- Email: [email protected]
Cognitive Bias and the Discovery Layer
The Journal of Academic Librarianship 42 (2016) 191
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
The Journal of Academic Librarianship
Editorial
Cognitive Bias and the Discovery Layer
When I first began “doing” library instruction, one of the phenomena that was notable and annoying was that the first tool you taught the students was their favorite, the only one they remembered, their go-to choice. Back in those days, 1997–99, the prevailing wisdom was to start with the OPAC, that is, to start searching for what was locally available in the building, and then move outward, to the article databases, with the steps to locate the print journals (not much electronic full text in those days) by looping back to the catalog (this was before SFX, after all). And then on to any consortial catalogs or World Cat and to teach how to use Interlibrary Loan. What I noticed working at reference during those first two years was that students then wanted to use the OPAC for everything. If I had a dollar for every time I had to remind someone that the OPAC didn't have articles in it or only had our school's books in it, I'd be enjoying an early retirement. I saw a variation on this a few times over the years when we had to migrate to new systems. The “old” catalog was always better. When the state contract for the aggregator changed from Company X to Company Y, there was no consoling people, or reasoning with them, that Database Y had the same journals, or more journals, or better features. There is more than just anecdotal resistance to change here, though. These behaviors involve cognitive biases and can be explained by psychological theories, such as the status quo bias, where the tendency to want things to remain the same impacts decision making. One could argue that the tendencies to privilege the first tool learned is an example of the anchoring bias, defined as the tendency to rely too heavily on one piece of information, usually the first piece of information acquired. The mere exposure effect, where one maintains a preference for something just because of being familiar with it, could also be at play. I recently attended a conference devoted to the discovery system that is used by all members of a regional consortia. One of the lightning talks was titled as if it were going to focus on teaching with this tool in credit courses. What the talk was really about, though, was how they were only teaching the tool in the credit courses because they're refusing to teach it to first-year students in one-shot sessions for English composition because of its complexity. This discovery tool – not only the replacement for the OPAC, but also the gateway for seamlessly requesting materials from the other 38 consortia members, plus the
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.acalib.2016.03.004 0099-1333/© 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
tool that provides links to full-text articles from various database vendors – with its single search box and the faceted searching options that look familiar to anyone who has shopped for shoes, sweaters, or any merchandise with size and color choices – this discovery tool is too complex. Those first year students are taught an aggregator database from one of the big vendors. It was reported that the students love it, it works, they get their articles quickly since it's all full-text, it's easy to teach, easy to use, and so on. This particular assignment could be said to fall into the functional fixedness trap, keeping the library within a narrow, traditional role. During the question and answer period, someone gamely asked them didn't their students need books? Not for this class, not for these first-year students, we were assured. They need three peer-reviewed articles, that's it, nothing more. Everything else can wait for some other time. In this case, it sounds like all the English instructors at their institution have designed assignments requiring retrieval of fulltext research articles, and nothing but full-text research articles, offering some defense for the privileging of the single full-text article aggregator as the single pedagogical tool. In other words, they have built-in confirmation bias. But to refuse to show students the tool that provides them access to or information about holdings for books, media, government documents, e-books, print journal holdings, digitized collections and other items, like, for instance, full-text articles from a host of other vendors? To not even mention it because you think the screen is too complicated or you don't like how the results are laid out? To ignore it because you're angry and upset that the product is dynamic and fluid and continues to change, mostly improving but yes, sometimes taking a step backwards, but definitely making it impossible to keep static instructional handouts and tutorials fresh? Something is rotten in the state of discovery, and I don't think I'm just suffering from bias blind spot. Elizabeth Blakesley Washington State University, Pullman, WA, USA E-mail address: [email protected].
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
The Journal of Academic Librarianship
Editorial
Cognitive Bias and the Discovery Layer
When I first began “doing” library instruction, one of the phenomena that was notable and annoying was that the first tool you taught the students was their favorite, the only one they remembered, their go-to choice. Back in those days, 1997–99, the prevailing wisdom was to start with the OPAC, that is, to start searching for what was locally available in the building, and then move outward, to the article databases, with the steps to locate the print journals (not much electronic full text in those days) by looping back to the catalog (this was before SFX, after all). And then on to any consortial catalogs or World Cat and to teach how to use Interlibrary Loan. What I noticed working at reference during those first two years was that students then wanted to use the OPAC for everything. If I had a dollar for every time I had to remind someone that the OPAC didn't have articles in it or only had our school's books in it, I'd be enjoying an early retirement. I saw a variation on this a few times over the years when we had to migrate to new systems. The “old” catalog was always better. When the state contract for the aggregator changed from Company X to Company Y, there was no consoling people, or reasoning with them, that Database Y had the same journals, or more journals, or better features. There is more than just anecdotal resistance to change here, though. These behaviors involve cognitive biases and can be explained by psychological theories, such as the status quo bias, where the tendency to want things to remain the same impacts decision making. One could argue that the tendencies to privilege the first tool learned is an example of the anchoring bias, defined as the tendency to rely too heavily on one piece of information, usually the first piece of information acquired. The mere exposure effect, where one maintains a preference for something just because of being familiar with it, could also be at play. I recently attended a conference devoted to the discovery system that is used by all members of a regional consortia. One of the lightning talks was titled as if it were going to focus on teaching with this tool in credit courses. What the talk was really about, though, was how they were only teaching the tool in the credit courses because they're refusing to teach it to first-year students in one-shot sessions for English composition because of its complexity. This discovery tool – not only the replacement for the OPAC, but also the gateway for seamlessly requesting materials from the other 38 consortia members, plus the
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.acalib.2016.03.004 0099-1333/© 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
tool that provides links to full-text articles from various database vendors – with its single search box and the faceted searching options that look familiar to anyone who has shopped for shoes, sweaters, or any merchandise with size and color choices – this discovery tool is too complex. Those first year students are taught an aggregator database from one of the big vendors. It was reported that the students love it, it works, they get their articles quickly since it's all full-text, it's easy to teach, easy to use, and so on. This particular assignment could be said to fall into the functional fixedness trap, keeping the library within a narrow, traditional role. During the question and answer period, someone gamely asked them didn't their students need books? Not for this class, not for these first-year students, we were assured. They need three peer-reviewed articles, that's it, nothing more. Everything else can wait for some other time. In this case, it sounds like all the English instructors at their institution have designed assignments requiring retrieval of fulltext research articles, and nothing but full-text research articles, offering some defense for the privileging of the single full-text article aggregator as the single pedagogical tool. In other words, they have built-in confirmation bias. But to refuse to show students the tool that provides them access to or information about holdings for books, media, government documents, e-books, print journal holdings, digitized collections and other items, like, for instance, full-text articles from a host of other vendors? To not even mention it because you think the screen is too complicated or you don't like how the results are laid out? To ignore it because you're angry and upset that the product is dynamic and fluid and continues to change, mostly improving but yes, sometimes taking a step backwards, but definitely making it impossible to keep static instructional handouts and tutorials fresh? Something is rotten in the state of discovery, and I don't think I'm just suffering from bias blind spot. Elizabeth Blakesley Washington State University, Pullman, WA, USA E-mail address: [email protected].