1. Beyond the Basics:
How Can Librarians Teach What
We Truly Care About?
Information Literacy Summit
Illinois State University
April, 18 2011
Chris Sweet
Information Literacy Librarian
Illinois Wesleyan University
csweet@iwu.edu

2.  Is
teaching students to use the
online catalog (which will be
obsolete next year) to find a book
what we really care about?
 Or,do we care about the process
of efficiently identifying the best
information sources and then
applying that information to
address a problem?

3.  Didyou become a librarian to
teach students how to create a
works cited page with all the
periods and semicolons in the
right place?
 Or, do we really care about
teaching the concepts of
intellectual property and
attribution?

4. What do you care
about?
Whatare your deep
pedagogical goals?

5. What Do I (we?)
Truly Care About?
 Intellectual Freedom
 Censorship Issues
 Ethical use of information
 Using the research process to teach
critical thinking
 Evaluation of Information
 Characteristics of different information
sources
 Reading and Literacy
 Valuing librarians and libraries

6. What are the barriers to
teaching what you truly
care about?
What ideas or methods
do you have for
overcoming these
barriers?

7. Ruthless Prioritization:
You Just Can’t Do it All!
 Determine what you truly care about
and then figure out ways to teach it.
 Try writing a teaching philosophy
statement (then update every couple
of years).
 Don’t keep it to yourself! Discuss
what you care about to
students, teaching faculty, library
colleagues- basically anyone that will
listen.

8. Improving the One-Shot
 If an instructor wants too much to be covered in
one session, use handouts to cover some
material and reserve class time to focus on more
important stuff.
 Try to get “routine tasks” such as creating
accounts or very basic research skills taken care
of ahead of time through pre-assignments.
 Consider using online modules that introduce
basic research skills assigned ahead of time so
that you can focus on more meaty issues.
 Solicit specific research questions / problems
from all students in advance of the session. Use
these to focus the session on important issues
that are also relevant.
 Advocate strongly for 2 or more sessions in order
to progress towards “big picture” library issues.

9. Get Embedded!
 Embedding yourself in a course
beyond a one-shot session gives you
an opportunity to reinforce important
concepts that were maybe only
touched upon in a single session.
 Embedding allows you to build rapport
with students and then push them a bit
harder on some issues.

10. Librarian as Team Teacher
 Many courses could greatly benefit
from courses co-taught by a librarian
and a teaching faculty member.
Spending most –or all- of the
semester with a single class is very
time-intensive but can also yield the
greatest results as far as teaching
what you truly care about.
 Identify “library champions” among the
teaching faculty to pilot this idea.

11. Librarian as Lead Instructor
 Information Literacy or College Research
courses are somewhat common courses
(elective or credit) that librarians often
teach. Are these the most effective use
of our precious time? Can they be made
relevant enough to engage students?
 Are there any opportunities to teach at
your institution in a subject area where
you have expertise?
 If you are the lead instructor of a course,
you can model an ideal way of
integrating information literacy into a

12. Service Learning /
Community-Based Learning
 Service Learning has great potential as a
pedagogical strategy for teaching information
literacy.
 Students apply research to a “real world”
project instead of just another research
paper.
 Much closer to the way Information Literacy
is used in real life outside of academia.
 Service Learning Librarian Blog:
http://www.libraries.wright.edu/servicelearnin
g/

13. Questions?
 CARLI Instruction Team Spring Forum
 Collaboration and Embedded
Librarianship
 Friday June 10th at Heartland