Jakob Nielsen, widely recognized as one of the world’s leading experts on website usability, usually addresses content and interface design issues in his Alertbox columns. In a recent column however, he provided some rather different advice for educators. Too often, he claimed, students are taught how to use specific versions of software. That’s certainly important for enabling students to use software to complete course assignments. The problem, pointed out Nielsen, is that instructors need to spend more time on deeper conceptual skills about computing both for when they enter the workforce and 10 to 15 years beyond that. He said:

Teaching life-long computer skills in our schools offers further benefit in that it gives students insights that they’re unlikely to pick up on their own. In contrast, as software gets steadily easier to use, anyone will be able to figure out how to draw a pie chart. People will learn how to use features on their own, when they need them — and thus have the motivation to hunt for them. It’s the conceptual things that get endlessly deferred without the impetus of formal education.

Where this column gets even more interesting is when he discusses search engines and information retrieval. If we can agree that search is going to change significantly in the next 10 years, then the value of teaching students how to formulate good search strategies, how to judge search results relevancy, and how to be adept at using multiple search engines that offer different technical features is going to be critical knowledge for today’s students. For students, these skills transcend knowing which search engine offers a certain feature or how to manipulate the search buttons. Temple University librarians are experts in understanding how electronic research systems, both the many commercial subscription databases provided by the library and free internet search engines, function and their underlying mechanics. They are knowledgeable about the appropriate conceptual skills needed to obtain high quality research results with these resources. We encourage faculty to seek out our subject expert librarians for assistance in developing assignments that will help students to build the critical conceptual research skills that will take them through their college years and well into their time in the workplace. –Steven Bell

Many New York Times readers were disappointed when the Times took away free access to editorials and commentaries and converted this content into the subscription-only TimesSelect. Well those of us who attend and work at higher education institutions are getting a break from the Times. They recently announced that as of March 13 students and faculty with an “edu” email address would be eligible to get free access to TimesSelect. From the press release:

Beginning on March 13, subscriptions to TimesSelect will be available for free to all registered college students and faculty with a .edu in their e-mail addresses. TimesSelect is NYTimes.com’s paid offering that provides exclusive access to 22 columnists of The Times and the International Herald Tribune as well as an array of other services, including access to The Times’s archives, advance previews of various sections and tools for tracking and storing news and information. Current student subscribers will receive pro-rated refunds for their previously paid subscriptions. College students interested in registering for free TimesSelect subscriptions should go towww.nytimes.com/university for more information.

Since the registration form provides options for only students or faculty, this does leave some questions for the rest of us. Are computer services, library, writing center, and other institutional personnel eligible for the complimentary access to TimesSelect? What about alumni who may have an institutional email address from the .edu domain? So far there is no word from the Times on these matters, so for now it may be best to review the registration information when deciding how to proceed.

While having access to the current editorials and commentaries is a tremendous benefit to faculty and students, we recommend that when you need to search the archives of the New York Times you use the library’s version of the archive rather than the Times’ own version (now also being made freely available to faculty and students). The ProQuest Historical Newspaper database offers the full-text of the New York Times from 1851 through 2003. Not only is the search system more robust and functional than the Times’ own interface, but the ProQuest version offers more text, such as classified advertisements. In addition, the Times has placed limits on the number of documents that can be retrieved from the archive. There are no limits for Temple faculty and students when using the Library’s ProQuest Historical Newspaper database.

–Steven Bell