A View From The Reference Desk

As a librarian I get to see the learning process from another vantage point – what happens outside of class when a student works on completing an assignment?  I have found that some students still need face-to-face instruction from librarians.  One day this week I spent 45 minutes going over the mechanics and basics of creating a citation with a student who was turning in her first essay for an English class.  Clearly the student was intimidated by the whole idea of doing a citation.  She was hoping I would find the citation builder from the Web that she had used the first time.  I explained that it would be better if she learned how to construct the citation from the ground up and especially, if she plans to continue in college (emphatic yes) she would have to construct many more citations.  So, I went over constructing a citation step-by-step and she worked the citation through start to finish.  There was some resistance on her part, claiming she wasn’t up to the task.  When she finished the citation she said something like “Oh, it’s not as hard or as bad as I thought it would be, it’s actually kind of easy.”  Her experience is not an isolated incident.  Later, my colleague at the reference desk said, “It’s a good thing there were two of us at the Reference Desk, otherwise you wouldn’t have been able to give the student that much of your time.”  All this makes me wonder if there is a way instructors can squeeze in 20 minutes or 30 minutes for a librarian to give students a presentation about one thing library-related that they are struggling with?  We currently have samples of citations and instructions about how to construct a citation on the library website.  But somehow when you do your first citation from something you have in hand (article, printout, URL) it is a better learning experience to construct your own citation for your item.  Or we could post a link on the library web page to some free citation generators?  I cannot say that I am fan of or an advocate for this sort of thing.  Disclaimer:  Please remember my posting reflects only my opinion and not the opinions of anyone else in or outside the library.