Jay Wilkerson

One of our biggest challenges at the Walden library is to adjust our patrons’ expectations about what our library can and cannot do. Many patrons assume that because Walden University is an online university that everything they need for their academic work will be available online in full text. They are quite shocked when we suggest that their local libraries or commercial services might be excellent resources.

What are some of their reactions?

• The time-limited student replies, “I don’t have time to go running off to the library, that’s why I enrolled at Walden!”
• The get-it-done student asks, “So how do I limit my database search to what is available online in full text?”
• The overwhelmed student cries, “It takes how long to get an article from Indiana University’s Document Delivery Service? My posting is due tonight!”
  

The vast majority of our work at the Walden library is with beginning students. We get students to understand that the university expects their work to meet quality standards, established by their academic discipline. What we preach is that graduate-level work requires that students identify and obtain the best research pertinent to their topic of inquiry, which requires that all researchers be aware of and use a wide variety of resources.

Library Mission

• The Walden library’s mission reflects the process of scholarly inquiry that we use to help students understand what is expected of them to earn a graduate degree at Walden. Our mission is to assist students in identifying, obtaining, and evaluating scholarly research. Additionally, we strive to help students acquire the skills necessary to do this on their own.
  
  
• We explain to students that our immediate goal is to help them get the task at hand completed, but our ultimate goal is to help them acquire the library research skills essential for them to be true scholar-practitioners. When Walden students understand our mission, they quickly begin to ask all sorts of questions that allow us to teach them graduate-level library skills. Furthermore, they realize, after our first transaction with them, that we do everything we can to help them achieve their educational goals.

The Library Staff
How do we convince new students that we are a reliable source of help? It starts with staff committed to helping others conduct quality scholarly inquiry and ends with staff trained to efficiently and effectively serve Walden students.

When we train library science students to work with Walden students, we stress the fact that many of the people sending us emails and calling us on the phone are in an anomalous state of knowledge (ASK for short).

The Dilemma
People in an ASK tend to be at a loss as to what to do to resolve their ASK. New Walden students tend to be very competent at resolving an ASK when in their professional milieu, but in the Walden environment they feel initially helpless when they can’t find a single article for their posting, paper, or KAM Learning Agreement.

Hence, we get an email ASKing for help: “I must be doing something wrong. I’ve been searching the databases for hours and haven’t found anything for my assignment. Please help!” That is when we get busy helping them resolve their ASK by guiding them to information pertinent to their needs.

Reference Transactions
In all reference transactions, we do the following:

1. First, we reduce the Walden students’ anxiety by providing explicit instructions for accessing the appropriate resources to meet their information needs.
2. Then, we provide further explicit instructions on how to use the resources to identify appropriate materials for the task at hand.
3. These instructions usually lead students to what we call a “happy place” (i.e., they are able to execute the instructions and identify research for their assignment).
4. Along with the instructions, we take this opportunity to inform students of what resources are available to them for their Walden work and provide them with links to Web pages that explain these resources in detail.
5. We take every opportunity that presents itself to show the Walden students something new about library research, while at the same time making sure we don’t overwhelm them with too much information.

Orientation to the Library

• Our service orientation centers on empathy for the students.
• We assure them that the frustrations they are experiencing are typical of students new to Walden.
• We explain that (a) the learning curve is high the first quarter, and (b) we are happy to support them in completing the task at hand.
• We make it clear that while we are willing to do this upon their first contact with us, we expect them to acquire these skills gradually over the first few quarters, with our guidance.
• We also emphasize that it is okay to admit to us their lack of skill in navigating the library’s information space and that they should contact us again if they run into more problems with current or future tasks.

Librarian Follow-Up
Most reference services would end the transaction at this point, but not us. If students don’t contact us within a week with more questions, we send them an email asking how things went. This follow-up is vital to the provision of services in our environment because sometimes students forget about the need to learn new skills after the task is completed and are off to the next assignment without another thought about the library.

Our follow-up email gives them a chance to ask further questions without the anxiety of an assignment hanging over their heads. We know our students well enough to include in our follow-up emails questions that lead them to the next step in the library research process, so that we can provide them with further opportunities to learn.

The more we can teach students in the first two quarters, the easier it is to serve them through the more rigorous portions of their curriculum. We provide services to new students in a way that allows us to continue to provide efficient and effective services despite the rapid growth in the number we serve.

Role of Faculty
We need faculty to

• encourage new students to contact us early in their first quarter for help with their assignments;
• prompt students who are unable to identify and use quality scholarly material in their academic work to contact us for help; and
• contact us when creating assignments that require the use of scholarly materials, so that the materials needed for the assignment are within the typical Walden student’s ability to locate and access them.

Role of Students
The Walden library is not simply a place to go to get books and articles. The Walden library is a place you can go to learn skills and identify and obtain the resources you need to produce quality scholarly products. Send us an email (waldenlb@waldenu.edu) and let us know what your next assignment is; then we can begin to teach you everything we know about all things library.

Lastly, whenever you run across a resource (e.g., database, journal, Web site, book) or a service that proves useful to you, let us know about it. Tell us how it was useful and what you liked about it. We are constantly finding new resources, but in a world embroiled in an information explosion, we need help (your help) to keep abreast.