Breakout Session 2

In Search of Learning Communities:
Librarians and Faculty Partnering for Change

UCSC's NetTrail:
Academic Partnerships for Online Literacy


Ann Hubble
Electronic Information Resources Librarian
Science Library, UC Santa Cruz

Deborah Murphy
Instruction Coordinator
McHenry Library, UC Santa Cruz


ANN HUBBLE and Deborah Murphy described what it was like to work on UCSC's NetTrail. A follow-up project to the 1997 All University Conference, NetTrail was launched by a team of UCSC developers from the library, the humanities division, linguistics, computer science, Porter College, and communication and technology services.
A campus-wide, web-based computer literacy course, NetTrail is made up of four modules that help students learn to use the Web, to use e-mail and newsgroups, to negotiate online library resources, and to understand netiquette. It can be viewed at www2.ucsc.edu/nettrail/master.
"It became clear that if librarians had not been on that team, the students and the institution would have really missed out," said Hubble. Students had high usage of and gave positive feedback about the library module. This surprised Hubble's non-librarian colleagues on the team and, she noted, improved the library's image.
Hubble and Murphy were realistic about the time it takes from their existing jobs to maintain NetTrail. "For now, NetTrail isn't Everest. It's a one mile nature trail bringing up the trailing edge of information literacy for students."

Linda Salem
University of Redlands


Annual Conference Highlights