Talking Toward Techno-Pedagogy:
A Collaboration Across Colleges and Constituencies
Supported by a grant from the Mellon Foundation
Librarian Response, Mount Holyoke College
1. Resources include, PsycInfo: This is the major database of Psychology literature. MH provides it through the Ovid interface from 1887 through the present. It includes a sophisticated indexing system based on the terminology used in the field so will help students think about appropriate vocabulary, combining of terms, refining searches.
Web of Science: This interdisciplinary database is unique among indexing services. While it does not provide the specialized indexing of other services, it allows for searching of cited references which many faculty find a very powerful tool. It allows students to see how pieces of scholarship inform and respond to one another, how scholarship develops and shifts. With access to the backfiles (sciences back to 1945, social sciences back to 1950's) it opens up a part of the literature that may have been neglected in favor of materials more readily cited electronically.
JSTOR: Provides searchable fulltext of the backfiles of over 100 key scholarly journals. Although Psychology journals are not yet included, other disciplines in the social sciences are well represented. It may be interesting to see if and how topics in Psychology have crossed into other discplines.
2. We currently offer about 75 course integrated workshops each year. Many of these are at the request of faculty, though sometimes we see a need and offer to conduct a workshop. We also offer general workshops on searching the Internet through the LITS training program. In addition, we do much instruction in one-on-one encounters at the Reference desk. The majority of our questions now require some instruction in use and choice of resource (appropriate discipline, good quality, paper vs. electronic, full-text vs. index, timeliness, etc).
3. More! We would like to offer more course integrated instruction as those seem to be the most successful in reaching students when they have a need to know. We would also like to work more closely with faculty in developing assignments that will achieve their goals for the students and will be manageable and interesting for the students. We have some succces with that in the Sciences and would like to expand that success.
Kathleen Norton
Do you have any questions or comments regarding this response? Engage in a virtual dialogue with your colleagues before the workshop begins! Send your comments to dapplega@brynmawr.edu
They will be posted in the "Forum" section of our webpage in the order they are received. Please indicate which response you are commenting on if your submission is about a specific topic/question. Thanks!
updated 5/16/00, Diana C. Applegate
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