ACRL News Issue (B) of College & Research Libraries


July/August 1 9 9 2 /4 4 1

Good acting secret of successful BI

The theme of the March 27, 1992, meeting
of upstate New York’s Forum for Library In­
struction was “Library Instruction in a Televi­
sion Age: How to Deal with the Competition.”

William E. Connors, dean of the Library and
Information Technology at SUNY-New Paltz, 
and a skilled actor who has appeared in films, 
commercials, and plays, contended that teach­
ing (including bibliographic instruction) is the­
ater. Students don’t feel that BI is essential, and
we, as BI librarians, have to be actors to keep 
them awake. Our success in BI depends on
our ability to act, to strike people with what
we are saying, and to give them a hook on
which to hang the information. It is crucial to 
know your subject, your story, your audience, 
and perhaps most importantly, you need to 
know when to stop!

Borrowing from Uta Hagen’s book Respect
fo r  Acting (1972), BI librarians should ask them­
selves: What am I doing here? Why were these 
people brought together and who am I in rela­
tionship to them? What do I have to contend 
with (this may be as simple as the class time—
after lunch can be deadly)? What do I want from 
the students? What is hampering me from get­
ting inform ation across? How  can I break 
through the wall of resistance put up by the 
students? Connors suggested that one way to 
do this is to catch students at the point of their 
not knowing, yet knowing they need to know. 
In other words, providing an introduction to 
the library to students without an assignment 
may not be effective, while teaching students 
about to confront a term paper might be suc­
cessful. A specific acting technique Connors 
suggested using is talking to specific people as 
you teach. By focusing on different people as 
the class progresses, everyone has a chance to 
be involved. He likened the teacher w ho does 
not talk to anyone in particular to the voice on 
the loudspeaker in subway cars that does not 
talk directly to anyone—even though every­
one hears it, nobody is really listening.

Connors encouraged those who do BI to 
look at teaching as acting, as taking on the role 
of someone who knows something important 
for those w ho are sitting in front of us. If we 
do so, our students will stay with us. The group 
then previewed the new H. W. Wilson video,

 

 

 

 
 
 

 

 

Discovering the College Library, and discussed 
its strong points (its sense of humor, the use of 
a student as a peer tutor, the approachability 
of the librarian) and its weak points (no logical 
order to the presentation, no minority repre­
sentation, its lack of definitions, and its length).

Tom Demenkoff, assistant for instructional 
resources at SUNY-New Paltz and a former 
Broadway and television actor and producer 
of educational audio- and videotapes, shared 
his expertise in critiquing this video and in plan­
ning one’s own. He emphasized that librarians 
can use video as a bridge to students as long as 
it speaks their own language. Students have

He likened the teacher who does 
not talk to anyone in particular 
to the voice on the loudspeaker 
in subway cars— even though 
everyone hears it, no one is 
really listening.

grown up with video and accept information 
from it. But the videos need to be short and 
contain strong visuals, such as animation or 
computer graphics. Other key components in­
clude music that appeals to students, a plot 
they can relate to, and a “you are there” sense 
o f reality achieved w ith a roving camera. 
Demenkoff does not see a video replacing a 
librarian, but to be used as a “jump start” to 
bring people together. He felt the Wilson video 
was too clean and staged, and reported that 
students he showed it to were bored.

In order to demonstrate his ideas about what 
w ould make an effective library instruction 
video, Demenkoff will be working with Sarah 
Vasse, Orange County Community College; 
Lucille Brown, SUNY-New Paltz; and Kappa 
Waugh, Vassar College, to develop a three-to- 
five-minute pilot video on finding business in­
formation in periodicals. The Forum hopes to 
use this pilot to attract funding for a series of 
short videos on doing research. The pilot will 
be shown at the fall meeting of the Forum for 
Library Instruction.— Trudi E. Jacobson, SUNY- 
Albany, Bitnet: TJ662@ALBNYVMS ■