A strange new problem has arisen in the Research Reference Service experiment.
Vocational topics, I am learning, are a problem.
When I was in the classroom, I taught seniors twice. Both of those classes took place within my first two years of teaching. Those seniors had to participate in the senior project, meaning they had to choose a topic of interest (usually involving community service and/or a potential career), produce a product, and write an argumentative research paper thereon. Since I usually taught "lower" level courses (read: NOT the kids who get into Shakespeare), a huge chunk of those topics were related to what I call vocational subjects: car maintenance, welding, etc. Those students always came to me complaining that they couldn't find sources on their topics, either in the library or in the library's online databases. At the time, I chalked it up to laziness in research -- surely, they just weren't looking hard enough.
The first group of students to utilize the RRS were 9th Graders, writing informative papers for World History. Their topics were incredibly easy to research: Auschwitz, Cleopatra, Technology of Ancient Rome, the Cold War, etc... sources were practically jumping out at us and waving emphatically yelling, "Me! Me! Pick Me!" However, we next worked with a group of 11th graders, writing their "junior papers," a precursor to the senior project. And a LOT of those papers were on topics like HVAC systems, rebuilding diesel engines, installing car sound systems... just to give a few examples. We had NO print sources on any of the above in our collection; we had little to nothing from library databases. We barely rustled up enough to meet the bare minimum of their teacher's source requirement.
The plot thickens in the next installment. To be continued...
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