Information Literacy Commons^™

Bridging The Information Literacy Gap: First-Year Students Reflect For Success, Jennifer L. Fabbi, Dan Gianoutsos, David Forgues

Library Faculty Presentations

UNLV Context

• Fall 2011: 22,138 undergraduate students; 72% were fulltime; 5135 freshmen with a 76.4% first-yr retention rate (2010 to 2011); 40.6% six-year graduation rate

• Budget-induced movement to large-enrollment classes – Program eliminations and consolidations underway

• General Education Reform developments – Articulation of University Undergraduate Learning Outcomes, especially Inquiry and Critical Thinking – New general education requirements extending vertically throughout the curriculum

• Focus on enhancing the first-year experience for incoming students

Ipad 2s For Everyone! Catching Students’ Attention In Library One-Shots, Ngoc-Yen Tran

Faculty and Staff Publications

“You are an exercise science major and you have a mid-term essay due in two weeks. You’ve chosen to write about the benefits of yoga. The assignment requires you to find at least 2 peer-reviewed articles (also known as scholarly articles).” This is the scenario that I have given to students during one-shots and although that does not excite them, seeing iPads being distributed in conjunction with the activity certainly does. But, instead of using the iPad as a parallel to a computer (meaning that students use the web app to find materials), the students use the iPads to scan …

More Than Just A Drop In The Bucket: Black Instructional Librarians Teaching For Academic Success, Lisa A. Ellis

Publications and Research

As American society is changing due to new technologies and globalization, institutions of higher education have had to implement new teaching and learning practices to address student success, especially among Black students. Working collaboratively with college administrators and faculty, instructional librarians are in a unique position to participate in a variety of instructional programs to teach information, communication and technology (ICT) literacy. For Black Instructional Librarians working with underserved college students, many who are Black, they understand the importance in helping these students to develop a high level of ICT literacy skills, not only to attain academic success, but also …

A Few Thoughts On Evidence In Social Work, Gary Holden, Ellen Tuchman, Kathleen Barker, Gary Rosenberg, May, Sofie Kuppens, Katie Watson

Publications and Research

Social work practitioners must act every working day in the face of uncertainty. This uncertainty arises in part because knowledge is often difficult to locate or sometimes lacking regarding: the systems context the population being served; the particular client system; the set of problems the client system is experiencing; as well as the various interventions that could be selected. It seems reasonable to explore ways to reduce the experience of uncertainty, and narrow, if not eliminate, the knowledge gaps that arise in such situations. The generic idea of evidence based practice has been advanced for some time as an approach …

Seeing College Students As Adults: Learner-Centered Strategies For Information Literacy Instruction, Sarah P C Dahlen

Library Faculty Publications and Presentations

Information literacy instruction is a responsibility of many academic librarians and much has been written about approaches to this endeavor. This article explores ways in which pedagogy from the field of adult education can inform information literacy instruction in higher education. A review of the literature on adult learning is followed by suggested ways that academic librarians can incorporate these learning strategies into their instruction. A case description examines how librarians at one institution have addressed adult learning styles and classroom realities by using surveys for instructional pre-assessment. While further research is needed to assess the impact of these techniques, …

Libraries And General Education: New Strategies To Enhance Freshman Orientation, Faculty Collaboration, And Curriculum Development, Carl R. Andrews

Publications and Research

My research will attempt to re-evaluate the academic library's role in supporting a general education program. The emphasis will focus on student centeredness, faculty collaboration, outreach and curriculum support. In the short time that I have worked in academic libraries I have learned that quality customer service and reference desk work is far from the list of priorities in some settings. Coming from the public library I found this to be unacceptable. We are service providers and the way in which we communicate with students and faculty is important. As professionals we should do more in the way of making …

An Information Literacy Summer Assignment: Digital Learning Materials For The First Year Experience, Jeremy W. Donald

Library Faculty Research

Trinity University enrolls approximately 2400 undergraduate students, with an entering first-year class of ~600. As part of a campus-wide summer reading assignment, librarians and technologists were tasked with creating an online information literacy assignment, in which students were to complete an annotated bibliography related to the summer reading selection. The end result—an interactive website--combined instructional design, assessment, and usability design, and student work on the assignment was (optionally) incorporated into First Year Seminars.

Books And Websites, E-Journals Or Print: If The Source Fits, Use It, Todd J. Wiebe

Faculty Publications

Despite the ever-growing range of media types, formats, and information-access options, students are often instructed to only use specific sources in their research. They are sometimes even given strict guidelines, prescribing how many of each they need to, or may, cite. It is important not to lead students to believe there is a formula for the ideal works cited for all research topics. In contrast, students should learn to think critically about the content and appropriateness of each potential source rather than choosing it only because it is a book, a journal article, a Website, etc. This article argues that …

Reconceptualizing And Renovating An Academic Business Library: The Parrish Library Of Management & Economics, Hal P. Kirkwood Jr, Tomalee Doan

Libraries Faculty and Staff Creative Materials

Poster was presented at the International Internet Librarian Conference, 2012. Focus of the poster is an overview and timeline of the Parrish Library Renovation.

Rethinking Information Literacy In A Globalized World, Laurie Kutner, Alison Armstrong

University Libraries Faculty and Staff Publications

As a profession, librarians have an important and unique role to play in higher education in producing information literate students equipped to be successful in a complex, twenty-first century global society. It is our contention that our guiding professional information literacy definitions and standards need to be reconsidered in order to remain relevant within the global learning context. Our preliminary conclusion is that the predominantly skills-based approach facilitated by the current ACRL Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education, is not sufficient to facilitate teaching of twenty-first century “deep information literacy,” which we feel encompasses additional content-based engagement with the …

Medical E-Reference: A Benchmark For E-Reference Publishing In Other Disciplines, Terese Desimio, Ximena Chrisagis

University Libraries' Staff Publications

Electronic medical information retrieval systems and reference sources were some of the first discipline specific e-resources to be developed, due to physicians’ need to access the most current and relevant clinical information as quickly as possible. Many medical publishers and information aggregators have been incorporating the features their users demand for years. Thus, medical e-reference publishing could serve as a benchmark for e-reference publishing in other fields. Yet medical e-reference is not without its challenges. Today’s physicians and medical students expect immediate and user-friendly electronic access to media rich and value added clinical references, particularly via their mobile devices. Publishers, …

Create Your Own Cephalonian Method Adventure: An Interactive Session, Amanda Izenstark, Mary Macdonald

Public Services Faculty Publications

The Cephalonian Method has garnered much interest for its possibilities for engaging students in what could be an otherwise one-sided orientation program. This workshop will help attendees determine how and when to incorporate the Cephalonian Method into their sessions, how to discuss the technique with colleagues, and, most importantly, develop a set of Cephalonian Method questions that can be used in orientation and instruction sessions at their home libraries.

Creating A Sustainable Partnership : Information Literacy Instruction For An Honors Program First-Year Orientation., Anna Marie Johnson

Faculty Scholarship

The information literacy literature contains many articles highlighting new instruction initiatives but few articles documenting sustainable ones. This article examines the literature on library partnerships in general and Honors Programs specifically and reports on the evolution of an ongoing fifteen year partnership between the University of Louisville Honors Program and the Ekstrom Library. It then discusses the development of this partnership and the changes in the information literacy program engendered by this partnership. It ends by defining some of the elements that made the partnership sustainable, ones that could potentially be transferred to other such partnerships.

Get In The Game: Developing An Information Literacy Classroom Game, Maura A. Smale

Publications and Research

Much current research in the field of games-based learning demonstrates that games can be successfully incorporated into educational contexts to increase student engage-ment, motivation, and learning. Academic librarians are also using games as an innova-tive instructional strategy to strengthen students’ research skills and their understanding of information literacy concepts. This article discusses the development and implemen-tation of Quality Counts, a classroom information literacy game designed to teach un-dergraduate students how to evaluate Internet sources. After a brief overview of the game’s development and rules, the article describes the process of playing Quality Counts in several classes and presents the results …

Important Information Literacy Standards For Life And Health Sciences, Betsy S. Hopkins

Faculty Publications

Information literacy in the life and health sciences is a dynamic field, with challenges, opportunities, and rewards for the successful practitioner. This chapter will describe the big picture of information literacy in these disciplines, list relevant performance indicators from the ALA/ACRL/STS Task Force on Information Literacy for Science and Technology [STS-TFILST] (2006) Information Literacy Standards for Science and Technology (hereafter Standards), and give some practical advice for life and health sciences librarians and librarians with instructional responsibilities in those disciplines. The focus is on undergraduates at research universities, although many principles and strategies will apply to other circumstances.

Using Fun To Teach Rigorous Content, Mary Francis

Research & Publications

This paper will offer a position on the place of fun within education and learning. It will place fun as an important component of learning. The intent is not to espouse the belief that it is the duty of teachers and instructors to entertain students. Unlike a movie or TV show that provides passive entertainment, fun in this context relates to actions and techniques that aid students in learning new material. So rather than fun being associated with ease, fun is associated with rigor. In drawing together research on the successful impact of fun in education, this paper hopes to …

Mobile Information Literacy Let's Use An App For That!, Stefanie Havelka, Alevtina Verbovetskaya

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Notes From The Field: 10 Short Lessons On One-Shot Instruction, Megan Oakleaf, Steven Hoover, Beth S. Woodard, Jennifer Corbin, Randy Hensley, Diana K. Wakimoto, Christopher V, Hollister, Debra Gilchrist, Michelle Millet, Patricia A. Iannuzzi

Library Faculty Publications

Librarians teach. It might not be what we planned to do when we entered the profession, or it may have been our secret hope all along. Either way, we teach. We teach users of all types, including students, faculty, and our co-workers. We teach in multiple venues including classrooms, reference desks, face-to-face, and online. While the variety of teaching audiences and environments are endless, one teaching scenario remains quintessential: the one-shot library instruction session. No one knows better than librarians the limitations of this format, yet it remains central to our teaching efforts.

Libraries Atwitter: Trends In Academic Library Tweeting, Darcy C. Del Bosque, Sam A. Leif, Susie Skarl

Library Faculty Publications

Purpose – This paper aims to present an overview of how libraries are using Twitter in an academic setting.

Design/methodology/approach – This study analyzed the current state of 296 Twitter accounts from a random sample of academic libraries. A total of 19 different criteria were explored, with an emphasis on the following three categories: layout and design, content and number of tweets, and account followers.

Findings – Only 34 per cent of libraries in the study had a Twitter account and characteristics varied widely among libraries, however it is evident that it is possible to successfully communicate with patrons via …

Addressing Academic Integrity: Perspectives From Virginia Commonwealth University In Qatar, Nancy E. Fawley

Library Faculty Publications

Understanding the cultural aspects that affect a student’s ability to appropriately use resources is important in developing outreach and instruction in multicultural settings. Differences in educational philosophies, students’ previous scholastic training and cultural differences in individual motivation are all factors that may affect a freshman’s ability to understand an American university’s idea of academic integrity and can inadvertently cause problems where independent work and critical thinking are required. At Virginia Commonwealth University in Qatar (VCU Qatar), a branch campus of the American university in the Middle East, a special class on academic integrity and ethical behavior was integrated into the …

"Research Papers Have Always Seemed Very Daunting" : Information Literacy Narratives And The Student Research Experience., Robert Detmering, Anna Marie Johnson

Faculty Scholarship

Taking an interdisciplinary approach that draws on narrative theory, composition scholarship, and investigations into the affective dimensions of the research process, this article discusses stories written by college students about their experiences locating, evaluating, and using information in the context of academic research. These narratives provide insight into how students conceptualize the research process and perceive their often tenuous roles as researchers. A textual analysis of a selection of student narratives is included, demonstrating how narrative not only enhances our understanding of the research experience but also enables students to raise larger questions about authenticity and power in the classroom.

Review Of Who We Are Hispanics, 2nd Edition. Ed. By The New Strategist Editors, Rebecca Tolley

ETSU Faculty Works

Review of Review of Who We Are Hispanics. New Strategist. 2011. 3v, 9781935775331, 9781935773317, 9781935775355, $120.00

Inciting Curiosity And Creating Meaning: Teaching Information Evaluation Through The Lens Of “Bad Science”, Catherine Fraser Riehle

UNL Libraries: Faculty Publications

Ability to evaluate information is a critical component of information literacy. This article provides strategies for engaging students in learning about information evaluation in the contexts of the scientific publication cycle and communication in the digital age. Also included are recent findings regarding undergraduate student research behavior and ideas for integrating constructivist learning theory in order to develop effective learning activities that encourage curiosity and critical thinking.