Faculty Guide to the Library

The Association of College & Research Libraries' (ACRL) Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education states, "Information literacy is the set of integrated abilities encompassing the reflective discovery of information, the understanding of how information is produced and valued, and the use of information in creating new knowledge and participating ethically in communities of learning."

The six concepts that anchor the frames are listed here in alphabetical order:

• Authority Is Constructed and Contextual
• Information Creation as a Process
• Information Has Value
• Research as Inquiry
• Scholarship as Conversation
• Searching as Strategic Exploration

The links for each concept above include learning objectives and classroom activities from PALNI (Private Academic Library Network of Indiana).

• Library faculty would be happy to work with you to build a Research Guide or an assignment for your courses that develop information literacy skills. Contact the librarians or your liaison librarian to get started.
• Library faculty are available to lead information literacy instruction with your students. We are happy to host your class in the library's computer classroom for a research workshop at a level appropriate for your class. In order for us to plan a lesson and to reserve instruction space, please request instruction at least two weeks before the date(s) you'd like to visit. You can reserve a date for librarian-led instruction while you are building your syllabus and we can work out lesson plan details later. We can also create an online guide to highlight tools and resources for your course.

Library faculty have also created some materials you can incorporate into you courses:

• FYS Activity on Evaluating Sources - in-class activity to practice evaluating online sources.
• Library Quest - Students work in teams to solve a final trivia question by collecting clues throughout the library.

One of the learning outcomes for our First Year Seminars states "You will locate, critically assess, and ethically use informational sources." We know individuals will continue to develop their information literacy skills beyond FYS - even well beyond college. How can you tell if your students are making progress on this learning outcome? Wittenberg library faculty have identified key first year skills that will lay a foundation to enable students to grow their information literacy skills in upper level coursework and beyond.

By the end of FYS, Wittenberg students will be able to:

• articulate an information need
  • define their topic and narrow/broaden if necessary
  • identify gaps in the knowledge base
• describe how a librarian can help with their information needs
• effectively utilize a database or catalog to find information resources
  • identify appropriate key terms for a topic
  • refine search (use limiters, Boolean operators, truncation)
  • review results
  • select relevant resources
• critique information sources based on date, relevancy, accuracy, motivation, and authority

Potential Additional Outcomes:

• understand what constitutes plagiarism and how to avoid it
• discuss the value of information (e.g. subscription resources, intellectual property)
• formulate a research question that is appropriate to the scope of the assignment
• explain the iterative process of research
• describe the differences among different formats of information