Drifting through Research:

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Drifting through Research:

How the Bibliodérive Inspired New Approaches

to Information Literacy at Flaxman Library

Mackenzie Salisbury,School of the Art Institute of Chicago Nick Ferreira,School of the Art Institute of Chicago

Abstract—Abibliodériveis the application of the Situationist International practice of thedérive

or“drift”to the realm of research, libraries, and archives. The Flaxman Library (School of the Art Institute of Chicago) bibliodérive event in February 2015 was a collection of open-ended actions, or situations, designed to challenge students to think non-linearly about research. Using approaches similar to the bibliodérive event, Flaxman librarians have experimented with new methods of li-brary instruction that advance these generative and serendipitous modes of research. This arti-cle describes how librarians incorporated these practices along with the ACRLFrameworkinto instruction.

b a c k g r o u n d o f t h e d é r i v e

Librarians are always looking for new and innovative ways to approach research with faculty and students. Art and design colleges such as the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) are uniquely situated to experiment with non-traditional research methods as disciplines intersect and are expressed in a multitude of art forms. His-torically, librarians have used the standards and methods outlined in theInformation Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education,1developed by the Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL) to enrich research sessions. After the inspiring event of the bibliodérive, the SAIC’s John M. Flaxman librarians were able to reverse

Mackenzie Salisbury is reference and instruction librarian, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois; [email protected]. Nick Ferreira is reference and instruction librarian, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois; [email protected].

Art Documentation: Journal of the Art Libraries Society of North America, vol. 36 (spring 2017)

1.Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education, Association of College & Research Libraries, http:// www.ala.org/acrl/standards/informationliteracycompetency. The standards were rescinded in June 2016 and will be re-moved from the ALA website in July 2017.

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this process, allowing the theoretical practices of the Situationist International to in-form the way in which we guide students through the research process.

The Situationist International (SI) began in 1957 as a group of avant-garde artists and intellectuals from across Europe, although most of the well-known participants were in France. Their practices stemmed from ideas within the surrealist and dada movements, including the famous“dada excursions,” theﬁrst of which took place in 1921 at the Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre Church in Paris. Organized by André Breton, this was an“act of urban dérive, in which people met at a location that hadno reason for existing. . .and were encouraged to wander freely around the area, [exposing] par-ticipants to theﬂip side of modernization.”2

In a similar vein, Guy Debord, founder of the Lettrist International (LI), practiced the art of wandering through urban spaces, which he called“dérive”or“drift.”Debord became a central member of the SI and forged a new practice of psychogeography,

“the study of the speciﬁc effects of the geographical environment (whether consciously organized or not) on the emotions and behavior of individuals.”3_{The core concept was}

to merge the ideas of investigating space, as practiced in geography, with intangible emotions experienced within a situation, supporting a sense of discovery4_{(Figure 1).} “Theory of the Dérive,”published in 1958, serves as a guide for this psychogeographic practice, focusing on the dérive through a given space or situation:

In a dérive one or more persons during a certain period drop their usual mo-tives for movement and action . . .and let themselves be drawn by the attrac-tions of the terrain and the encounters theyﬁnd there. . .the dérive includes both this letting go and its necessary contradiction: the domination of psycho-geographical variations by the knowledge and calculation of their possibilities.5

o v e r v i e w o f b i b l i o d é r i v e e v e n t

A bibliodérive is the application of the Situationist International practice of the dérive to the realm of research, libraries, and archives. The Flaxman Library bibliodérive was a collection of generative, open-ended actions or situations taken to destabilize research practices geared towards an expected product or outcome—the gathering of information merely to support extant ideas and thought structures. It was a disrup-tion in the tradidisrup-tional use value assigned to the library, the archive, informadisrup-tion stor-age, and even to the very concept of research itself. The interactive, participatory, all-day event was open to all SAIC students, faculty, and staff.

The Flaxman Library bibliodérive originated from talks with then SAIC dean of graduate studies Rebecca Duclos. In 2011, as a research fellow at the Gail and

Ste-2. Julian Jason Haladyn,Boredom and Art: Passions of the Will to Boredom(Oxford: Zero Books, 2015), 144. 3.“Deﬁnitions,”Situationist International Online, s.v.“psychogeography,”http://www.cddc.vt.edu/sionline/si /deﬁnitions.html.

4. Guy Debord,”Introduction to a Critique of Urban Geography,”Situationist International Online, http://www.cddc.vt .edu/sionline/presitu/geography.html.

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phen A. Jarislowsky Institute for Studies in Canadian Art, Duclos organized a biblio-dérive with Canadian libraries and institutions as part of her curatorial project Com-pulsive Browse. The original bibliodérive was described as“an alternative, library and archive-based investigatory strategy designed speciﬁcally to unhinge participants from reaching expected research outcomes.”6_{When Duclos began her tenure at SAIC, she}

immediately started working on ways to involve herself with the library and speciﬁ -cally how SAIC and the Flaxman Library could host a bibliodérive. Those early talks with Duclos led to a commitment from the Flaxman Library and the SAIC Faculty Senate Library Committee to host a bibliodérive of our own in February 2015. This gave us one year to plan the event.

The library started to contact faculty already teaching the ideas of chance, walking, archiving, and alternative forms of research. Library staff also met monthly with the library committee and held open meetings during class breaks for the SAIC commu-nity at large. In addition, the library reached out to any faculty members teaching Fri-day classes (the event was scheduled on a FriFri-day) to encourage them to participate in one of the events we dubbed“situations”or to suggest a situation themselves. To help with the workload, the Dean’s Ofﬁce was able to hire a graduate assistant, Elena Ailes, who devoted ten hours a week to facilitating the project. Ailes contacted media cen-ters, received permissions from administration, and helped with design and art direc-tion. Ultimately, the event was largely student- and faculty-driven, which led to a wide variety of situations, events, and participants, but also meant there were a lot of mov-ing parts.

6.“Compulsive Browse Colloquium, February 18–20, 2011,”Fofa Gallery: Concordia University, 2011, http:// fofagallery.concordia.ca/oldsite/ehtml/TheCompulsiveBrowse.htm.

Figure 1.A 2004 poster announcing a large-scale dérive in London, led by a psychogeographical society. Image by Karenkarnak. Source: Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sex -majik-2004. Creative Commons CC0.

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The day of the event wasﬁlled with faculty- and student-designed situations as well as situations organized by the library for those who were tentative and/or new to the idea. The library’s main situation was a deck of cards with“prompts”that presented users with low-stress ways to involve themselves (Figure 2). Examples of the prompts included:

· Pick a paint chip sample color from the basket. Find ten objects in the library that match that color. Write a poem. Make a photocopy collage. Or call your mother and describe what you’ve found.

· Pullﬁve orange books from the library’s shelves. Create a concrete poem using one line of text from each book.

Other events were being held concurrently within the library, including a speed-dating for research event during which students interviewed partners about their re-search interests and then found materials in the library’s collection for them (Figure 3); an I-Ching inspired tea room (Figure 4); and a performative lecture on the history of the Situationists by SAIC faculty member Simon Anderson, complete with Anderson ripping pages out of a personal copy ofSociety of the Spectacleand offering each mem-ber of the audience a page (Figure 5).

Documentation of the event was provided by a professional photographer hired by the library for marketing purposes. The library also took advantage of user-generated content by encouraging participants to add the #bibliodérive hashtag to their Insta-gram posts. The images were then used on the library’s website and on the biblio-dérive Tumblr page. In addition to photographs, the library hired the school’s media team to produce a video of the performances that took place during the event.

Figure 2.Bibliodérive deck of cards. 2015. Photograph by Tony Favarula. Please see the online edition ofArt

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We assessed this event both qualitatively as well as quantitatively. The number of visitors to the library was double from what is expected normally on a Friday in the spring semester, using the library’s gate count as a measure. Students’feedback was very positive, as they seemed genuinely interested and engaged with the situations that

Figure 4.I-Ching tea situation. 2015. Photograph by Tony Favarula. Please see the online edition ofArt Docu-mentationfor a color version of this image.

Figure 3.Speed dating research. 2015. Photograph by Tony Favarula. Please see the online edition ofArt

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occurred throughout the day. Many students and faculty claimed ownership of these situations, and having a good mix of both types of participants exceeded the library staff’s expectations. Perhaps the greatest success was the alternative approaches to re-search that the Flaxman librarians were able to take away from the event and incorpo-rate into library instruction sessions.

d é r i v e

1 i n s t r u c t i o n

The success of the bibliodérive illuminated intersections between these alternative modes of research with SAIC’s core values and the ACRLFramework for Information Literacy in Higher Education.7_{By highlighting these correlations from each academic}

structure, we were able to reinvigorate our traditional information literacy instruction sessions with elements found throughout the bibliodérive.

Active learning components in library instruction sessions have become standard in academic libraries; this is demonstrated in articles by Julia E. Rodriguez;8_Alanna

Ross and Christine Furnow;9Gail Gradowsky, Loanne Snavely, and PaulaDempsey;10 and Katherine Strober Dabbour,11among others. While the activities we incorporated

Figure 5.Simon Anderson performance. 2015. Photograph by Tony Favarula. Please see the online edition ofArt Documentationfor a color version of this image.

7.Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education, Association of College & Research Libraries, adopted Janu-ary 11, 2016, http://www.ala.org/acrl/standards/ilframework.

8. Julia E. Rodriguez,“A Massively Flipped Class: Designing and Implementing Active Learning Information Literacy Instruction for a Large Enrollment Course,”Reference Services Review44, no. 1 (2016): 4–20.

9. Alanna Ross and Christine Furno,“Active Learning in the Library Instruction Environment: An Exploratory Study,”

portal: Libraries and the Academy11, no. 4 (2011): 953–70.

10. Gail Gradowksi, Loanne Snavely, and Paula Dempsey, eds.,Designs for Active Learning: A Sourcebook of Classroom Strategies for Information Education(Chicago: American Library Association, 1998).

11. Katherine Strober Dabbour.“Applying Active Learning Methods to the Design of Library Instruction for a Fresh-man Seminar,”College & Research Libraries58, no. 4 (1997): 299–308.

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into our instruction sessions are certainly active, they do not necessarily conform to the prescribed research techniques traditionally included or described in this type of literature. These articles suggest activities and educational models for students to help them understand traditional research methods, whereas the bibliodérive and the in-struction methods that arose from this event suggest that students should question the very idea of research itself.

In addition to rejuvenating our one-shot instruction, we were able to articulate and align these sessions with SAIC’s core values.12While we found correlation to all of the core values, the ideas supported in the values“We are Explorers,” “Meaning and mak-ing are inseparable,”and“We are artists and scholars”recognize the value of exper-imentation, playfulness, invention, and thoughtfulness in higher education. By com-bining SAIC’s core values with the alternative practices of the bibliodérive, and then aligning them with the ACRL Framework, we were able to formulate concrete ap-proaches to new information literacy sessions.

The ACRLFramework, ofﬁcially adopted in January 2016, shifts its focus from con-crete learning goals and outcomes toward broader foundational concepts in which one can access or“frame”information literacy. Sue Samson and Megan Stark sum-marize theFramework well:

The ACRLFramework for Information Literacy for Higher Education(2015) is“ or-ganized into six frames, each consisting of a concept central to information lit-eracy (threshold concepts), a set of knowledge practices (demonstrations of ways in which learners can increase their understanding of these information literacy concepts), and a set of dispositions (the affective, attitudinal, or valuing dimen-sion of learning)”that together comprise“conceptual understandings that orga-nize many other concepts and ideas about information, research, and scholar-ship into a coherent whole.”13

Of the six frames, we chose to focus on three frames that aligned well with our students’needs and SAIC’s core values. The frame “Information Creation as Pro-cess”is used in “Remix: Collections,” a lesson plan that incorporates browsing the physical collection and the production of a zine crafted by student collaboration. The“Research as Inquiry”frame is addressed in“Down the Rabbit Hole,”in which students use Google Images as an entry point for their research to ask questions; this lesson plan encourages undetermined results. The frame“Searching as Strategic Ex-ploration”maps directly to our lesson plan“Drift through Print Materials”that asks students to browse and recognize the value of serendipity. Each of these frames en-compasses knowledge practices or dispositions that we felt were easily attainable, and they lent themselves to the alternative practices seen in the bibliodérive. The

knowl-12.“We are explorers”;“Meaning and making are inseparable”;“We are artists and scholars”;“Chicago”;“We make history.”About: Core Values, SAIC: School of the Art Institute of Chicago, 2012, http://www.saic.edu/about/corevalues/. 13. Sue Samson and Megan Stark,“Framework for Information Literacy,”Maureen and Mike Mansﬁeld Library, Uni-versity of Montana, December 2016, http://www.lib.umt.edu/services/info-lit/framework.php.

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edge practices and dispositions all reinforce the ideas of exploration,ﬂexibility, and alternative perspectives when researching—ideas that are at the core of the biblio-dérive.

l e s s o n p l a n s

D R I F T T H R O U G H P R I N T M A T E R I A L S

Browsing the library stacks is one of the most important ways students can learn to expand their research.14In this lesson, we ask the students to look for not only the materials that they have identiﬁed, but also to look for materials that may or may not be directly related to the topic they are researching. By casting a wider net that includes a variety of material types and topics, we then encourage students to make their own connections between materials (Figure 6). Similar to the practice of mind mapping or brainstorming, this helps students to look at their topic from perspectives that would otherwise be lost. The approach falls squarely in line with many of the ACRL frames, speciﬁcally resonating with one of the dispositions within the sixth frame“Searching as Strategic Exploration”:“Learners who are developing their infor-mation literate abilities recognize the value of browsing and other serendipitous meth-ods of information gathering.”15

14. Kim Martin.“Creating Context from Curiosity: The Role of Serendipity in the Research Process of Historians in Physical and Digital Environments”(PhD diss., University of Western Ontario, 2016), http://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd/3733/.

15.“Searching as Strategic Exploration,”Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education, http://www.ala.org /acrl/standards/ilframework#exploration.

Figure 6.Example of resources pulled in the dérive. 2016. Photograph by Mackenzie Salisbury. Please see

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Dérive (Drift): Student Instructions

1. Search the library collection online for books and articles that are conceptually and/or formally related to the artist’s work and your proposed project.

2. Go to the stacks and pull at least one book about the artist or subject that relates to your project.

3. Count 10 books in either direction and pull that book, pick that or another book in the vicinity.

4. Go to the pictureﬁle and choose an image or images related to your project. Photocopy, scan, or otherwise reproduce image.

5. Search the CD collection for audio material that in some way relates directly or indirectly to your research artist/project. Check out this CD, listen to it, and de-termine how you might use it in your presentation or artwork.

6. Stretch the envelope; be creative and playful with your research. Make connec-tions that may otherwise be overlooked by conventional research methodologies. Learning outcomes:

1. Students recognize the value of browsing a variety of materials. 2. Students make connections and articulate similarities and differences.

D O W N T H E R A B B I T H O L E : W E A V I N G T H R O U G H O N L I N E R E S O U R C E S

Many students feel most comfortable starting their research process online. In this lesson, we focus on the digital resources available to students, making them aware of their own information-seeking behavior. We begin the search in the familiar Google world, allowing us to talk about the beneﬁts and drawbacks of this kind of searching (and we may discuss better approaches to Google searching as well). Students then work with a randomly assigned result, setting the students up to“consider research as open-ended exploration and engagement with information”16as described in the“Research as Inquiry”frame’s disposition. This open-ended string of results asks students to be aware of their resources, to see and make the connections where they exist, and it show-cases the differences between library resources and search engines.

Rabbit Hole: Student Instructions

1. Open a browser, do a Google Search for an artist or practice—click on the 4th result in the list.

2. Find a name (other than the authors) or reference to another person or place (within the article or works cited).

16.“Research as Inquiry,”Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education, http://www.ala.org/acrl/standards /ilframework#inquiry.

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3. Search for this name in the library “search almost everything”—reﬁne your search to“full text online & magazines.”

4. Select any article of interest.

5. Look in the same magazine edition/vol./issue andﬁnd an additional article. 6. Identify the subject of this second article (either by looking at the tags or reading

the abstract).

7. Search in Google Images for the subject (Figures 7–8).

8. Partner up, summarize the path of resources you found, and describe what con-nections are made between each resource.

Learning goals:

1. Students will be able to locate citation information (i.e., article title vs. magazine title)

2. Students will articulate how resources are connected (i.e., subject matter, au-thor, etc.)

R E M I X : C O L L E C T I O N S

Traditional information literacy instruction rarely invites students to become con-tent creators. Utilizing instruction-based art from conceptual artists such as Yoko Ono and Sol Lewitt, we invite students to approach the library resources as source material, moving beyond the typical research paper. During this exercise, students use the catalog and article databases to ﬁnd source material to create“blackout

po-Figure 7.“Civil War photography.”Google Image Search. Screenshot. http://tinyurl.com/jdc6lv5. Accessed

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ems” (Figure 9). Working with partners, students then remix their partner’s selec-tion, creating an ideal space to have discussions regarding sources, remix, and appro-priation. Using the frame“Information Creation as a Process,”we are able to promote the ability to“accept the ambiguity surrounding the potential value of information cre-ation expressed in emerging formats”17_{in a creatively unique way.}

Remix: Student Instructions

1. You will work with a partner on this project.

2. Find a piece of writing that pertains to the remix project you have been work-ing on.

3. One of you willﬁnd a book and one of you willﬁnd a journal article.

4. Print or photocopy one page from either your book or journal article—scale each of your selections toﬁt on one half of the 8.5”11”piece of paper provided. 5. Use black markers to block out portions of your partner’s selection.

6. Glue your edited partner’s text to the paper provided (it has a line on it so pick a side)

Figure 8.Searching Google Images using JPG image URL upload from the web. Screenshot. http://tinyurl

.com/zdqfjlr. Accessed August 30, 2016. Please see the online edition ofArt Documentationfor a color

version of this image.

17.“Information Creation as a Process,”Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education, http://www.ala.org /acrl/standards/ilframework#process.

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7. Photocopy the page with both of your edited selections. 8. Give this to your instructor.

Remix: Instructor Tips

1. Once students give you their completed pages, you are almost ready to make the zine (Figure 10).

2. Either make front and back covers yourself or have students whoﬁnish early make them on the half-letter template pages. This will add 2 pages to yourﬁnal count.

3. Make sure theﬁnal number of pages is divisible by 4. In other words if you have 13 students and you include the 2 pages for front and back cover, you’ll need to make 1 more page. You could make a list of students who participated or a brief introduction or leave it blank; it’s entirely up to you.

4. Finally, take your pages and photocopy them double sided. The only pages where order matters is the cover or if you had to add a list of participants or blank pages. We would recommend adding them on the inside back covers.

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Learning goals:

1. Students will utilize a variety of types of library resources.

2. Students will understand how to navigate the library catalog and one search.

m o v i n g f o r wa r d

These new lesson plans were piloted in the 2015/2016 academic year. In the future, we hope to gain more participation from faculty and to develop different ways to in-corporate the concepts of serendipity and experimentation into our research and ori-entation sessions. During the next bibliodérive event, scheduled for February 2017, we anticipate that the new instructors, staff, and students will generate just as many ideas and excitement. We are focusing the events around concepts related to student ownership, empowering them to understand and question traditional structures they may experience. In addition, we are consciously including individuals from outside of the SAIC community, such as practicing artists, activists, and other interested li-braries, for a fresh perspective.

Figure 10.Sample spread from student-created zine. 2016. Photograph by Nick Ferreira. Please see the

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In support of SAIC’s core values, the Flaxman librarians hope to align themselves more closely with SAIC’s undergraduate“Academic Spine.”Currently, all incoming freshman and transfer students are required to complete a library orientation and re-search session during theirﬁrst-year Research Studio classes. The Academic Spine, a three-course sequence required for all undergraduate degrees, is the follow up to this prerequisite course and includes Sophomore Seminar, Professional Practices, and Capstone.18_{Each of these courses has speci}_ﬁ_{c goals with elements of information}

lit-eracy throughout. We intend to use the ACRLFramework, as well as elements from the bibliodérive, to highlight how the library can facilitate many of these goals.

Graduate studio classes are another area in which we would like to expand our ser-vices. Taking a more non-traditional route, we hope to partner with key faculty to bet-ter understand and support graduate students’needs both in the studio as well as in their information-seeking behaviors.

Finally, assessment of these sessions has been difﬁcult, as the nature of the class is to approach research in a new way. Devising a way to assess what students learn, be-yond the qualitative feedback from instructors, is the next step in our process. Work-ing with faculty and the ACRLFramework as a guide, we hope to identify the most useful aspects of each lesson and determine how to measure its success and impact. Ideally, we would be able to incorporate an assessment technique equally as experi-mental as the approaches themselves, maintaining the true nature of the bibliodérive. The bibliodérive proved to be a great event for our library and a catalyst for further exploration within the library itself. Using the ideas of serendipity and exploration in library research has uncovered uses of our collections that otherwise would have gone unnoticed. We hope that future bibliodérives continue to inspire the SAIC commu-nity to think differently about research practices.

18.“Academic Spine,”SAIC: School of the Art Institute of Chicago, http://www.saic.edu/academics/departments /academicspine/.