Make Syllabi Work for You! Tools and Methods for Liaison Librarians
Syllabi analyses have long been used by librarians to inform collection development and information literacy instruction. However, time-intensive manual syllabi analyses have only been viable in smaller institutions with dedicated librarian capacity. Community college librarians, who tend to serve large institutions with limited capacity, have been unable to benefit from this approach. I collaborated with liaison librarians at Portland Community College (PCC) to develop an accessible and automated syllabi analysis method. I successfully identified and customized an open-source text mining tool to create PCC-specific query templates, and developed detailed documentation to empower librarians to use and customize the tool themselves.
Project sponsored by: Portland Community College
Project participants:
Andrea Berg
MLIS Online