End of a very short era? And, getting students to the library.
I seem to be losing steam with this Litbrarian blog, partly because I am not convinced there is anyone reading it, so I’m considering whether to retire it at the end of this season. Would you miss it if it were gone? (If yes, please leave a comment!)
In the meantime, here is a recent article in the Chronicle by Todd Gilman, an English Librarian at Yale. In the article, Gilman offers suggestions for augmenting students’ research skills in meaningful ways that focus on research practice rather than overemphasizing tools for research.
May 18th, 2009 at 5:34 pm
Hi Marta,
This is a great resource, so I’m sorry to hear that you’re losing steam. Do you have any usage statistics? Are some areas more visited than others? I’d be happy to help re-think/re-purpose this type of effort with similar experiences around UDHIG.
June 15th, 2009 at 1:03 pm
I love your blog — I visit it all the time — or once a month anyway
I agree with Zoe that this is a great resource but of course it’s your call. These things can be kind of time-consuming — and it feels like wasted effort if few people seem to be reading it. So I wonder if there are ways to make it more visible? Is there a link to it on your departments’ websites, i.e., Comparative Lit, History, etc? I finally provided a link to my own blog on the HUMlab website and traffic shot way up.
Have a lovely summer!
June 15th, 2009 at 1:49 pm
Thanks, Zoe and Caroline for your supportive feedback! As it happens, I am now in serious conversation with individuals from several campus units related to digital humanities activities and we are thinking of team blogging. I would very much like to broaden the reach of this blog and still be relevant to scholars in my subject areas and it seems to me that focusing on digital humanities is one way to do this. And one of the things I would like to explore is the relationship between our digital collections and our “traditional” collections–i.e., between digital humanities scholarship and “traditional” humanities scholarship–so I would still be talking about things relevant to those faculty and students at UCLA who do not consider themselves to be plugged into the world of digital scholarship. More soon!
June 19th, 2009 at 1:41 pm
I came across your blog while I was working on my literature Libguide and wanted to see what other people had done. So I’m a bit of a latecomer, but I did read through the archive and found a few gems I had missed. I hope you keep it going in some form!
June 19th, 2009 at 3:09 pm
Thanks for your kind words, John! It definitely helps to hear that some of my blog posts were helpful. And the LibGuides have certainly been a huge help to me in my reference and instruction. I especially love that we can readily see how other librarians are using them in our subject areas. A big help to this Americanist who finds she must do instruction in areas out of her comfort zone, like Victorian literature or British government documents.