Comments on: Who should teach library instruction?

By: Mechelle Fogelsong

Mechelle Fogelsong — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 00:23:37 +0000

I’m a middle school English teacher, and I take my students to the library every Monday for lessons in library skills. Whenever I write a lesson plan, I always consult our librarian. I consider us co-teachers, and I never plan anything without involving her in the planning process.

Incidentally, we’re planning a New Moon Party for our local public library as well, and I’ve posted my New Moon party planner on my blog. Here’s the link: http://passinglovenotes.wordpress.com/2009/10/16/were-having-a-new-moon-party-how-should-we-celebrate-new-moons-arrival-in-theaters/

Librarians everywhere are welcome to steal our ideas. That’s exactly why I posted it.

By: Lori C.

Lori C. — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 16:20:15 +0000

It is interesting to read your posts as I come from a K-12 setting as a school library media specialist turned technology teacher. In library school (MLS) we were trained to teach and we think of ourselves as teacher-librarians. Yet, the classroom teacher is not “taught” to collaborate with the school librarian. This results in a myriad of possibilities – with some teachers you work cooperatively, or in coordination, and with some fully collaboratively. However, this rarely translates into teaching a full grade of students collaboratively alongside the classroom teacher (the best way to infuse both technology and information literacy). I guess you could call the choice not to collaborate a sense of academic freedom – although to be honest “No Child Left Behind” has essentially erased many of those “freedoms” anyway.

In our realm, there is much discussion about how to divide up teaching technology skills to students along with information literacy and content. Some schools have technology teachers and in my mind library media specialists are well-equipped to teach technology skills in unison with information literacy skills. However, all are not able to do so. Some library media specialists do not choose to learn and allow others to take over this aspect of “information literacy”. For me, I choose to take a technology teacher position in my school. I knew that this postion would allow me full access to databases, programs, hardware and software necessary to teach information literacy well. While it is true that I am not in a library, I am still teaching library skills for electronic resources. As I read about your dilemma at the college level, I couldn’t help but see many correlations to the K-12 setting. I agree with the person that believes that we must work together to teach each student. We serve no one when we choose to only serve our own interests.

By: Candice

Candice — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 23:58:35 +0000

I think our expertise resides in understanding the importance of the process. My university just launched a new core curriculum and info lit, as well as 3 other sets of skills, are embedded in progressively higher degrees through four linked courses. I’ve taught in three different training ‘boot camps’ for faculty and some just do not see the point in evaluating anything but the finished product. How the students found their sources, why they chose those particular sources- some faculty (not all, by any means) are very vocal in their disagreement that these are important. They are only interested in the final paper.

We have 4 instruction librarians and nearly 10K students- there’s no way we can provide library instruction to all the classes that are conducting library research. LibGuides has been great for covering some of the gap, and I love collaborating with faculty on their assignments. But really, we HAVE to bring faculty into the loop- I don’t know any library with enough staff to do it all in-house. One avenue I’ve begun exploring is sharing IL rubrics with faculty members. Once again, they have to be willing to play in our sandbox, but so far it’s been interesting.

By: edh

edh — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 14:40:36 +0000

I’m of the camp that students should get assignment-specific library instruction on a regular basis. The “vaccination” approach to freshmen in the library is just not enough to get them to see that the library has a variety of resources… not all of which will be appropriate for every given assignment.

I think if there is a strong line of communication between faculty and librarians then the question of who should teach the course can become moot. But I have had K-12 teachers tell their students to go find ERIC and use it to research their middle school history papers (I’m assuming because it was the database they used in college, they thought it was the only one out there?) and I’ve thought that these sorts of situations could be allievated through more library exposure.

I’m still convinced that the most effective library instruction is fully integrated into discipline-specific assignments. Learning random resources and skills “just in case” seems to result in more confusion with students.

By: Lisa Hinchliffe

Lisa Hinchliffe — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 03:24:21 +0000

I know very much who I think should teach library instruction and who should teach information literacy but I wonder if part of the tension reflected in your examining this topic is created by conflating the two? To me they are absolutely not the same.

(Actually, I’m not sure whether I think it is useful to use the term “information literacy instruction” – I personally find it more useful to think of information literacy as a characteristic of a person or group and library instruction, writing instruction, psychology instruction, biology instruction, etc. as many of the methods that can contribute to people/groups attaining the characteristic – which I also think people can attain without any formal instruction at all.)

Reacting to some of the comments … I think the debate is not settled on “information literacy” – not because we can’t come up with a definition but because ultimately the battle is whether the term is normative/prescriptive or descriptive. Research methods investigating information literacy in the United Kingdom and Australia have tended much more to descriptive (and contextual and as-experienced) characterizations whereas in the United States we seem drawn to more normative and prescriptive conceptualizations.

I do agree though that, if we want to convince faculty that library instruction is worth class time (which is one of the most precious commodities I’ve ever managed!), we have to be good teachers. My sense is that as a profession we’re getting better but there is certainly a ways to go! ALISE/ACRL Instruction Section have a joint group related to pre-professional preparation: http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/acrl/about/committees/roster.cfm?committee=acr-INSJWGC but it isn’t just about library school curricula – from the research I’ve seen it also is going to require that library administrators understand what it takes to be a good teacher (no, it doesn’t mean lecturing from a script so that there is no prep time!) and hire for it and reward it.

By: Meredith Farkas

Meredith Farkas — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 12:20:29 +0000

Steven, yes, I am familiar with Library Issues (Rita Pellen had asked me to write for them when I was in the midst of working on my book), but we do not have a subscription here. I’d definitely be interested in reading it and seeing what you and Bill had to say on the subject.

By: Meredith Farkas

Meredith Farkas — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 12:20:25 +0000

Bohyun, I know here my Director has reached out strongly to our VPAA and the President of the University, but it seems like academic freedom trumps any sort of initiatives towards requiring information literacy instruction. Even when NEASC now has the teaching of information literacy as part of the accreditation standards (both for librarians and for the faculty in separate standards), we still have to “fight the good fight” one faculty member at a time. I have moments where I feel like what we’re doing is futile — since faculty will either value research instruction or won’t and what we say probably won’t matter much — but every once in a while I have a victory with a program or a professor that makes me feel better about continuing to market our instructional services. It’s frustrating to have to always be taking baby steps, but at least I feel like we’re moving forward.

By: stevenb

stevenb — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 01:02:58 +0000

Are you familiar with the publication Library Issues (from Mountainside Press)? Back in the May 2005 issue Bill Miller and I co-authored an issue titled “A New Strategy for Enhancing Library Use: Faculty-Led Information Literacy Instruction”. It raises some of the same issues as your post – what do we gain/lose when we turn over library instruction to faculty. We proposed that since librarians could not reach all students it was best to involve the faculty – and our primary rationale was that students are much more likely to listen to and take seriously what their faculty have to say about building research skills and evaluating information. We identified ways that librarians, though removed from the classroom, could still be active in supporting faculty and students. For example, creating instructional products faculty could use in the course to assist them in teaching students how to build their research skills. I don’t think it got much attention at the time. If you are interested in reading it (not freely available on the web) get in touch and I could probably get a copy for you.

By: Bohyun Kim

Bohyun Kim — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 00:56:20 +0000

This is a really thoughtful post because it touches on so many issues librarians run into in everyday instruction. It is frustrating to feel sometimes that librarians want to help anxiously but keep being rejected by those who don’t feel the need to be better informed and be more efficient in their research. One may argue that therefore librarians need to market their services more widely and attract users to a library.

However, if whether a librarian can persuade a faculty member to bring in their class or not decides whether studentss will have a chance to learn about information literacy, then that only seems to reinforce the belief that information literacy is not essential to college education. No matter how strongly librarians feel about the need for information literacy, as long as the need is approved and supported by the governing bodies of libraries, librarians’ and libraries’ efforts won’t be sufficiently effective. I wonder whether academic libraries should reach out to college/university administrators as much as they do to faculty members and students.

By: Michael Golrick

Michael Golrick — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 20:51:31 +0000

I like your comments about frequency of blogging. My style has changed of late, and I am not totally sure why.

Related to that concept of apology, I read this twice. And while I do not work in a university setting, I am well aware of many of the factors. I don’t think that your post has taken a twisted path, I think it is a thoughtful consideration of some of the aspects of this many-sided issue.

I would say to make the allies you can, and keep trying to reach out to faculty. I know that in some institutions it can be done with a new faculty orientation/group, and that some powerful relationships can be built there.