James White Library strives to develop information literacy in 日韩AV students so they may improve scholarship, create knowledge, achieve educational goals, and become lifelong learners.
We live in an age when more information is available than ever before. On a daily basis we are bombarded with information from radio, television, newspapers, magazines, journals, books, email, social media, and internet websites. Even if we wished to remember everything we see, hear, or read, our minds cannot absorb it all.
The online environment has revolutionized both the administration and delivery of information. In the academic setting, technology has transformed the classroom and the library. In addition to online books and articles, students must navigate and evaluate a myriad of online websites of varying types. How can they determine which resources best meet their information and research needs?
Information literacy is the key to understanding and thriving in the contemporary age. According to the American Library Association (2015), "Information literacy is the set of integrated abilities encompassing the reflective discovery of information, how information is produced and valued, and the use of information in creating new knowledge and participating ethically in communities of learning." Teaching faculty and librarians need to work together to ensure that students develop the skills needed to successfully achieve their university and life goals.
The Association of College & Research Libraries, a division of the American Library Association, revised its information literacy competencies in 2015 with the document, "." The Framework includes the following six concepts plus knowledge practices and dispositions which support each concept.
The following guidelines are intended to assist library faculty and teaching faculty in assessing their students' information literacy skills.
Competency Standard | Short-term Skill |
Responsibility to Teach
|
Lifelong Skill |
---|---|---|---|
Determine the nature and extent of the information needed |
Understand the scope and key concepts of the assignment including the types of sources needed |
Library Faculty & Teaching Faculty |
Recognize when information is needed and know of possible sources of this information |
Define the scope of the topic as needed | Library Faculty & Teaching Faculty | Sselect relevant information | |
Access needed information |
Select appropriate investigative method such as literature search, experiment, etc. |
Teaching Faculty |
Understand how information is organized, created, and accessed |
Use effective and well-designed search strategy | Library Faculty | Able to adapt and refine searching in source entities | |
Evaluate information and its sources critically |
Choose sources appropriate to scope/discipline |
Teaching Faculty |
Think critically about information encountered in career as well as everyday life |
Evaluate sources for relevance, bias, authority, credibility, currency, etc. | Library Faculty & Teaching Faculty | ||
Recognize document's relationship to other documents | Teaching Faculty | ||
Ues information effectively to accomplish a specific purpose |
Communicate, organize, and synthesize information to achieve a purpose |
Teaching Faculty
|
Incorporate information into everyday life and work in a useful and appropriate manner |
Access and use information ethically and legally |
Understand that information is not free with respect to time or money |
Library Faculty |
Value the creative process and its worth to society |
Understand legal restrictions of copyrighted material | Library Faculty & Teaching Faculty | Abide by copyright law | |
Use citations and references correctly |
Library Faculty & Teaching Faculty | Understand ethics and the process of citing sources | |
Uses the Internet appropriately, passwords and privacy |
Library Faculty & Teaching Faculty
|
Respect confidentiality and proprietary information |
Designing assignments that make effective use of library resources requires thought and planning. Library faculty are willing to teach class sessions and work with you in developing collaborative assignments to help students achieve these information literacy competency standards.
The goal of our library instruction program is to help our users achieve information literacy. With this goal in mind, we provide a number of instructional services. Any of our services can be adapted to off-campus students.
To request tours, classroom instruction, or faculty outreach, contact the Instruction Librarian, Silas Marques by email (silas@andrews.edu), phone 269-471-6263 or use the Library Consultation Request Form. Submit requests not less than one week in advance. Include course name and number and the number of students who will be attending. It is also helpful to provide the librarian with a copy of the assignment the students will be working on.