Plagiarism - Who wrote it anyway?

If you read the following NYT article Plagiarism Lines Blur for Students in Digital Age you will start to understand why so many students don't see the error of plagiarism. 40% admit to having borrowed other's words, and only 29% say that copying from the web is "serious cheating" per a study of 14,000 undergraduate surveyed 2006-2010 by "Donald L. McCabe, a co-founder of the Center for Academic Integrity and a business professor at Rutgers University." (See NYT article) Image taken from - http://www.zunal.com/webquest.php?w=16733 - Was using this graphic legal??? (My idea)

Sure the above quote is common knowledge, i.e. the person's position and affiliation with said organization, but I too copied and pasted it verbatim, as it was what I need to attribute the statistics . . . at least I gave the attribution, right? (My idea)

Per the NTY article students can readily find the stuff they need online, yet because it isn't a physical entity it seems to immediately belong to them to manipulate and use as needed. Even if this was a physical entity, the fact that there is often no clear author or authority behind the information found, i.e. Wikipedia, means that it seems to be fair game for usage without attribution.

Furthermore our world seems to be changing from the era of the 60s where uniqueness and authenticity was valued to an era in which students rather want to try on "many different personas" - "MyWord!: Plagiarism and College Culture" by Susan Blum.

The result to this modern information soceity is that we can't tell who did what, said what, or wrote what anymore. All of course is not a loss, as we are recreating things and connecting in various ways with the information. Ways we never could have imagined before. (My idea)

Notice my own week attempt to attribute ideas in this post - at least I tried!

I.e. these ideas are not my own, apart from the ones I noted as (My idea).
:<

Jana

Undergraduate Research Engine

I've found the following customized google search tool useful for helping to narrow the results to more quality resources for undergraduate research.

Start using the Undergraduate Research Engine. So far I've been thrilled with the results. A student shortened the url in my Library Instruction class to http://tiny.cc/ure

Thanks go to David Dillard, a reference librarian at Temple University, for creating this cutomized search box. I read about this on his yahoo group, NetGold and have contacted him regarding how this tool was created, i.e. what limiters he set up.

Hooked on Gadgets - Interesting to consider . . .

READ ARTICLE - Hooked on Gadgets and Paying a Mental Price

I will really take a look at this and consider if I need more peacefulness and less gadgetry in my own existence.

Netvibes - Dashboard - READY

Hi Everyone - CLICK to see the public version of the Netvibes dashboard I created.

I have tabs for -

• General News & Information
  
• Information Literacy
  
• Technology
  
• Music

This is an easy to use site, so try setting one up for yourself.

Tools for the online reading of the future

Just saw an article about some neat tools for simplifying your online reading experience. They bookmark things and/or make it easy to save reading to a mobile device.

Readability = This is what they call a bookmarklet. It reformats the text so that you don't see the adds and extra side bars, and does it in various modes - Newspaper, Novel, eBook.

Instapaper = a way to mark a text in your browser and then either read it later via your Instapaper account or more conveniently save it to another mobile device for easier viewing there.

SEE whole article from ALA's TechSource Blog = Change How You Read

Summer Projects at ECC

Today at our librarians meeting we discussed options of what we, the librarians at ECC, might like to accomplish over the summer. We also looked through the FY10 goals sheet and evaluated whether there were items from that to still address. It appears we accomplished much of what we set out to do last year, though I of course only starting March 1st didn't do much to help out in this.

So, what to do this summer? There are 21 hours a week I have to work and the students don't have as many questions as usual, so thus some time for summer projects.

Some ideas for summer projects:

1. Develop an information literacy action plan (including goals for each Research Session)
   
2. Continue to weed if this is desired by the Collection Development librarian
3. Discover Web 2.0 and possible library outreach and implementation of these tools
4. Learn about teaching and presenting to be more effective in bibliographic instruction
5. Read about current events to relate to students - more relevant examples for sessions
6. Finish the Arthur Lourie research - research writing skills and organizing thoughts(my personal goal and not a work-related one)
7. Acquaint myself with the library resources & ECC classes - reference, videos, databases, etc.

YES, there are many things to do and I will use my time wisely over the summer. Thank God for better air-conditioning today in the library.

A Personalized "Dashboard"

Though I have my own website at http://www.janaborchardt.com/ I now am creating a "dashboard" - a personalized newsboard or website which will allow me to more easily stay informed through the wonderful technology of widgets and RSS feeds. Instead of checking out several websites and blogs to find the latest news I can refer to my "dashboard."

I read about this cool Web 2.0 tool on another blog "Information Literacy Meets Web 2.0." When I complete my project I will let you see how it turned out.

Create your own "dashboard" at http://www.netvibes.com/. This way the news comes to you, and you save valuable time.

Brainstorming - facilitating a lost skill

Why can't today's students brainstorm? See "Sparking a Brainstorm: Getting Students Organized" by Theresa Westbrock from the LOEX Quarterly (Summer 2009, vol. 36 no. 2). LOEX (Library Orientation Exchange) is a great organization for academic librarians who teach students information literacy skills. Their 38th annual conference was last this month.

QUOTE - "One could argue that the Web can take the place of brainstorming . . . they were used to letting the hyperlinks lead the way."

Thoughts on Brainstorming:

• Students have difficulties brainstorming due to their online search habits
• Brainstorming teaches students to pose better questions, the type with purpose and that lead to thought organization
• Brainstorming helps students slow down the research process
• Brainstorming helps students learn to care about the whole process, including finding quality resources
• By facilitating brainstorming librarians encourage higher levels of information literacy than merely finding the resources***

***See the ACRL Information Literacy Standards) Instead of merely developing the student's ability to access needed information effectively and efficiently (Standard 2) we can look at Info Lit Standard 1.1b & 1.1e (1.1b=Develops a thesis statement and formulates questions based on the information need & 1.1e=Identifies key concepts and terms that describe the information need.

ECC Community College

I'm thrilled to be working as a reference librarian at Elgin Community College, where my librarian colleagues and I teach classes, lead library initiatives, operate efficiently, and inspire one another to focus on playing our best games as librarians.

One such possible endeavor is a proposed outreach activity I hope to implement sometime next spring with one of my colleagues. We are basing our idea for an Info Literacy blog upon an article in the LOEX Quarterly titled "No Time, No Problem: Using Blogs to Build Upon Face-To-Face Instruction" by Harold Goss.

Check out my library's evolving website, and the progress we are making toward moving into a new library building in Summer 2012!

Library Journal & "E-Access Changes Everything"

This thought provoking article has given me various ideas to keep the millenial students at my college engaged during our information sessions. Especially as we think about the often dreaded and required College 101 for the fall. I'd like to find some ways to better engage students, i.e. a library "Show and Tell" with fun library facts and a presentation on how scholarly books and journals are published. See - http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6713143.html