presentation of Google Book Search – featuring a scanned image of a page in a 100- 261
Proceedings of the First National Joint Conference of Librarians of Color

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Proceedings of the First National Joint Conference of Librarians of Color
