Zoombrarian: Using Zoom to provide personalized database instruction

Abstract

I was recently enrolled in an excellent evidenced-based nursing course. My classmates were nursing educators. None of them were librarians. As part of the course, one of the university’s medical librarians gave us a PubMed searching lesson. In my rare role as a student of database searching rather than as a librarian, I had an epiphany.

Passively watching a librarian search a database is so incredibly boring and hard to follow that even I checked out. She perfectly executed the kind of PubMed demonstration we all regularly provide for classes, and there was nothing egregiously incorrect about her presentation. Experiencing the lesson from the other side of the virtual desk, however, sharply revealed to me how ineffectual this method of instruction is. I resolved never to teach that way again.