Your weekly links to interesting stories from the world of libraries and archives, books and publishing, and information science.
Got a hot tip? Please send it to Kate.Cushon@uregina.ca (tipsters will be credited!).
Here is a breakdown of how students are expected to write a research essay, as told from an instructor’s perspective, aimed at the librarians and library staff who might help the student in the research.
The “culture of helplessness” among students, and what it means for staff and faculty at universities.
How to use skills from an experienced salesperson during a reference encounter.
The “millennial side hustle,” and how universities are preparing students for a world in which stable employment is not always the norm. (Features the University of Regina’s UR Guarantee Program!)
Finally, for fun: the library at Grey Gardens is apparently just as eccentric as one would expect:
“In a sunroom off the living room, we discovered a trove of cloth-covered adventure and romance books tucked onto low shelves: mostly from the twenties and thirties, they had in many cases swollen to twice their size, their pages thickened with sea air and salt and decades of gin-and-tonic fumes. These books we left alone: they were less for reading than beholding as disheveled, candy-colored artifacts, and somehow they pleased me more than the others.”