|
| Elisabeth
E. Cook, who holds an A.B. degree in religion from Duke University,
a master of public health degree from the University of North Carolina
at Chapel Hill, and an advanced certificate in management from the
Hospital Financial Management Association and the University of Colorado,
began her career in health care administration. A decade ago, she
made a midcareer transition into the world of letters. After completing
a master of library science degree and teacher training at the State
University of New York at Albany in 1994, she worked in school libraries
and media centers in North Adams, Mass., and Pittsfield, Mass. On
Sept. 1, 2001, she became director of Phillips Academy’s Oliver
Wendell Holmes Library on the Abbot Stevens Foundation. Named after
the famous physician and poet, a member of Andover’s Class of
1825, the OWHL is among the best-equipped high school libraries in
the world. It boasts more than 120,000 volumes, subscribes to 300
American and foreign-language serials, houses several special collections
and provides electronic access to countless additional resources.
Just before Cook’s first anniversary at the academy, Andover
Bulletin editor Theresa Pease talked with her about the challenge
ahead. |
What
drew you to Phillips Academy?
What attracted me was the job description crafted by the search committee,
which stated that the academy wanted to shift the library to a more
central role in support of the curriculum. Expanding on the library’s
role in teaching had become my passion during the seven years of my
library career, and, after discussing the school’s vision with
the committee and with Dean of Studies Vincent Avery, who is my supervisor,
I knew I had found my dream job. |
Did
the Andover library match your expectations when you arrived?
I expected that the library would be excellent, and, of course, that
turned out to be true. What I found was an extraordinarily well-organized
warehouse rich with materials, as well as an educated, competent staff
of 12, including six professional librarians and several paraprofessionals
with deep experience, providing valuable point-of-service instruction.
My only fear in coming here was that there wouldn’t be anything
for me to do—that it would be so strong a program I would be
just a figurehead. But, in fact, the academy’s desire to make
this subtle shift—the shift from a library that’s a supporting
resource for people who seek it out to one that’s central to
the curriculum—meant I had plenty to contribute.
Were there specific curricular needs
that were not being met?
It’s not fair to say needs were not being met; in a way, the
need actually had to be created. In other words, we are talking about
a new kind of partnership that schools and libraries are just beginning
to recognize as a possibility. Libraries and media centers are moving
closer to the heart of academics. This, I believe, is a reflection
of the information age and the accompanying perception that information
retrieval skills form part of a student’s core competency. It’s
a culture shift, really.
How do you go about effecting a
culture shift?
I believe strongly in strategic planning, so when I arrived I started
a planning process that eventually will involve a broad segment of
the community. We began by defining the key values of the library
staff and rewriting our statement of purpose so it starts right out
with the notion of teaching. “The Oliver Wendell Holmes,”
it now says, “is a teaching library and information gateway supporting
the mission of Phillips Academy to prepare students for creative and
independent lifelong learning.”
Because effecting a culture shift will rely on creating robust and
ongoing alliances with teachers, we began a liaison program through
which every professional librarian will work in close collaboration
with a faculty member to assure the needs of that teacher’s department
are being met. In the past, instructors who sought out library services
had been very well served, but those who didn’t seek them out
were unlikely to find out what resources the OWHL had. The liaison
program is designed to raise the visibility of the library program,
provide us with a better device for listening to the needs of departments,
and encourage participation by faculty members who had not previously
used library instructional programs with their classes.
What kind of instructional programs do you offer?
The OWHL has adopted a formal Information Literacy Program, following
standards set by the American Library Association in 1998. In essence,
this is a curriculum of information skills we believe students should
graduate with. These skills can’t be and shouldn’t be taught
in a vacuum; they must be learned in the context of a particular course.
Suppose, for instance, that kids in Biology 100 are doing a research
paper on infectious diseases. We can strategize with their teachers
to design an in-library lesson that assures the students get the scientific
knowledge they are seeking while simultaneously gaining the information-gathering
skills we want them to have.
Did you find any areas of the collection
in need of improvement or rebalancing?
I found the collection extremely well-balanced in support of the curriculum.
I introduced just two minor changes last year. The first was the creation
of a recreational reading collection. As a reader myself, I feel strongly
that in a residential community we have a responsibility to meet the
recreational reading needs of the students, the faculty, the staff
and their families. The other change was a revision of our acquisition
policy to encompass selection of electronic periodicals and databases
to supplement the print collections.
Doesn’t everything in the library
qualify as “recreational reading,” depending on the readers’
tastes?
That’s true, but because our previous collection development
policy stressed matching the curriculum, there were some blanks. For
example, we didn’t collect fiction that was not directly aligned
with the English curriculum. Now we actively respond to requests from
our community, and we purchase New York Times best sellers and award-winning
books that are likely to be of high current interest.
How knowledgeable is the faculty
in the use of the new electronic materials?
The faculty has a range of familiarity with such resources. Some do
very exciting things with the Internet, while others are fuzzy about
what’s out there and how it could possibly be useful in their
curriculum. Some have not even used our electronic card catalog. Many
do not understand the difference between the free Web and the commercial
Web.
I’ll bite: What’s the difference?
The commercial Web contains products that libraries purchase and make
available to their users through contracts or licenses. We have a
variety of these databases. We have full-text magazine databases and
databases with specific kinds of information. They are products that
have been selected, that are authoritative, that are comprehensive,
that are all the things that print materials in libraries traditionally
are. That’s very different from the free Web, where anybody can
print anything.
Do you offer instruction for faculty?
The entire library staff is available to help instruct teachers in
the use of all our resources on an individual basis, just as we are
available to students, but we do not hold specific classes for faculty.
I think in the past there were some workshops offered, but they met
with limited success because the library was competing for teachers’
time, which is a scarce commodity. We do have orientations for new
faculty and for summer session faculty. We want to make sure teachers
just coming on board are aware of who we are, what is here and how
we can support them. I think in some ways it’s easier to start
with new faculty because they don’t have any expectations or
habits.
Of course, when we present an information literacy class to students,
the teacher becomes a participant. Recently a faculty member who attended
one of those sessions told me he had not felt so comfortable in a
library since we got rid of the card catalog. I think he meant that
in a broader sense: Today’s libraries are so different from the
ones most adults are used to that they really are a little bit intimidating.
We need to eliminate that as a barrier for faculty. As we work with
their classes, we also help them to feel more comfortable; they become
aware of the resources we have available, and we become partners.
The teacher brings to this partnership the content knowledge and expertise
and his or her curriculum objectives, and we bring the knowledge of
the information sources and the skills we want kids to internalize
before they graduate.
What are those skills?
We want them to internalize all the skills you need to find and use
information well. For example, you have to define your task, you have
to identify the range of possible sources and you have to locate those
sources. We teach them how to use precise search terms to construct
a good search that will yield the most useful information possible.
Once you’ve located your sources, you need to know how to synthesize
the data and how to evaluate those data for quality, accuracy and
relevance, as well as how to use and document the information properly
in your finished product. By embedding that process into library instruction
sessions held within the structure of diploma-requirement courses
like History 100 and English 200, we eventually hope to reach every
student at every grade level with the same sort of information-finding
experience and practice.
How would you expect the library
to look five years out?
I think that in five years we will be in full, active partnership
with the faculty and that students will graduate from PA better prepared
for further education and lifelong learning, having a real comfort
with the information process. I think this will be an even more energized
place, where the professional librarians will grow in their roles
as teachers and become genuine collaborators in education at this
academy. I also think all the wonderful things we are doing now will
continue. I see this place being a center of intellectual activity
for this community. |
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