Week 10

Continuing the discussion about the challenges of information literacy instruction, this week I talked to Professor Jessica George, the education librarian.  With a background in public education policy, Jessica has a firm understanding of how important it is to incorporate IL instruction into the curriculum and how to address curriculum issues with university administrators.  We discussed how important it is to develop strong relationships with faculty and administration to better communicate the library's mission with respect to IL instruction, and to work toward incorporating IL instruction into university curriculum.  We also discussed the challenges in assessing students' IL skills, and how important it is to integrate IL into the curriculum as much as possible so that assessment can be done properly.

Since Jessica is currently serving as the department chair, we also talked about the role of the chairperson.  One of the chairperson's responsibilities is defining the over-arching goals of the library and identifying any programs or policies the library wants to implement, and then providing leadership throughout the implementation process.  The chair also communicates the library's mission to the administration and to other faculty, and facilitates dialogue with these partners and among the library faculty.

Jessica and I talked about the unique nature of some of the items in the education collection, including children's books, textbooks and teaching kits.  Her goal is to provide education students with high quality teaching materials, but to balance that with providing materials that are likely to be available in the schools where they will eventually teach.  Our discussion about the education collection led us to talk about the trend toward open access materials, which hopefully will be more widely available in the future, and the benefits of open access materials to students, teachers, public schools and universities, and taxpayers.  One of the roles that librarians can play in this debate is to educate people about the benefits of open access materials, point patrons to these kinds of resources when possible, include them in journal lists or catalogs, and continue to lobby publishers and authors for more favorable terms of use.

I also talked to Professor Melissa Gold, the science librarian, who discussed how her background in biological anthropology helps her as subject specialist for the sciences.  One of the unique challenges in serving the science departments is the high cost of science-related materials, which makes it difficult to provide all the materials students and faculty would like to have access to while staying within the budget.  With the cost of these resources increasing sharply each year, it's a challenge that all research libraries face.  We also discussed the trend toward electronic resources in the sciences, and the fact that print collections for the sciences will continue to dwindle.  Finally, Melissa talked about the challenges of IL instruction in the sciences, particularly the very specialized skills and resources needed for upper-level undergraduate and graduate level courses.