College Level Cooperatively Taught Information Literacy and Subject Area Course Background and Assignments

Project is in Early Stage This is the beginning of a much larger project. college level course for undergraduate students combines a three credit subject area course with a one credit library research component. cooperatively taught by the subject area faculty, professor, adjunct, or teaching assistant as well as a reference and instruction librarian who has background in the subject area.

The Idea In a full semester course, a librarian would be able to teach students how to do research and at the same time teach about how to use the various resources the library has to offer. While teaching about how to use the library and how to become more effective researchers, the librarian would be in essence selling the students on what the library has to offer as well.

O’Gorman and Trott (2009) says in relation to this that, “If our users do not know what sort of assistance librarians can give them in their information searches, then they will be unlikely to seek out any assistance from librarians.”

Choice: Freshmen or Students in Their Majors Course could be done for freshmen and tied to a required course – All students get same content and process background Or, students would take more specific library component along with a course early on in their major

Course in Major This way the research methods students are learning are more closely aligned to the students’ future coursework. The research methods taught could be curtailed specifically to the kind of research being done. “Library instruction is best received when it is course related and, more specifically, assignment related” (Dewald, 1999).

Identified Need 1 – Personal Experience 2 – Reduce Library Anxiety Mellon in 1986 describes: “the sense of fear and anxiety reported by 75% to 85% of the students she studied, when confronted with the need to conduct research in an academic library for the first time. In her two-year qualitative study involving the thematic analysis of the personal writings of 6,000 undergraduate students, Mellon identified the recurrent themes of fear, confusion, a sense of being overpowered or lost, and a feeling of helplessness and dread, in the students’ approach to having to use the library to conduct research” (Carlile, 2007). 3 - Accreditation: Grafstein (2002), “…accrediting agencies are increasingly incorporating the teaching of IL [information literacy] skills into their accreditation guidelines.”

Also Macpherson (2004): “A second focus of higher education is the process of learning; for example, what teaching strategies will result in optimal learning outcomes?”

Content Standards Need to be created Need to ask: “What will students be able to do as a result of this assignment, lesson, or course?”

Institutional Support Required to succeed past the pilot stage there must be institutional support at the highest administrative levels. Grafstein (2002) comments in relation to this that: “…if IL [information literacy] programs are to be successful, they cannot be deployed under the exclusive initiation, development, implementation, direction, and support of academic libraries along with the few committed and overworked classroom faculty whom librarians can convince to “buy into” the enterprise by collaborating with them on select courses.”

Going Forward This is the beginning of a much larger project. Several assignments have been created that could be utilized in the future. These assignments have been designed around the essential content standard question, “What will students be able to do as a result of this assignment?”

Assignment 1 Instructions: Use the library’s databases and find ten articles of your choosing on a variety of subjects. Create a citations list of these articles. Then use a familiar search engine and see if you are able to find any of the articles on your citations list. Make a note of any articles you can find on both. Note: make sure you do not set your search engine’s preferences to check against the library’s holdings. Write a one page reflection on your experience. Purpose: Students gain first hand experience finding out that search engines will be limited in what they can retrieve. Note: If necessary, the instructor can choose articles and make students find them so s/he knows students are seeing that not all information can be found through search engines.

Assignment 2 Instructions: Find one work of fiction (a list of books will be given by the instructor) in the library and check it out. Also, find one work of nonfiction from a list designated by your instructor (list will be distributed). Bring both books to class for credit. Purpose: Though elementary, it is important students go through the experience of checking out books in their library. One must not assume all students know how to do this. Also, students should have experience locating both fiction and non-fiction. Note: An addition to this assignment could be to have students find a book or library material in another library’s holdings, but not in their own. Students would then have to request it through interlibrary loan. This way students have experience using the service.

Assignment 3 Instructions: Locate four articles related to a topic you are interested in using the library’s databases. Provide citations for your four articles. Then try to find four articles on the same topic using a familiar search engine such as Google or Yahoo and cite them as well. Read (it is okay to skim long articles as long as you get the idea of what the article is about) all the articles and write a three to four page comparison on whether you noticed anything different between the articles and how you retrieved them. Answer questions such as “what kind of article is this?” ; “how accurate is the information?” ; “Is the writer an authority on the subject?” ; and “Is the information and source reliable?” Make sure to talk about the similarities and differences in information retrieved from the library’s databases versus the search engines. Purpose: Students gain experience comparing information retrieved from different sources.

Assignment 4a Instructions: Use your library’s databases to search for and locate three journal articles on the same topic (no search engines allowed). Choose a topic that interests you based on your major, or if you have not yet chosen a major choose a topic that interests you that you are still able to locate articles on using the databases (use a topic different from the previous assignment’s topic). Read your articles and create an annotated bibliography for the three works. Make sure to provide both a citation and a summary in your own words for each article. Purpose: Students will be able to create an annotated bibliography.

Assignment 4b Instructions: Now that you have read your three articles, write a paper no more than two pages in length tying what you have learned together. In other words, develop a thesis and argue it in less than two pages. Purpose: Students will be able to synthesize the information obtained from the library’s databases.

Assignment 5 You will be given a list of ten items in the library’s catalog. You must find the call numbers for the ten items. Not all numbers are necessarily books. Purpose: A: Students will have experience locating call numbers for library materials. B: Students will be able to retrieve library materials. Note: This assignment is best done in-class in the library where students have to retrieve the materials and bring them back to get credit for a grade.

Additional Assignments should be created that have students using their individual library’s services. An assignment should be created around the services though and not just have the students using the service for the sake of using it. For instance, if an assignment requires students learn how to use microfiche or microfilm then they should be doing it beyond the reason of just learning how to do it. Content needs to be created to go along with it.

References Carlile, H. (2007). The implications of library anxiety for academic reference services: a review of literature. Australian Academic and Research Libraries, 38(2), Dewald, N. H. (1999) Transporting good library instruction practices into the web environment: an analysis of online tutorials. Journal of Academic Librarianship 25(1). Grafstein, A. (2002). A discipline-based approach to information literacy. Journal of Academic Librarianship. 28(4), Macpherson, K. (2004). Undergraduate information literacy: a teaching framework. Australian Academic and Research Libraries, 35(3), O'Gorman, J., & Trott, B. (2009). What will become of reference in academic and public libraries?. Journal of Library Administration, 49(4),

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