Carolyn,
I think you might be able to find (or assemble) an interesting thesis
question at the intersection of cataloging and legal research.
Each fall, we have a "Library Survival Skills" unit for our
first-year law students. We teach them how to look up a case when they
know the citation, how to use LRI (on our campus network), and how to use
the catalog. The idea is that these are skills a curious law student
might be able to use from the start -- e.g., to read a case that's
excerpted in a casebook, to find a law review article discussing the case,
or to find a hornbook or nutshell that will say what _International Shoe_
is really about. (They learn to use an assortment of print and online
tools during winter quarter.)
Of course, even with this instruction, some students are not very
skilled catalog users, or they don't understand the difference between a
catalog or an index, or they forget to use the catalog at all. But we
try. As we were about to begin the Library Survival Skills Unit this
fall, I sent the following to the other reference librarians and the legal
research and writing faculty:
=========================================================================
_Perspectives: Teaching Legal Research and Writing_ has a regular
feature, "Our Question -- Your Answer." The question for the Spring 1997
issue was "Next to the librarian, what is the most underused research
resource in the law library?" The number one answer:
THE LIBRARY CATALOG!
Bob Berring, library director from Berkeley, says: "It has to be
the catalog. Many students come to law school not knowing how to use a
catalog, and most of us don't get to teach them. Many of them never touch
it; studies show that those who do don't understand how to use the subject
headings. When you think about all of the time, expertise, and money that
goes into the catalog, doesn't it return less on the investment per patron
than anything else? It's as if we were building precision automobiles and
most of our customers weren't sixteen years of age. Does this mean that
we need better patrons, or should we rethink the catalog? Of course, as
Dennis Miller says, 'It's just my opinion; I could be wrong. ...'"
Rather than wishing for "better patrons" or trying to "rethink the
catalog," I think we have one other hope: giving the patrons some
instruction and an opportunity to learn to use the catalog! I hope that
our Library Survival Skills unit is a step in that direction. The lesson
won't necessarily sink in for many of the students, but at least we're
giving them a *chance* to learn what they can do with the catalog and LRI
and why these tools would be useful to them in their studies.
=======================================================================
Is there a thesis question in here? *Are* our sophisticated
catalogs poor investments? *Do* we need to rethink them to make them
serve patrons' needs better? Is more or different training the answer?
How can users learn when to use the catalog and when not to? (For much of
legal research, the catalog is just a distraction, as we see when
nonlawyers try to use our online catalog to find a case or a statute or a
regulation.)
Good luck with your project.
Mary Whisner, Head of Reference
Gallagher Law Library, University of Washington
whisner@u.washington.edu
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