I've just come back for the American Society for Engineering Education annual conference which was held in Pittsburgh, PA. This is one of my favorite conferences because the attendees include engineering professors who are committed to preparing the next waves of engineers for the challenges they'll face in the workforce and a large, very organized group of engineering librarians (ELD) who are committed to the same - with a heavy focus on how access to information contributes.
During the exhibit, I demonstrated Knovel to dozens of instructors over the course of the conference. At risk of oversimplifying, at some point during several of the demonstrations, the conversation turned and went in the same direction:
Instructor: Wow. This is great. If I had this, I'd definitely use it. I'd probably tell my students to do the same.
Me: Let's see, well... you know, the institution you teach at appears to have a subscription. You can use Knovel as much as you like and point your students at it too.
Instructor: We do? Why didn't I know about it?
Me: Hmmm... The important thing is that now you do. Make sure to tell your colleagues. Take this handout so you remember where to find us....
A lower than ideal level of awareness isn't a problem unique to Knovel. Most information related services where the user and the buyer aren't the same people experience something similar. It's one of the true challenges of our current information environment. Information is everywhere and there's simply so much of it out there that it becomes increasingly difficult for the information consumer to know what tools and sources he should be using.
And then there's the fact that the users aren't walking into a traditional library the way they used to - eliminating the live and in person point of contact.
Here's where the librarians come in. In academic settings, they are the ones driving decisions to subscribe to Knovel. Many of my librarian conversations took on a different flavor than those with instructors. Virtually uniformly, librarians see the challenge of directing their users to the right information resources for the job. In subsequent postings I'll write about some of the solutions to these challenges they shared with me.
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