Comments on: A show of hands from those in this audience of one http://alevtina.commons.gc.cuny.edu/2011/01/12/a-show-of-hands-from-those-in-this-audience-of-one/ musings of a newly minted librarian Tue, 27 Sep 2011 18:02:47 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.1 By: Alevtina Verbovetskaya http://alevtina.commons.gc.cuny.edu/2011/01/12/a-show-of-hands-from-those-in-this-audience-of-one/#comment-16 Alevtina Verbovetskaya Thu, 20 Jan 2011 21:05:15 +0000 http://alevtina.commons.gc.cuny.edu/?p=121#comment-16 I agree, answering the “what’s in it for me?” question is important, especially when most people (especially students!) think they know everything. Grabbing their attention at the beginning of the session with a magic trick will definitely do the job.

Thanks, Jason! :)

]]> By: Jason High http://alevtina.commons.gc.cuny.edu/2011/01/12/a-show-of-hands-from-those-in-this-audience-of-one/#comment-14 Jason High Thu, 20 Jan 2011 19:51:25 +0000 http://alevtina.commons.gc.cuny.edu/?p=121#comment-14 Hi Alevtina,

I am a trainer at RefWorks and I saw your post. I’m glad to see your efforts to promote RefWorks usage. Maura and others who responded to the ILI listserv thread make a good point – showing how it creates bibliographies at the beginning is a good way to capture their attention and answer the “what’s in it for me?” question. It is also good to keep it simple, especially for those that are new to the research process. And if you show how to use it to capture references from the library catalog and other sources you subscribe to, it can drive usage of library resources.

If you’d like some ideas or materials to use such as suggested training outlines and workbooks feel free to drop me a line. I’m happy to help! You can reach me at jason.high (at) refworks-cos.com.

Good luck!
Jason High
RefWorks-COS

]]> By: Alevtina Verbovetskaya http://alevtina.commons.gc.cuny.edu/2011/01/12/a-show-of-hands-from-those-in-this-audience-of-one/#comment-11 Alevtina Verbovetskaya Thu, 13 Jan 2011 16:28:44 +0000 http://alevtina.commons.gc.cuny.edu/?p=121#comment-11 That’s what someone from the writing center said to me: “Just tell them that it will make their lives easier.” Which is funny because making the bibliography is easy (and even fun!) for me, so RefWorks actually creates more work for me >_< But I know that I'm in the minority and that most people hate the tedium of creating & listing citations.

Again, this is probably just a lack of confidence in my own teaching skills. I'm so afraid that they'll all be bored to tears in the classroom and walk out on me. (I had a dream — nay, nightmare! — that a class just up and left while I was mid-sentence :( Awful!) I’ll get over it soon :)

I’ll definitely be blogging my marketing & teaching efforts.

]]> By: Maura A. Smale http://alevtina.commons.gc.cuny.edu/2011/01/12/a-show-of-hands-from-those-in-this-audience-of-one/#comment-10 Maura A. Smale Thu, 13 Jan 2011 01:34:03 +0000 http://alevtina.commons.gc.cuny.edu/?p=121#comment-10 Fun is hard, esp. with RefWorks. :) But I’ve found that faculty are *really* interested even when you save the automagicalness for the end of the workshop. Importing citations from databases is another “oooh!” moment. It just saves so so so much time compared to the way many of us old fogies used to do it back in the day.

We haven’t really advertised RefWorks to students at City Tech so we don’t have many student users either. I’m not sure that we’re going to, though — I feel like most of our students aren’t doing the kind of in depth research that really lends itself to a citation management system. But maybe I’ll reach out to honors students in the future.

Let us know how the marketing and workshops go!

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