NASIG 2007: Education trifecta: win attention, place knowledge, show understanding

This session was presented by Virginia Taffurelli, Betsy Redmond, Steve Black. I was fortunate enough to be assigned to introduce them and thus had the opportunity to talk a bit with Steve Black, whom I hadn't met before, about the lack of attention to serials and electronic resources in library school curriculum. He teaches one of very few courses dedicated to this topic (among ALA accredited LIS programs in North America).

Virginia and Betsy presented some of the basics of developing and delivering course content. Virginia spent most of her time describing the use of course delivery software (WebCT, Blackboard, Moodle), and Betsy focused on practical tips for delivering a CE course. Their focus was a CE course in fundamentals of acquisitions for ALTCS.

Steve reviewed the syllabus for his course (which he made available to us in print). He talked about his reasons for writing his own textbook; he had contacted Nisonger to ask if he was going to revise his 1998 text and Nisonger had said no. It was published in November 2006. Prior to that he had used a copy of the manuscript in classes for two years and solicited feedback from the students which he found very useful.

He covered the objectives for the course which include a small module on cataloging a serial (they catalog on paper in class then as homework they compare what they’ve done to a MARC record online).

I really enjoyed this presentation and hope that someone follows up next year to answer some of my remaining questions: why is LIS education seemingly ignoring serials and e-resources management? what is covered in other serials courses (or modules within courses)?