Top Ten: A discussion of ten things academic librarians do that create inadvertent barriers to access and overcoming them.
Start Date
10-11-2016 4:00 PM
End Date
10-11-2016 4:45 PM
Description
QR codes – We librarians love them, but do students use them? MLIS jargon – It’s correct, but does it aid an Econ or Nursing students understanding of searching a database? Who doesn’t love the look and feel of a real bound volumes or the printed page? The student 75 miles away from campus, that’s who. In order to move forward with making libraries and information literacy concepts more accessible, we must first identify the follies that can occur in academic libraries that may hinder accessibility for specific student populations. In this session, we’ll count down a top ten list of things we librarians do in our collections, reference, building layout, and instruction that, while well-meaning, tend to actually decrease accessibility for specific student populations. We will lead a discussion that highlights examples for each of these ten no-no’s, and solicit practical solutions and workarounds to mitigate their hindering effects. We will also encourage participants to identify practices that they feel discourage accessibility and kick start a discussion to identify solutions.
Top Ten: A discussion of ten things academic librarians do that create inadvertent barriers to access and overcoming them.
QR codes – We librarians love them, but do students use them? MLIS jargon – It’s correct, but does it aid an Econ or Nursing students understanding of searching a database? Who doesn’t love the look and feel of a real bound volumes or the printed page? The student 75 miles away from campus, that’s who. In order to move forward with making libraries and information literacy concepts more accessible, we must first identify the follies that can occur in academic libraries that may hinder accessibility for specific student populations. In this session, we’ll count down a top ten list of things we librarians do in our collections, reference, building layout, and instruction that, while well-meaning, tend to actually decrease accessibility for specific student populations. We will lead a discussion that highlights examples for each of these ten no-no’s, and solicit practical solutions and workarounds to mitigate their hindering effects. We will also encourage participants to identify practices that they feel discourage accessibility and kick start a discussion to identify solutions.