Information Literacy Continued

Now that I've watched the Gators soundly beat UCF, I can get back to my earlier discussion of information literacy (it doesn't hurt that the ALA/ACRL website is back up). Here's the definition from the Association of College and Research Libraries I promised: "Information literacy encompasses more than good information-seeking behavior. It incorporates the abilities to recognize when information is needed and then to phrase questions designed to gather the needed information. It includes evaluating and then using information appropriately and ethically once it is retrieved from any media, including electronic, human or print sources." (ACRL Website) So, we have an idea of what IL is, and I mentioned before that libraries everywhere are incorporating IL goals into library instruction. If you're interested follow the link to ACRL's Information Literacy site for more information.

Information literacy is such a big deal with librarians that the ACRL has an Institute for Information Literacy that holds annual, in-depth training on IL called the Information Literacy Immersion Program. I'm interested in exploring the training the immersion program uses and whether it teaches sound instructional design principles. A comment from Dr. Dawson points out that much library instruction focuses on the lower levels of Bloom's Taxonomy. I would have to agree with her assessment. How are instruction librarians schooled in instruction? Librarians are experts in our particular niche...give us a database and a complex search topic and we can play the database like a finely tuned organ to get the best results possible. But how do we rate as instructors? What do students attending a typical library instruction session learn? How can we design instruction to focus on higher levels of learning? I hope that as I progress through this course and the Ed Tech program I will be able to answer these questions and design high level library instruction.

By the way, if anyone has comments on library instruction in general or specific experiences, I'd love to hear from you. If you have ideas on improving library instruction that you'd like share, I'd love to hear them. Please don't include names of instructors or specific information that might be used to identify the instructor (I give you permission to use my name) because I wouldn't want to upset or offend any of my colleagues.

Speaking of instruction, I'll be doing a "quick and dirty" demo of RefWorks next week. If you've used RefWorks (or any citation management software) before I'd love to hear your comments. If you've used RefWorks and have specific questions you'd like me to address or you have suggestions for what I should cover, please let me know.