Library & Learning
A collection of essays on engaging student curiosity and critical thinking, with regards to research and use of library tools and materials. We offer strategies for navigating through controversial developments in information access, pedagogical approaches to competencies in information use, and an academic view of intellectual engagement. Writers include PCC librarians and occasional guest authors from the library staff or PCC faculty.
By: Roberta Richards
Library & Learning, December 2012
The tide of e-ink is rising. E-readers, tablets and other mobile devices have become constant student companions. eBooks are now the hottest sellers at Amazon and other book distributors. Textbook and academic book publishers are likewise making a dramatic...
By: Sara Seely
Library & Learning, August 2012
I’m really not the forwarding type, but I just can’t help myself sometimes. Viral videos are my weak point and once in a while I’m compelled to send a video that passes through my inbox or social stream (Example:...
By: Tony Greiner
Library & Learning, May 2012
My first, and perhaps best job in a library was working as a page for the Minnesota Historical Society Library. The MHS Library is a closed-stack, non-circulating collection, so if you want to look at something in the collection, you had to come in...
By: Alan Cordle
Library & Learning, May 2012
I'd been to Canada once in the mid '80s, as a surly teen on a long drive with parents. My father was on business and I thought of it a burden rather than my first international trip. Other than that, my travel experience was quite limited until 1996...
By: Pam Kessinger
Library & Learning, September 2011
When a student faces disruptive knowledge gaps or misunderstood hypotheses, perhaps he or she could be afforded a "right of parlay" (Surowiecki ), to buy a brief stretch of time to think and catch up. The student could request staying the course with their...
By: Stephanie Debner
Library & Learning, June 2011
One of the most common requests that the PCC librarians receive at the research help desk is for help finding peer-reviewed articles or determining if the article in hand or on the screen is, in fact, peer-reviewed. We have learned that the requirement for...
By: Tony Greiner
Library & Learning, April 2011
Ah children, civilization has never seen a time without libraries, but millennia have passed without computers, and if things were no better then than they are now, they were no worse. In those days of ink and paper, those skilled in the ancient arts...
By: Stephanie Debner
Library & Learning, February 2011
In the January 2011 issue of College & Research Libraries, Thomas P. Mackey and Trudi E. Jacobson make the argument that metaliteracy is a framework that can unite the various competencies and literacies (visual (...
By: Roberta Richards
Library & Learning, January 2011
Engaging students in the college classroom has gotten tougher. This reality has inspired a new book by Elizabeth Barkley, award-winning community college instructor, called Student...
By: Pam Kessinger
Library & Learning, November 2010
“No thanks, I’m just browsing” is the phrase I love to imagine hearing library users say, as if they were perusing the books like they would the newest fashions, for their cachet and allure of uniqueness. Just looking, the implication would be, idly...
By: Stephanie Debner
Library & Learning, September 2010
While Nicholas Carr’s 2008 essay "Is Google Making Us Stupid?", might have launched the popular discourse about the effect of the Internet and the web on our brains, it was not news to scientists who study attention and cognition. One effect is that the...
By: Pam Kessinger
Library & Learning, June 2010
Pondering the derivations of some words, specifically, why some words have clear opposites and others only have a negative version—bad, good; but conditional, unconditional—I got stuck, attempting to think of a word that would describe the comforting...
By: Pam Kessinger
Library & Learning, May 2010
A recent study by Harold Pasher et. al., “Learning Styles: Concepts and Evidence,” was heralded on The Chronicle of Higher Education website with the blaring headline “Matching Teaching Style to Learning Style May Not Help Students.” David Glenn did a...
By: Robin Shapiro
Library & Learning, March 2010
Have you seen what our databases can do now? We have databases that talk, translate, and cite articles for you, as well as databases full of art images, and even video clips!
All of our new Gale databases – including the popular ...
By: Greg Kaminski
Library & Learning, February 2010
The concept of learner-centered instruction has been around a long time. Back in my former days as an ESL instructor it always seemed to be the natural thing to strive for, to engage students in ways of actively using the language with the goal of more...
By: Pam Kessinger
Library & Learning, December 2009
To support the leadership of Portland Community College, History Instructor Sylvia Gray, and the Learning Assessment Council...
By: Tony Greiner
Library & Learning, November 2009
There is a long practice in the US of denigrating the local paper. When I lived in Richmond, Virginia, the two dailies were the Times-Dispatch and the ...
By: Pam Kessinger
Library & Learning, October 2009
The title of this article could easily be misread in a couple of ways, with the first word as "learners" or "leaders" instead of "leaners." In the former, the pejorative (or secondary) term seems to be "lifter". We easily recognize the value of learners,...
