Hello,
More on the TL’s role in the library, I loved the quote in the beginning of Riedling’s Chapter 1, p.3…’The half of knowledge is knowing where to find it.” This is a great quote and I believe this quote becomes more powerful as the level of technology available to students increases. There has never been a faster time to locate information on electronic devices such as cell phones/ipods/blackberry’s than the present. Students don’t need to remember factual data when that same information is held on a website just waiting to be accessed. Though a great feature of the internet is its abundant information, students and potentially TL’s have similar problems in evaluating online resources. With the advent of wikis, blogs, and free websites, anyone can become an online publisher of data. This creates an online atmosphere where one has to be very vigilant in finding reliable, scholarly sources. The precursor to differentiating between reliable and unreliable sources is a solid background in the subject area being studied. Obviously, due to the infinite range of research topics, one can’t be an expert in all fields/subjects. This knowledge gap in some subjects creates hesitation among students selecting resources and it also could potentially create uncertainty for the TL as well. There are resources that a TL and a student could consult such as online book reviews of a potential source. There would also be some critiquing required of the person writing the book review, but this should give the TL and/or student somewhere to begin.
This is where the concept of authority becomes relevant - in the old days we used to study something called bibliographic coupling. This basically means that for a source to be reliable that it needs to be linked to another authoritative source.
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