What Genres can Librarians Teach?
In the composition classroom students learn how to write various academic and popular genres. Likewise, the library classroom can prepare students to recognize the various genres they will likely find while researching. In addition to the genres returned from a search performed in a discovery tool, Andersen (2009)[1] described a second important layer of genres students must learn: the information systems themselves. To illustrate how we can think about this second layer of genre, Andersen used the example of a digital library. For many researchers, the digital library is a recognizable space; it is known what to expect in and what can be accomplished by using the platform. Thus, the digital library is typified, and a researcher’s approach to the system is rhetorical as it contains socially meaningful signifiers that make up a genre to help a researcher navigate the space. Perceiving library databases, catalogs, and other information containers as rhetorical and typified provides another avenue of inquiry for us as librarians to pursue as we teach information literacy skills.
Leeder (2016)[2] found that genres associated with online resources were misidentified by undergraduate student study participants 60% of the time.
Library discovery search tools have changed drastically since the days of the card catalog. Today, electronic library catalogs often default to a search function combing through millions of records to return thousands of results spanning dozens of genres (see figure to the left for an example). Contemporary discovery systems provide students with more information choice than ever before, but by returning such a broad spectrum of results, it becomes not only useful but necessary for librarians to assist students in recognizing and understanding these genres of information.
I believe adopting genre pedagogies can become a method for librarians to assist students in knowing when to use which genre during their process of research.
