Talking to Your Students about the Library: Inspiration

If you asked a medical doctor for a simple description of the practice of medicine, their response might be "keeping people healthy or returning them to health." If you ask a librarian about information literacy, their response might be "teaching people how to find accurate information and use it appropriately." These statements are true, but they cover vast and complex fields.

"Information Literacy" is further complicated because it is usually not taught as its own subject - we do not ask students to devote 6 years of study and then participate in internships to become information competent. Usually aspects of information literacy are incorporated into subject classes. It is considered vital (included in WASC accreditation standards), it is just not given a significant amount of time.

In 2000? Librarians developed a list of information literacy skills (called the Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education), and much of the existing literature focuses on developing one or more of those skills. In 2015 Librarians developed a list of threshold concepts, presented in the Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education.

Dorothy A. Mays (2016) Using ACRL's framework to support the evolving needs of today's college students, College & Undergraduate Libraries, 23:4, 353-362, DOI: 10.1080/10691316.2015.1068720