Transitions: From High School to Academic Libraries

1
Transitions From High School to Academic
Libraries

• Presented by
• Randy Williams, Bishop Strachan School
• Mark Bryant, Humber College
• Cecile Farnum, Ryerson University
• Jeff Newman, University of Toronto
• Deena Yanofsky, York University

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Who Are We and What Do We Do?

• Randy - Teacher-Librarian, Bishop Strachan
  School
• Mark - Reference and Information Literacy
  Librarian, Humber College Library
• Cecile - Communications and Liaison Librarian,
  Ryerson University Library
• Deena - Reference and Instruction Librarian,
  Scott Library, York University
• Jeff - Undergraduate Instruction Librarian,
  Robarts Library, University of Toronto

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Who Are You and What Do You Do?
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Today's Agenda

• This session will address the following questions

• Who are we and why are we here?
• What are the major differences between the
  academic library and the school library?
• What do your students already know?
• What do your students need to know?
• How can we work together to improve
• the transition from High School to
• University?

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Why Are We Here?
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The Obvious

• Students making the transition from secondary
  school to college or university will encounter

• More space
• More volumes
• More libraries
• More librarians
• More changes?

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From High School

• Single space/seminar rooms
• Smaller and varied staff composition
• Some computer workstations
• Collections geared to clientele
• Limited hours
• Dewey decimal system
• Citation styles?

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to the University Library
Robarts Library, the Humanities and Social
Sciences library of the University of Toronto
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University of Toronto

• Located in downtown Toronto.
• Over 30 libraries approximately 10 million
  volumes
• 57,000 FTE Students
• Circulated 4,038,471 books in 2004/2005
• 938 online databases

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York University

• Founded in 1959, York's Keele campus is now the
  largest post-secondary campus in Canada.
• York's libraries are located in five buildings,
  and contain over six-and-a-half million items -
  books, print periodicals, theses, archival
  materials, micro-forms, maps, films and music
  CDs.
• At the Scott Library, we
  answer more than
  100,000
  in-person reference
  questions every year.
• In 2006-07, over 23,000
  students participated in IL
  classes.

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Ryerson _at_ a Glance

• Located in downtown Toronto
• 21,000 students 700 masters and PhD students
• More than 80 undergraduate and graduate programs
• Five Faculties Arts Business
  Communication Design
  Community
  Services
  Engineering, Architecture
  and Science

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Humber College

• 2 campuses 2 libraries
• 18,000 full-time students 55,00 part-time
  students
• 350 programs
• 100,000 monographs,
• 40 databases
  (north campus)

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The "Google Generation"
The next generation of college students, more
wired than any other, might not be as good at
Internet research as you may think.

• Some of the key problems include
• Young people don't develop good search strategies
  to find quality information.
• They might find information on the Internet
  quickly, but they don't know how to evaluate the
  quality of what they find.
• They don't understand what the Internet really
  is a vast network with many different content
  providers.
• http//www.jisc.ac.uk/media/documents/programmes/
  reppres/gg_final_keynote_11012008.pdf

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Since You Told Us
Boolean Operations
Teachers
Librarians
Popular vs. Academic
Library of Congress Classification
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What do they need to know?

• Jeff
• Google vs. fee-based databases, e.g., Scholars
  Portal
• Academic or scholarly sources vs. popular
  publications
• Cecile
• Journal articles, books, and other information
  sources
• Dewey classification system to Library of
  Congress
• Randy
• Knowledge of Boolean logic
• Deena
• Getting help, including services like askON.ca
• Mark
• Knowledge of Information technology
• Time management skills

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Collaboration
Collaboration is an effective strategy that can
help reduce student anxiety about the transition
to university.

• So, where do we begin?
• Ryerson University
• York University Libraries
• U of T
• Humber College

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to the Future