Thill

Obviously I'm not saying we just have to be paper pushers -- just pushing out whatever it is the student wants, Thill says.

Study: College students rarely use librarians' expertise 2011

"They have big aspirations but they're at the early innings in terms of their hardware strategy," said Brent Thill , an analyst at UBS Securities.

Oracle Displays Resilience Ben Worthen 2011

Librarians and teaching faculty certainly have an obligation to encourage good, thorough research, says Thill, but they also have a responsibility to serve students -- and that means understanding the limitations of library idealism in practice, and acting pragmatically when necessary.

Study: College students rarely use librarians' expertise 2011

IdealismPart of the challenge for faculty in learning to serve students more effectively might be adjusting their expectations to the realities of what students already know -- and can be reasonably expected to learn -- in the space of a given assignment, says Thill, the humanities librarian at Northeastern Illinois.

Study: College students rarely use librarians' expertise 2011

This is treading on treacherous ground, and Thill knows it.

Study: College students rarely use librarians' expertise 2011

If we quietly hope to convert all students to the liberal ideals of higher education, we may miss opportunities to connect with a pragmatic student body, wrote Mary Thill, a humanities librarian at Northeastern Illinois.

Study: College students rarely use librarians' expertise 2011

Librarians often have to walk that line between giving a person a fish and teaching her how to fish, proverbially speaking, says Thill.

Study: College students rarely use librarians' expertise 2011

In her contribution to the ERIAL tome, called "Pragmatism and Idealism in the Academic Library," Thill wrote about the tension between library pragmatism -- the desire to satisfy the minimum requirements of a research assignment -- and library idealism, which glorifies the tedious unearthing and meticulous poring-over of texts.

Study: College students rarely use librarians' expertise 2011

Thill says she does not think "satisfice" should be a dirty word.

Study: College students rarely use librarians' expertise 2011

Showing students the pool and then shoving them into the deep end is more likely to foster despair than self-reliance, Thill wrote.

Study: College students rarely use librarians' expertise 2011