SEAMK Talk: Supporting Students - Library Insights from SEAMK and Bern University of Applied Sciences
In this episode of the SEAMK TALK -podcast, host Tuula Ala-Hakuni from SEAMK Library welcomes guest Kira Burger, an information specialist from Bern University of Applied Sciences.
Tuula
Welcome to listen to the SEAMK Podcast. My name is Tuula and I work in the SEAMK Library as a coordinator. Today we have a guest from a Swiss library and therefore we will discuss all kinds of library matters, for example how the libraries can support the students in their studies and how University of Applied Sciences libraries in Switzerland and Finland differ from each other? Or do they actually differ that much? So welcome Kira to SEAMK and SEAMK Library, could you please introduce Yourself and the university and library where you work.
Kira
Yes, thank you Tuula for having me here. So I’m Kira. I’m an information specialist from Bern University of Applied Science in Switzerland. I work at the Department of Agricultural, Forest and Food Sciences HAFL. For now almost 4 1/2 years.
Tuula
OK, Bern University of Applied Sciences is a partner in institution of SEAMK. I imagine that that was one reason why you chose to come to Finland and Seinäjoki especially. Are there any other reasons which made you choose a library in Finland?
Kira
That’s of course right, because SEAMK is a partner institution of BFH. I chose that, but I also have never been to Finland, so I was curious how it is in Finland and also the library in Finland or mostly all in Scandinavia have quite a good reputation. That they are innovative and they live the 3rd place and I was curious about, is this really the case or is it just someone saying? And also of course, what are the differences between our universities or the similarities?
I wonder, Tuula, do you know something about Switzerland and or have you heard something in general about Switzerland or Swiss libraries?
Tuula
Well, Kira, I think all university libraries’ services, at least in Europe are quite similar because we have similar customer groups and that is students, teachers and researchers. But since there are many official languages in Switzerland, I know that library services are provided in many different languages. So Switzerland is a very multilingual society and so are are the libraries. That is what I know.
Kira
Yes, that’s quite right.
Tuula
Yeah. And our Finnish University of Applied Sciences libraries conducted a national user survey just about a month ago, and the majority of the respondents were students.
And I will tell you something about the results of of this survey. So our students considered library services to be important, which we are of course happy of. And they evaluated, for example, our service hours, our customer service facilities, online services, collections, information literacy education and open science services. And they thought that they were very important for their studies. And we are happy. So happy to hear that they gave us an overall score of 8.9 on a scale of zero to 10, where as in particular customer service received the highest ratings in terms of importance. And they thought that increased information literacy education and personalised guidance were important as well, and especially in the final stages of studies, that is normal. And this is what our information specialists do offer for our students. The students can book a consultation with an information specialist and can get help with finding suitable information sources. For example, for the assignments and thesis and they need help also in citing information sources. And in addition, here at SEAMK information literacy education is part of the students curriculum. It’s not everywhere in Finland, so our information specialist teach information seeking skills to our students. It belongs to their duties.
So, Kira, how do you see the situation in your library? Is it the same? So what and what kind of services do you offer to support students learning and what do you think? How could we support students learning and studies in the future even more?
Kira
I think we have quite a similar situation at BFH or at the HAFL library where I work. Information literacy is a very big part of our work, so my colleague and I, we are giving introductions or training courses to the students. We are also a part of the curriculum of all the four bachelor degrees we have and the two master’s degrees in the module scientific work. So that means we talk about the whole research process or literature search process to be clear and specific steps you need to do so that means from finding a research question to define the search terms perform a search in a database and how to procure the full text of course. And it’s also important to evaluate the results, of course. So we talk also about this because nowadays we have so much information going on in the Internet, but also in the databases you find sometimes so much result. So it’s important to evaluate the results of course. And on top of that, we are giving training courses to our students for the literature management system, Zotero, so that they can work with it and cite correctly and also easily because it’s quite a good programme. Like, it’s easy to use and it’s practical also.
And we are also, if we can say so, kind of a competence centre. I’m not sure if that’s the right translation for questions regarding citation for the students, because we have our own citation style at HAFL and sometimes there are questions regarding them and we are very happy to help them. And of course, physically we also have working places in the library. Unfortunately not that much, but yes, that’s the work we do. And for the future, I think AI is a topic that we have to discuss. Or yeah, has to be a part of our introductions, our training courses. And I would love that we could offer an introduction or training course to scientific writing, because I think sometimes it’s hard for the students to know how to write scientific, because it is kind of a different story than writing a letter or writing something like an e-mail. I would love if we could offer that to the students and well. Yeah, we will see if we could do that.
And how about you, Tuula? What do you think? How you could support here at SEAMK Library the learnings and studies from the students in the future.
Tuula
Well, here in SEAMK it has always been a priority that we offer courses on site as well as online. But in the library we can see how much help our students need when we offer library services and information literacy search. Therefore, the customer service and supporting students both at the library and online is a priority to us also in the future. So Finnish Universities of Applied Sciences offer nowadays degree programmes which students can complete entirely or partly online. For them, our electronic materials, e-books, e-journals articles and so on, all kind of databases ordered by the library are vital. The use of e-resources is also increasing among all students. So they will need them everywhere they are. They are always available wherever the students are. What do you think, Kira? How do the Swiss students or students at your university see the importance of electronic resources?
Kira
I think it’s hard to say how they use it and I would say it’s a big difference between our departments, what we have. I would say that, for example, the students of the Department of Health, they use quite a lot e-resources with the database like PubMed. They use it quite a lot than maybe rather with us at HAFL. But as we are increasing our e-resources, we buy more and more e-books and have access to more databases. I guess it’s everywhere the case and and it’s also a practical thing, I guess for the students to use them from home. When they are not at HAFL with us. And I think it’s also with the whole open access subject you find more and more on the Internet free available. So yeah, I think they are very good used, the electronic resources. But nevertheless, the books are still quite a topic for the students.
Tuula
Yeah, I think it’s quite the same here here in our university. We know that our healthcare students use them a lot and because maybe one reason for that is that there are many databases for them available. So there aren’t that many electronic resources for all the degree programmes which are which we offer. I think we also need to raise the issue of AI, artificial intelligence and its impact on library work and the way students search for information so we have probably both noticed in our work that students have started to use AI application like ChatGPT to search for information on the on the web. And just this week I heard in the news, for example, that it has been noted that Google searches have decreased on Apple devices and they think maybe because of these AI application which are used for searching information. So concerning AI from a library perspective, I think the use of AI focuses on its responsible use and the adoption of trusted AI tools to find relevant and reliable information, search information sources and of course guidance. It’s very important for like academic information searching. So how do you see AI already affecting and will affect the information literacy education in the future?
Kira
Well, AI is such a big topic. I think with AI regarding information literacy, there are opportunities, but there are also challenges.
Tuula
It is.
Kira
I would say. AI opens a lot of possibilities and can for example be used in the literature search process for a few step. So for example, if you are struggling with finding a research question or finding search terms for a database, I would say use an AI tool for an inspiration, but also think about what an AI tool gives you as an answer. Don’t just rely on that. As I said, for an inspiration, it’s perfect. As for example ChatGPT is because it’s a chatbot. I think the challenges are even bigger because it’s important to recognise that not every AI tool can everything. So ChatGPT cannot everything. Sorry to say that, but for example you should never search for sources in ChatGPT because it’s hallucinating the sources you get in ChatGPT. They are not existing, sometimes, of course, sometimes there is the case that he finds something with existing but and I think that’s the case where we can come in as a library, as giving in introductions to the students to say them, hey, take care there are different tools because for example if you want to search sources for your scientific work then use Semantic Scholar or Keenios Plus as you are using here at at SEAMK. Yeah, to find reliable sources and not ChatGPT so. And I also think that it is important to know for the students what is happening with the data you enter to an AI tool because somehow the AI tools need to be trained so and that happens with your data you are entering. And that I think is important. That we have, as universities, Universities of Applied Sciences kind of a licence to different tools. AI tools where the data is not used to the training as you have with Keenios Plus. So we have that with Copilot in Bern. And of course that’s for me the most important thing, always evaluate the information you get from an AI tool, because we know it’s not a person behind that, it’s a machine. It’s a logic. It’s only logical the answers you get. So always check the answers and not just copy paste them. And I think. It’s also a point where we can stick on. And for me, it’s also the point of sustainability and ethics with using AI tools. I mean, sustainability is such a big term in these days with climate change and all that. And I just had to look the numbers but a search query on ChatGPT usually consumes 2.92 Watt hours of electricity, while a normal Google search consumes around 0.3 Watt hours, so that is more than nine times the amount of energy consumed. Only one query on that ChatGPT. So yes and also I think the ethical aspect is just as important. The work of the so-called click workers, I mean they got not really paid for the work they do. They click on every for example on every image to say yet yes, that’s a lake. That’s a house that’s grass. For that you then get an answer of out of touch ChatGPT. And. As we don’t want to support fast fashion, I think we also have to think about that. Do we want to support that in a in a ethical way? So I’m not saying it’s forbidden to use AI. I think it could be or it is a practical tool in some ways. But maybe we have to think about. When do we want to use it? When makes it sense and when makes it sense to do a a proper search in Google or in a database for example. And I think that’s also our job, maybe in a way to sensitise the students about that. And what are your thoughts about? I talked a lot. What are your thoughts about AI and this whole topic regarding information literacy?
Tuula
Well Kira, I do agree with everything you said. It’s all there. So my thought exactly but we have noticed that AI includes very many points of views. And it’s a good tool sometimes where to use it. And then you told us that you must always evaluate and be responsible what you get. And of course we have lots of many quality databases, which we are both offering to our students. So they do exist still. And if you want to have a quality information sources then you can still use them as well. But I think the development is so fast that the information searches will be changing a lot in the in the future. And let’s see how it changes our work as well.
Kira
Mm-hmm. Absolutely. Yes. I’m curious what is coming with AI also with our library catalogue maybe how they are implementing AI as a research assistant, I mean, quite a few databases already have that. We work with Web of Science, and I know that there is an AI search assistant. We haven’t used it yet, but yeah, we’ll see where it goes.
Tuula
Yeah, that’s true what you said, that our library platforms already use AI for producing metadata for our collections, our books and so on. So everything changes so fast, you have to be around and be aware of the new things all the time.
Kira
Yes, I don’t know if you know the website. I think it’s called, there’s an AI for that, something like that. And there you find a huge list of AI tools with making pictures, music, chatbots, whatever you can imagine. And that’s insane how this is growing every day. So yeah.
Tuula
Maybe I think this is a subject which we could be talking about for hours.
Kira
Yes.
Tuula
I suppose but.
Kira
We have to move on.
Tuula
But yeah, we have to move on. So you have now spent three days getting to know our library and its services. Have you already noticed any differences between our library and yours?
Kira
I would say the biggest difference is the division of tasks you have in your team. You have information specialists and you have the information service advisors. And we do not necessarily make this distinction here. So in my team, we are a team of three and one apprentice. Almost everyone is doing everything except for the introductions and training courses. But other than that, I think we are quite similar. We yeah, I would say. I thought that it would be more different.
Tuula
- Yes, I do think so too. Because in the beginning I already spoke about the similarities in the University of Applied Sciences libraries. Because of the target groups which we have and customer groups there, they are quite the same. So can you give me and us an example of a best practise you’re going to bring back to your own library from here SEAMK.
Kira
I really liked the idea of the Tietomessut.
Tuula
Information fair, yes.
Kira
Information fair. I tried to say it in Finnish.
Tuula
Good.
Kira
I could attend with Leena on Tuesday. So where the students prepared the topic, and then they designed like a stand, the place, a poster and then had kind of the role of a teacher and explained that to her, to their colleagues of them. So I think that’s a great idea of changing the roles. And some kind being a teacher at some point. And I will definitely take that back to Bern to BFH. And maybe somehow we can manage something like that. I would really love that. Yeah, I think that’s best example I have.
Tuula
Oh, glad to hear that the fair was successful for you as well.
So, Kira, thank you so much for participating in our podcast. It seems that libraries work in a very similar way, although there are some differences in procedures maybe and the surrounding organisation and its activities also have a big impact on library services. And like we just talked, artificial intelligence will have a significant impact on our work as well.
Thank you, Kira.
Kira
Thank you so much for having me. So, merci vilmal, as I would say in Swiss German.
Tuula
Thank you.