Arthur H. Sterngold
Most readers will agree that library instructional programs should do more than develop students’ bibliographic skills and awareness of library resources. These services should help students master the information resources and technologies that drive our knowledge-based society and are important to the students’ life- long learning and professional development. Library instruction should enhance the students’ information literacy (IL), including the ability to employ a variety of strategies and tools to acquire, evaluate, and use information to solve problems and gain knowledge as well as an understanding of the role of information tech- nologies and resources in modern society.
Developing students’ IL is as important to their future effectiveness as is in- creasing the students’ subject-matter knowledge, much of which may become outdated soon after the students graduate from college or be irrelevant when students switch jobs and careers. As explained by Larry Spence (2001), the founder of the Schreyer Institute for Innovation in Learning at Pennsylvania State University, to succeed in today’s information-rich society, a college stu- dent “does not need to learn more facts but how to think, decide, judge, cre- ate, and learn” (12). Developing students’ IL contributes to these higher-order abilities.
For IL instruction to be effective, I believe that it must be firmly embed- ded in an institution’s academic curriculum and that the faculty should as- sume the lead responsibility for developing and delivering IL instruction. I propose that librarians’ roles and rhetoric reflect this emphasis and that li- brarians serve more as consultants to the faculty than as direct providers of IL instruction.
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Led by librarians, many colleges and universities have adopted campuswide IL programs, and more are doing so now that regional accrediting bodies include IL standards in their evaluative criteria. Despite its importance, however, many faculty members remain uninformed and apathetic about IL and do not appreci- ate the value of library-provided instruction. As Badke (2005) says, “The ac- crediting bodies may be rumbling in the distance about the need for information literacy in the curriculum, but the continuing experience of most academic li- brarians is that information literacy is only a small blip on the radar of most pro- fessors and their academic administrators. Faculty culture remains a tough nut to crack” (70).
Given this situation, it is understandable that some librarians favor using ac- creditation standards to try to compel faculty to cooperate and to more fully recognize the status and influence of librarians. This position is forcefully expressed by Kempcke (2002), who states, “No longer are we in business just to support teach- ing. In a sense, the tables have been turned. Undergraduate teaching needs to support the library and its instructional mission of IL” (Badke 2005, 66).
As one way to meet IL accreditation requirements, Badke suggests embedding credit-bearing IL instruction in academic departments, even if the courses must be supported by college libraries as elective courses at first. Badke (2005) insists that these IL courses be taught by librarians because only they have the special- ized knowledge and training required to view information as its own discipline and to create a broadly based IL curriculum.
I fear that providing stand-alone library-based IL instruction, even if indi- vidualized, may not be as effective in developing students’ IL as some antici- pate. Even if faculty do support this approach, students and faculty may not take the instruction seriously if it is not integrated into regular academic courses and grading. Perhaps more important, library-controlled programs may not be able to adequately develop the students’ appreciation for the inherently context-specific aspects of IL, just as English composition courses sometimes fail to fully develop students’ ability to write in their disciplines.
For IL instruction to be effective, faculty must believe that developing stu- dents’ IL is an important aspect of their school’s academic mission and programs, and the faculty also needs to assume the primary responsibility for incorporating IL instruction in their teaching and curricula. As Miller and Bell (2005) argue, IL instruction should be “woven into the fabric of courses, rather than added on somewhat awkwardly after the fact” (n.p.) To gain this faculty cooperation and support, librarians should soften their rhetoric about IL, and they should concen- trate more on serving as consultants to the faculty than as providers of IL instruc- tion. Rather than viewing IL accreditation requirements as a tool to pressure the faculty to cooperate, librarians should use the accreditation process as an oppor- tunity to enhance faculty understanding and support and to improve their own insights into how they can help faculty members more effectively incorporate IL instruction into their teaching and courses.
WHy IL MUst Be eMBeDDeD In regULAr ACADeMIC CLAsses
Students Must Believe IL Instruction Counts
Librarians are painfully aware of the problems that occur when faculty mem- bers, who may know little about library resources and services, request library instructional services. Despite a genuine desire to cooperate with the program, faculty may not realize how to incorporate the training into their courses and teaching. Understandably, many students do not take such instruction seriously because they do not see how it is relevant to their course work and grades, or they cannot understand the connections between general IL instruction and their spe- cific assignments. Such “one-shot” instruction is made even more ineffective if the classroom faculty do not follow up on the IL training throughout the rest of the semester.
A further hindrance to the students’ perception of value is that the librarians who teach the programs may have little in-depth knowledge about the specific courses and assignments for which they are providing the instructional services.
Librarians, especially at small colleges, must cover many disciplines and follow a rigorous instruction schedule through much of the semester. Miller and Bell (2005) conclude, “There is every indication that information literacy instruc- tion for students, as a one-size-fits-all, exclusive domain of librarians, is at best a hit-or-miss, haphazard proposition which is valued by few, still leaves many underserved, is far too labor-intensive, and overall is a paradigm of how to work dumber instead of smarter” (n.p.).
Faculty Must Believe That IL Counts
Last year, I interviewed several faculty members at my institution to find out what they think about IL and how they incorporate IL instruction into their courses. These interviews confirmed the common assumption that most faculty members are preoccupied with covering as much subject matter as possible in their courses, and they are not interested in devoting any more time to developing students’ information competencies. (This is similar to the problem that plagues writing-across-the-curriculum programs in many schools.) Several faculty mem- bers told me that there is hardly enough time during the semester to cover all the course topics and textbook chapters listed in their syllabi. Some instructors told me that they simply do not have the interest or temperament to employ the kinds of process-oriented or student-centered teaching that may be required to develop their students’ IL. Some of these faculty members explained that they were hired for their subject-matter expertise and that their job is to convey this knowl- edge rather than develop skills. In the absence of strong institutional incentives to change their pedagogical styles, many faculty members will continue using lecture-based teaching methods that are easier, safer, and less time consuming to practice.
As part of the outcomes assessment system that the accounting and business departments at my college developed to satisfy our accreditation requirements, we adopted a set of learning objectives a few years ago that included developing students’ abilities to use business-oriented software programs, such as Microsoft Excel, PowerPoint, and Access. During our initial discussions and on subsequent occasions, I proposed that we include the goal of developing our students’ re- search and information skills, using the more modest definition of IL described later in this chapter. I argued that this goal could be rather easily integrated into our academic programs, and I cited statements by the American Institute of Cer- tified Public Accountants and other business groups indicating the importance of developing students’ information competencies. Despite my efforts, the account- ing and business faculties decided against adding IL as a learning objective, partly because they were not convinced that developing students’ IL was important and partly because they were not interested in making the necessary changes to their teaching and curricula.
As Spence (2001, 12) explains, most faculty members learn to teach through a process of trial and error (“sink or swim” may be more fitting), employing the same lecture-based methods of teaching their professors used, who employed the instructional techniques which their professors used, and so on. Based on inter- views with doctoral students working as teaching assistants, Austin (2002, 102) found that only rarely did the students’ faculty advisers discuss instructional is- sues or practices with them and that the discussions usually focused on preparing lectures, writing exams, and other fairly mechanical issues. While many other professions have changed considerably over time, Spence (2001) suggests that a fifteenth-century teacher from the University of Paris would feel right at home in a Berkeley classroom because most professors continue to believe that “teaching is telling, learning is absorbing, and knowledge is subject matter content” (12).
True IL Is Inherently Context Specific
Information literacy is inherently context specific—that is, determining what information strategies and tools should be employed depends on the specific re- search situations in which the strategies and tools will be applied. To a consid- erable degree, each discipline has its own ideas about how research should be conducted and what information sources and methods are appropriate. In under- graduate education, these contextual elements are defined by the academic fac- ulty members who teach the students’ courses and by the academic disciplines and fields in which the courses are embedded.
Just as effective writing requires authors to assess their audiences and their writing situations early in the composition process, so true IL requires an abil- ity to assess different research situations and then to adapt one’s information strategies and tools accordingly.
This is similar to the rationale for the writing-in-discipline (WID) move- ment, which argues that writing instruction and practice should be embedded in disciplinary communities so that the students learn each community’s preferred
discourse, such as its vocabulary, argumentative styles, uses of evidence, and other rhetorical methods (McEwen 2003, 7; Miller, Myers, and Olson 2001, ix). Early proponents of WID believed that general composition courses, typically taught in English departments, were too context free and did little to improve students’
writing in other disciplines.
For example, to produce a research-based article for publication in a scholarly journal, a historian may use somewhat different methods of finding, evaluating, and citing data sources than does a business analyst who must quickly brief man- agers on how her company should respond to a competitor’s new product. While the historian must thoroughly assess well-defined bodies of knowledge to write a credible literature review, the marketing analyst may have to search for relevant data about the competitor’s new product in popular and commercial sources that many scholars would reject out of hand because they are biased or unreliable, such as company Web sites and sales materials, articles in popular magazines, or even personal blogs and comments posted in online discussion forums. Furthermore, while the historian must fully identify his sources and follow strict guidelines for formatting references, the marketing analyst knows that her readers may not care how she identifies her sources or even whether she cites them at all.
As this suggests, history students must learn how to conduct research and use information resources like historians, while marketing students must learn how to conduct investigations and use information resources like marketing researchers and managers.
From the student’s perspective, the most important contextual elements are defined by the research assignments for which the student must gather and use information, the course in which the assignments are used, and the pedagogical style and grading criteria of the faculty member who teaches the course. These in- clude the specific topics, goals, and requirements of the assignments, the actual or implied audiences to which the students will report their research findings, the in- structors’ criteria for grading the assignments, and the contents and requirements of the academic courses in which the assignments are given.
Beyond these, the information context is also shaped by the academic dis- cipline in which the course is embedded. This is because every academic disci- pline and profession comprises a unique community of practice that has its own specialized language, practices, and norms that determine what kinds of research questions are important, what research methods and tools are suitable for address- ing the questions, what criteria should be used to evaluate information sources, and how those sources should be used and acknowledged when presenting research results to other practitioners.
In my introductory marketing course, the students are required to investigate the marketing strategies of well-known U.S. companies as well as the competitive circumstances in which the firms operate and then to present recommendations for improving the companies’ marketing performance to hypothetical groups of managers. For this assignment, students mostly use information sources written for business managers and professionals, such as articles in trade publications, business databases, and policy-oriented journals. To evaluate these sources and
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the information they contain, the students must properly distinguish between information that is operational or tactical and information that is truly strategic (e.g., seasonal variations in a company’s advertising and pricing versus long-term changes in the firm’s product offerings and market segments). Most scholarly books and articles are not very useful for this assignment because they tend to be overly general, theoretical, or untimely. For their papers, I encourage the students to explicitly acknowledge their sources in the bodies of their reports rather than using formal citation formatting styles and to do so in a manner that suggests potential biases or inaccuracies in the source materials (e.g., “According to the company’s Web site . . . ,” “An informal survey of local shoppers suggests . . .”).
These aspects of the assignment reflect my personal (and perhaps idiosyn- cratic) preferences, and they differ greatly from what many librarians would stress in library instructional sessions they designed on their own. Yet these content- specific elements are ones I believe are important based on my experiences from working in business, marketing, and advertising.
Long-terM soLUtIons Soften the Rhetoric of IL
While IL is a popular concept and catchphrase among librarians, current definitions may unnecessarily confuse or even alienate some faculty because the definitions are too complex or contain too much jargon. At present, it seems that most of the academic research and discourse about IL occur among librarians with little participation of faculty members in other disciplines. To elicit greater faculty understanding and support, more members of the academic community must participate in the dialogue.
This may require defining IL in ways that are easier for faculty to under- stand and that make sense in specific academic situations. In Characteristics of Excellence in Higher Education, the Middle States Commission on Higher Educa- tion (2002) uses the definition of IL developed by Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL):
Information literacy is an intellectual framework for identifying, finding, understanding, evaluating and using information. It includes determining the nature and extent of needed information; accessing information ef- fectively and efficiently; evaluating critically information and its sources;
incorporating selected information into the learner’s knowledge base and value system; using information effectively to accomplish a specific purpose; understanding the economic, legal and social issues surround- ing the use of information and information technology; observing laws, regulations and institutional policies related to the access and use of information. (32)
This definition is overly complex and encompassing, and it is couched in language that may confuse many faculty members or reinforce suspicions that
the IL movement is a ploy to expand the library’s influence and role. How many faculty members understand “the economic, legal and social issues surrounding the use of information and information technology” and how important is this to developing the IL of undergraduate students? Is “incorporating selected infor- mation into the learner’s knowledge base and value system,” which may involve students’ cognitive, moral, and emotional development, truly an aspect of IL itself?
I believe that librarians should adopt a more modest definition of IL that is easier for faculty to understand, that can provide a practical basis for integrating library instruction into academic courses, and that faculty are less likely to view as self-serving and encroaching on their domains. In particular, I suggest that we define IL as the ability to use a variety of research methods and tools to acquire, evaluate, identify, and apply information to help solve problems, answer ques- tions, and gain new knowledge. Compared to the ACRL definition, this con- struct is more modest in scope, and it is similar to one proposed by Sterngold and Hurlbert (1998, 244).
Information Literacy and the Oberlin Education (1996, n.p.), a report by a li- brary committee at Oberlin College, is a highly readable explanation of IL that is similar in scope and includes these elements: (1) understand how information is produced, disseminated, and organized; (2) know how to formulate questions;
(3) know how to access information; (4) know how to evaluate information; and (5) understand how to make use of information.
Of course, each school should define IL in the manner that best fits its own situation and academic culture. Last year, my college’s Information Literacy Sub- Committee decided to use the term “research and information literacy,” or RIC, instead of IL. We did this because “research” is a familiar and valued concept in academe, connoting a systematic process of inquiry to discover new facts, to in- terpret existing knowledge and thinking, or to evaluate evidence and arguments.
Most academic departments offer research methods courses, and many courses about discipline-specific topics include research projects and exposure to research studies.
Librarians as Consultants to Faculty
My faculty interviews confirmed what librarians already know—at most insti- tutions, faculty members depend on librarians to plan and teach IL instructional sessions, limiting faculty involvement to describing the research assignment for which the sessions are held. This approach too easily lets faculty become disen- gaged, resulting in library sessions that may focus too narrowly on the technical or mechanical aspects of IL. As discussed earlier, faculty often do not integrate these library-controlled programs into their teaching and courses, and students do not take them seriously. As Miller and Bell (2005) argue, this approach is “far too labor-intensive and overall is a paradigm of how to work dumber instead of smarter” (n.p.). They assert further that to solve this problem, librarians should
“concentrate less on teaching students directly, and more on helping primary