Who’s Teaching UC Students?

Name: Dorothy Byers, Senior Librarian, Department Head, College of Engineering Library

Q. What attracted you to librarianship?

A. I was actually working on a research degree in Information Science when I joined the library faculty and felt that this would be a perfect setting for research. I was interested in finding out how people use and process information. Engineering was particularly inviting because I am a frustrated engineer. I got sidetracked during high school and college and never got back to my original dream of becoming a nuclear engineer. My father was an engineer and his sister a librarian, so I am the logical consequence.

Q. Tell us about your teaching.

A. In the Engineering Library we try to teach all incoming freshmen (approximately 500 each year) and all new graduate students (approximately 300 each year) about library resources. We work through each of the six College of Engineering departments to set up the classes. Their areas are vastly different from one another and the library resources pertinent to each vary considerably as well.

In most cases we give assignments so that students have hands-on experience using and accessing engineering resources. We also try to interact with seniors working on design projects. Jim Clasper, Engineering Reference Librarian, works most closely with these groups.

For many years I have taught “Engineering Information Resources,” a for-credit online course open to upper-level undergraduate and graduate students. Students generally take this course together with research credits for their masters or PhD thesis and use the results as a basis for their bibliography. I feel that this is the students’ best exposure to engineering resources, but it is also the most time-consuming for them and me as I struggle between reaching all students with just a little information versus reaching a few students with a very intense experience. The latter produces better results and students often say that they wish they had known this information sooner.

Q. What is your teaching philosophy?

A. First, the world is big. I want students to expand their horizons and reach beyond known and comfortable sources or standard ways of viewing their research. Second, I want them to be clever in the way they approach information research, learning the strategies that will yield fruitful results. Finally, I want them to be critical, questioning what they find and not just regurgitating for the sake of an assignment.

Q. And finally, what is the most challenging aspect of teaching research methods?

A. First, rapid change. I just came back from academic leave and all the interfaces have changed, the databases have changed, and the resources have changed. If students understand search strategy, they will adapt. Second, inconsistency. Some materials are in the Library Catalog, some not. Some are full-text, some not. Some go back to the beginning in full-text, some not. Some sources are free on Google, some not. Students need to know not to draw conclusions based on one experience. Third, ask. Ask a librarian.

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