The paper and its video manifestation explore what’s known as the “Theory/Practice Gap,” that is, a perceived disconnect between theories taught in library schools and the practical work of librarianship. In my opinion, both the paper and its multimedia translation contain essential insights for LIS students who often have strong opinions on these matters. To explain, educators in Library and Information Science programs teach and champion theories, concepts, and models of information behavior, while students in the video plead for a different kind of training: “Please, please, just teach us something practical!” Overcoming this long-standing tension between LIS instructors and students, the video has a happy ending in which the LIS newcomers discover the relevance of the information behavior theories to their professional practice. 

VanScoy et al’s study has an unusual and innovative method that is illustrated clearly in the video. They conduct a card-sorting exercise and interview with 20 public librarians in the United States and Slovenia. Informants were given cards with plain-language information behavior theories and were asked to sort them into categories of “relevant” or “not relevant,” explaining their thinking along the way. I am fascinated by the cards (which are shown in the video) and believe they have pedagogical applications. As a gift to viewers and subscribers at INFIDEOS, these novel research instruments were turned into a coloring book, available here. Happy Holidays!