ACRL News Issue (B) of College & Research Libraries


O ctober 1986 /  585

Keith J. Stanger, Coordinator, Access Services, 
Eastern Michigan University Library, Ypsilanti, 
MI 48197. Dan Bricklin’s Demo Program is avail­
able at a list price of $74.95 from Software Garden, 
In c., P.O . Box 238, West Newton, MA 02165; 
(617) 332-2240.

F o r ad d itio n al in fo rm a tio n , consult these 
sources:

Aarons, Richard, “Bricklin’s Demo Program 
Breaks Original Ground,” PC M agazine 5 (April
29, 1986):54.

Bonner, Paul, “Dan Bricklin’s Demo Program: 
A Gem of a Tool for PC Managers,” PC W eek 3

(March 18, 1986) :87, 100.
Duntemann, Jeff, “Prototypes in Motion,” PC 

Tech Journal 4 (March 1986) :29.
Edlin, Jim , “Human Interface Design: From the 

Outside In ,” Dr. D o b b ’s Journal o f Softw are Tools 
11 (May 1986): 24–31.

H am ilton, Rosem ary, “D an B rick lin  Demo 
Speeds Prototyping Via Sim ulation,” C o m p u
terw orld 20 (April 7, 1986) :33, 36.

W alkenbach, John, “D an Bricklin Crafts a 
Dem o P r o g r a m ,” I n fo w o r ld  8 (M arch 31 , 
1986):41–43.

Ig n o ran ce was ou r excuse

By Wendy M oorhead

H ead o f R eferen ce
Roosevelt University

BI fo r  foreign students requires a shift in cultural 
perspective.

P a r t  of our job each year is giving library orienta
tion talks to newly enrolled foreign students a
Roosevelt University. This is almost the same as th
usual bibliographic instruction that the referenc
staff does for the rest of the student body; however,
a few seemingly minor differences are critical.

The English Language Program (ELP) classe
could be beguiling: small classes, attentive, polit
students, few or no questions about the lecture
what more could a BI librarian ask for? One an
swer might be, “Is anyone out there learning any
thing?”

On the other hand, we might certainly be for
given if we were failing to reach our 200 foreig
students in the English Language Program. W
were experienced in library instruction. The for
eign students were only a small percentage of th
1,700 students we instruct in library use each year.

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Yet we all have a need to be useful and not waste 
anyone’s time.

Roosevelt University is a Chicago-based urban 
university and has always drawn a sizable contin­
gent of foreign students from the Far East, South 

sia, Africa, and Europe. Each E L P  class contains 
an unpredictable mix of these students, each one 
arriving with different English skills and unique 

erceptions about America, Americans, and— 
ost importantly— university life.
Sarkodie-M ensah, a foreign student w riting 

bout foreign students, notes: “While not every 
merican is an expert in the use of the library, the 

verage American student has an idea of what hap­
ens in a library. To many foreign students, the li­
rary is only for silent reading.... In some foreign 
ountries the librarian at the reference desk still 
ossesses the power to claim  monopoly of all

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586 /  C &RL News

knowledge, and thus is not to be disturbed  
Sometimes it is not easy for foreign students to real­
ize that certain types of ignorance are acceptable, 
and that librarians are there to help.”1

Growing up in any academic environment, even 
in a society as multinational and diverse as the 
United States, we emerge with a set of perceptions 
that are strikingly similar and largely unrecognized 
by ourselves as peculiar to us. Our shared common­
alities are seen best when they are not shared, or 
when they become uncommon. For us, foreign stu­
dent orientation lectures provided the necessary 
shift in perspective.

It was a hard school and we were not always the 
most apt of pupils. We learned that plagiarism was 
a strange notion to many foreign students. We 
learned that words, even simple ones, can signal 
more than we once thought: “yes” may mean 
“yes,” but it may also mean “no,” or “see how 
agreeable I am ,” or “I don’t have the least idea of 
what you’re talking about.” Almost never does it 
mean “I understand what you are saying,” which is 
what we all wanted it to mean. When we realized 
this it was both surprising and disappointing.

We learned that students from certain cultures 
will not compete for the honor of showing they 
know a certain thing; that when they talk among 
themselves, ignoring your attempts to teach, they 
may simply be being polite and responsive to one 
another, not rude to you; that there are a lot of rea­
sons to go to college and very few of them have any­
thing to do with the Protestant work ethic, the no­
tion of human perfectability, or even with getting 
an education. Some foreign students hold that pri­
mary and secondary education is the time for hard 
work and hard lessons, and college is the time to 
form associations that will be important to them 
for the rest of their lives. Given this viewpoint, a 
library orientation lecture may become an exercise 
in politeness.

We also learned that suppressing witty or idiom­
atic expressions during our lectures could seriously 
cramp our style. We remembered, as some of us 
had known all along, that card catalogs and peri­
odical indexes are not easy.

In short, we found that our foreign students 
didn’t get the point. Our efforts at communicating 
library skills were largely unsuccessful, so reluc­
tantly we confronted the problem and began seek­
ing solutions.

Presenting the library in broad strokes or ab­
stract conceptual terms was not working. We de­
cided to simplify our approach. Perhaps the only 
way to get the big picture across was to start out 
small and talk about mixing pigment and choosing 
brushes. The student would be gently walked 
through each mechanical step involved in finding a 
book or getting a journal article.

1Kwasi Sarkodie-Mensah, “In the Words of a 
Foreigner,” Research Strategies 4 (Winter (1986):

For the first time we abandoned caring about 
he level of understanding that the foreign student 

achieved, just as long as he could find a book or ar­
icle. Our new test for success became: can he lay 
is hands on the material he needs?

The program we developed was evolutionary in 
hat we chose to concentrate on details taken from 
ur prior talks—on what might be called the criti­
al elements— and to do this as intensely as possi­
le. We hoped to make students comfortable with 

us by working individually with them, thereby en­
ouraging their questions in future library visits. 
ssentially we were out to build two foundations, 
ne based on useful information and the other 
ased on trust.

This approach works for us. The ELP faculty 
ave also become a part of the process. Their par­
icipation validates what we do. We insist on small 

groups, certainly no more than ten and preferably 
ess. The cornerstone is a brief discussion or de­
cription of a point, following almost immediately 
y the students working through the point on their 
wn. If they get into difficulty, a librarian or ELP 
eacher is near enough to help but not too close to 
tifle their efforts. The idea is to guide and direct 
he students, letting them make any discoveries 
here are to be made.

The discovery or “eureka” process happens a fair 
amount because we encourage it to happen. For ex­
ample, when we discuss the card catalog we hand a 
lip of paper to each student. Some slips ask them to 
ook for a book with a certain title, others for a par­
icular author, and still others for a certain subject. 

(By way of a brief explanation, we usually compare 
he subject side of our divided catalog to the yellow 
ages.) Working at the card catalog in groups of 

hree, the students eventually realize that all three 
lips of paper are different ways to find the same 
ook. It’s a little surprising to see how much plea­
ure they get from this moment of discovery. W e’re 

betting that the students who learn this way will re­
member.

Finally, with the same slips of paper the students 
go to the stacks to find and check out the book.

In the same fifty-minute session as that devoted 
o the card catalog, we also cover the way the li­

brary is organized. We make one stab at this broad 
opic— that libraries use the same organizing prin­
iples as we do at home, and that librarians make 
hings available and more useful by putting similar 
hings together. Spare tires and garden rakes are 

kept in one place, oranges and lettuce in another, 
and blouses, skirts and belts in still another.

Another fifty-minute session is devoted to peri­
dical indexes and periodicals. We begin with a 
ile of magazines, asking their ideas on what each 

is about, its audience, who publishes it, and where 
he volume and issue numbers can be found. We 
urn quickly to pages of the R ead er’s Guide and 
how them how to read a bibliographic citation. 
ach student reads and explains a citation, which 

hen becomes “his.” Then when we go into the pe­

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O ctober 1986 /  587

riodicals room, their task is to find the articles they 
have read aloud.

At every point in this process the emphasis is on 
the human side— on creating a comfortable atmo­
sphere and establishing some rapport. We feel that 
whether or not they understand a certain aspect of 
the lecture is not critical, but that how they per­
ceive us and the library is critical. If we turn them 
off, that may be the last day their shadows darken 
our halls. Probably no scholarly point, no matter 
how cherished, is worth that price.

In one situation described by Mellon, American 
students reported their feelings about libraries in 
such terms as “scary, overpowering, lost, helpless, 
and fearing the unknown.” Findings such as this 
led the investigating library to include a “warmth 
seminar” in its library orientation program: “Al­
though search strategy and tool use were still em­
phasized, the redesign provided maximum interac­
tion between student and librarian.”2

If this is true of American students, think how 
we and our libraries must seem to students who are 
already in culture shock to one degree or another. 
An associate has told me of a public library director 
who began spending more and more time in the 
public service area. “What I ’m doing is taking a 
look at this place,” he said. “What I see is almost an 
armed camp; little kids trying to find stuff, a sys­
tem that will let you borrow a book only if you have 
a close relative in circulation, public service em­
ployees who are into icy intimidation. It scares me, 
and God knows what it does to the patrons.” He 
paused. “The Board has asked me to find out why 
circulation is down.”

If we achieve nothing else in our E L P  lecture ex­
cept helping students discover something for them­
selves and giving them a comfortable sense of the 
library and librarians, maybe that is enough.

Suggested reading
Council of Graduate Students in the United 

States. The Foreign Student in American Graduate 
Schools. Washington, D .C .: Council of Graduate 
Schools, 1980.

Daniel, Norman. Cultural Barrier: Problem s in 
the Exchange o f  Ideas. Edinburgh: Edinburgh 
University Press, 1975.

Hull, Frank. Foreign Students in the United 
States o f A m erica: Coping Behavior within the E d ­
ucational Environm ent. New York: Praeger, 1978.

Lewis, Mary Genevieve. “Library Orientation 
for Asian College Students,” C ollege & Research 
Libraries 30 (May 1969):267–72.

Lopez, Manuel D. “Chinese Spoken Here: For­
eign Langu age L ib ra ry  O rien ta tio n  T o u r s ,” 
C &R L News 44 (September 1983):265, 268–69.

Mood, Terry Ann. “Foreign Students in the Aca­
demic Library,” RQ 22 (Winter 1982): 175–80. B B

2Constance A. Mellon, “Library Anxiety: A 
Grounded Theory and Its Development,” College 
& Research Libraries 47 (March 1986): 160, 164.

How to publish in ACRL: 
on-serial publications

Are you working on a survey, directory, pam­
hlet, bibliography, or any other project with pub­

ication potential? Then you need to be aware of 
hese new publication procedures for non-serial 
ublications that the ACRL Publications Commit­

ee adopted at ALA Annual Conference in New 
ork last July.
Your publication proposal will go through the 

ollowing steps on the way to becoming an ACRL 
r ALA publication.

Step One. Fill out a “Preliminary Publication 
nformation Form ,” available from ACRL Head­
uarters, early in the planning stages of your proj­
ct. This form asks for basic information about the 
cope and content of the proposed publication and 
he individual(s) responsible for developing it. 
end the completed form to Mary Ellen Davis, 
CRL’s publications officer, at ACRL Headquar­

ers.
Step Two. The ACRL publications officer re­

iews the proposal and offers ALA Publishing Ser­
ices the first chance of accepting the project as an 
LA publication. This “right of first refusal” is 

pecified in the operating agreement between ALA 
nd its divisions.

Step Three. ACRL’s Publications Subcommittee 
n Non-Serial Proposals and the ACRL publica­
ions officer review the content and viability of the 
roposal and make a recommendation as to its fea­
ibility. (In some cases, an outside reader with ex­
ertise in the subject area will be asked to review 

he publication for editorial content. This review 
ill next be considered by the Subcommittee and 

he program officer.) The Subcommittee will re­
iew and act upon publication proposals through­
ut the year, as well as at ALA annual conferences 

and midwinter meetings.
Step Four. After reviewing the recommenda­

ions of the Subcommittee (and any outside review­
rs) the ACRL publications officer then accepts, 
ejects, refers back to ALA Publishing Services, or 

asks for further development of each proposal from 
he author or sponsoring body.

Step Five. If your proposal is accepted, submit 
our completed manuscript to ACRL Headquar­
ers for further review by the Subcommittee and 
he ACRL publications officer.

For further information, contact Mary Ellen 
Davis, ACRL Publications Officer, ACRL/ALA, 
50 East Huron St., Chicago, IL  60611-2795; (312) 
944-6780, x287.

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