1. Dana Statton Research and Instruction Librarian & Assistant Professor
Getting started with visual literacy: using images to maximize teaching and learning
Dana Statton Research and Instruction Librarian & Assistant Professor

2. What is visual literacy?
What is visual literacy? Visual literacy is a “set of abilities that enables an individual to effectively find, interpret, evaluate, use, and create images and visual media. - The Association of College and Research Libraries. ACRL Visual Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education. (ACRL, 2011). 
Why does visual literacy matter? Twenty-first century college students are expected to use and critique images in their academic work, and to produce visual materials that effectively communicate their research and scholarly activities.  Visual literacy is becoming increasingly critical, as modes of communication are increasingly visual and image-based. One pop-culture example of this is the increasing popularity of the social media platform Instagram, which is a primarily photo and image based network featuring very minimal text. However, many people do not have the skills necessary to fully participate in a visual environment; where will they learn these skills? Your classroom is a good place to start.

3. Visual literacy and Information literacy
Images often function as information, but they are also aesthetic and creative objects that require additional levels of interpretation and analysis. Finding visual materials in text-based environments requires specific types of research skills. The use, sharing, and reproduction of visual materials also raise particular ethical and legal considerations. The ACRL Visual Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education address these distinct characteristics of images and visual media and challenge students to develop a combination of abilities related to information literacy, visual communication, interpretation, and technology and digital media use.

4. In an interdisciplinary, higher education environment, a visually literate individual is able to:
• Determine the nature and extent of the visual materials needed • Find and access needed images and visual media effectively and efficiently • Interpret and analyze the meanings of images and visual media • Evaluate images and their sources • Use images and visual media effectively • Design and create meaningful images and visual media • Understand many of the ethical, legal, social, and economic issues surrounding the creation and use of images and visual media, and access and use visual materials ethically
Examine the Visual Literacy Array - Which visual literacy concepts seem interesting to you? Write down 2-3 subtopics for further exploration.

5. Types of activities Find Images Interpret Images Evaluate Images
Manipulate Images
Attribute Images
Visualize a Topic

6. Find images
The first skill required in visual literacy is the ability to find images. Although scholarship has primarily relied on written communication, the 21st century is seeing an increase in assignments that require students to create poster presentations, develop online image-based blogs, or find visual examples to support written assignments.

7. Although the library does subscribe to a few proprietary art image databases, there are also many online, open-source image repositories that are available free. One particularly comprehensive resource is the Digital Public Library of America, containing over 7 million items from libraries, archives, and museums, including primary source materials as well as images.
The Library of Congress, the Getty Museum, the National Gallery of Art, and The Met, to name a few, all have databases which allow scholars and researchers the ability to use many of its images free of charge.
There are also crowd-sourced image repositories, such as Flickr’s Creative Commons search option, which allows users to limit to images that have been licensed through a Creative Commons license. If youre interested in learning more about where to starting searching for images, we can speak more after the presentation.

8. interpret images What do I see? What else do I need to know?
Look
Read
Examine
Describe
Check Understanding
What else do I need to know?
What does the text tell me?
Interpretation
situate images in their cultural, social, and historical contexts
be aware of suggestion and metaphor
Analyzation
Look - What do I see?
Read - What does the text tell me?
Examine - What do I see now?
Describe - What does this mean?
Check Understanding - What else do I need to know?
What does this mean?
What do I see now?

9. The NYT partnered with the arts education organization Visual Thinking Strategies to use their powerful three-question protocol:
• What is going on in this picture?
• What do you see that makes you say that?
• What more can you find?

10. At the beginning on a new lesson is an excellent time to present an activity using images. Images related to course content coupled with a few “looking prompts” can get students in a question-driven mind-set and frame the research process.
Begin to Interpret and Analyze an Image Take a few minutes to look at this image closely. Answer the questions, then reflect. What do I see? What is going on? Why do I think this image was created? REFLECT What do you want to know more about? How might you put this exercise into practice?
Project the image at the beginning of class and then give students a few minutes to engage with the image and to write answers to questions such as: What do I see? What is going on? Why do I think this image was created?
After students spend a few minutes freewriting answers, use think-pair-share to debrief.
This approach sets the stage for an inquiry-based research session and works as a lead-in to more pointed visual analysis.
A child jumps on the waste products that are used to make poultry feed as she plays in a tannery at Hazaribagh in Dhaka, Bangladesh on Oct. 9, Luxury leather goods sold across the world are produced in a slum area of Bangladesh’s capital where workers, including children, are exposed to hazardous chemicals and often injured in horrific accidents, according to a study released on Oct. 9. None of the tanneries, packed cheek-by-jowl into Dhaka’s Hazaribagh neighborhood, treat their waste water, which contains animal flesh, sulphuric acid, chromium and lead, leaving it to spew into open gutters and eventually the city’s main river.
We have also heard from the photographer himself, Andrew Biraj, who adds that the girl jumping from one pile of tannery waste to another is a child of one the workers.

11. This is a graph that originally appeared elsewhere on nytimes. com
This is a graph that originally appeared elsewhere on nytimes.com. For the purposes of this activity, we have removed some of the original text and features, all of which we will reveal on Thursday afternoon, Jan. 11.
After looking closely at the graph above (or at this full-size image), think about these three questions:
• What do you notice?
Share what you notice and what this may imply.
• What do you wonder?
Are there items you noticed that answer what you wonder? Where could you find those answers?
• What’s going on in this graph?
Use what you notice. What can you infer from this graph beyond what it shows directly? What’s the deeper story that comes from this graph?
The questions are intended to build on one another, so try to answer them in order. Start with “I notice,” then “I wonder,” and end with “The story this graph is telling is ….”

12. Evaluate images
Just as students are asked to evaluate written information before using it in a paper or other assignment, images need to be evaluated, contextualized, and analyzed before being used to illustrate a concept or represent an argument. While there is no CRAAP test for images, UC Irvine has a very useful checklist for evaluating images.
See handout
Sample of images retrieved when searching for “The Ghost and the Flea” painting by William Blake in 1820 via Google Images.

13. Manipulate images
Once an image has been located, it may need to be manipulated depending on its ultimate destination. Often, reproducing images requires resizing, cropping, or other photo editing which can only be done with unique software. Students or patrons may need to shrink images to post on a blog, or crop images to fit in a school report.
Some schools and libraries may have proprietary software such as Adobe Photoshop or Aperture, but there are also many open source, free image editing tools available. Perhaps the most popular of these resources is GIMP, which serves as a direct substitute for Photoshop. GIMP is freely available for download on many operating systems; users new to the software may find the free e-book Grokking the GIMP helpful, and there are also many YouTube and other web tutorials available for specific GIMP commands. Another free image editing software is Aviary, in which users can embed the free photo editor directly into their browser, download the editor into mobile apps for both iOS and Android, or download the standalone software. Like Aviary, Pixlr is a free web-based photo editor that lets users manipulate and edit photos in their browsers. Users in search of photos to edit might like the Pixlr Grabber feature, which lets users select images from the web and edit immediately. Check out their blog for additional tips and tricks.

14. Attribute images
Images and other visual material needs to be credited when being used or otherwise reproduced, just as written resources are cited in bibliographies or works cited pages. Crediting images can take the form of either attributing or citing: both provide information about an image to help viewers locate the original source. Attribution is used when no citation style is required: all major citation styles have specific standard image citation formats. If attributing an image, include as much information as possible: image creator, title, date created, materials used, holding institution (if applicable), date retrieved, and web address.
An important issue in using images from the open web is the need to check licensing on each image before using or reproducing the image. Licensing exists to protect original work; many online images are covered using a Creative Commons license, which allows varying levels of use and reproduction. More information about Creative Commons licenses can be found at  Many formal repositories, such as the Digital Public Library of America or the Getty, both mentioned above, have specific licensing restrictions on images. It is critical that patrons and students check the license on every single image they share, reproduce, or modify.

15. Visualize a topic
A great way to get students to think visually – to come up with those oh so important keywords – is to create a mindmap, also known as a concept map.

16. Representing information in a non-linear way encourages lateral thinking and can reveal new connections. Visualizing a topic also show promise for developing and improving higher order thinking.

17. conclusion
Visual literacy has strong potential for a variety of cross-discipline collaborations in a university setting; for example, an instruction session on image copyright could be used with journalism students who are creating a multimedia final presentation featuring historical images, or a session on finding science-specific images could be provided to graduate students seeking reputable illustrations for article submissions. There are many ways to use images to maximize your teaching and student learning.

18. Image list
Art Museum Teaching (n.d.) Visual Literacy [Image] Retrieved from Biraj, A. (n.d.) Bangladesh [Photograph] Retrieved from in-this-picture/s/ POD-slide-LF4J-LN3.html Hattwig, D., K. Bussert, and A. Medaille. (2013) Visual Literacy Array based on ACRL’s Visual Literacy Standards [Image] Retrieved from array/ Envisioning Information Literacy (n.d.) Information Literacy [Image] Retrieved from MeisterLabs (n.d.) Mindmaps [Images] Retrieved from essay-writing/ Monroe, R. (n.d.) Wikipedian protester [Image] Retrieved from (CC BY-NC 2.5)

19. references
ACRL Board of Directors. (2011) ACRL Visual Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education. Retrieved from Brown, N. et al. (n.d.) Keeping Up with… Visual Literacy. Retrieved from Henrich, K. (2014). Visual Literacy for Librarians: Learning Skills and Promoting Best Practices. Retrieved from and-promoting-best-practices/