Barnes Whyte, Susan

English

OJS at Oregondigital.org (Oregon State University / University of Oregon)

OLA Quarterly Volume 7 Number 2 Information Literacy (Summer 2001) July 2014 From BI to IL: The ACRL Institute of Information Literacy Susan Barnes Whyte Linfield College Recommended Citation Barnes Whyte, S. (2014). From BI to IL: The ACRL Institute of Information Literacy. OLA Quarterly, 7(2), 14-15. http://dx.doi.org/10.7710/1093-7374.1580 © 2014 by the author(s). OLA Quarterly is an official publication of the Oregon Library Association | ISSN 1093-7374 SUMMER 2001 14From BI to IL:The ACRL Institutefor Information Literacyby Susan Barnes WhyteLinfield CollegeI am a faculty member at the Immersion Institute forInformation Literacy. I spent five hot, sultry days inAugust 1999 in upstate New York near Lake Champlainobserving this institute and then spent five lovely sum-mer days in August 2000 teaching in the Institute at theUniversity of Washington. Five librarians teach. About100 librarians participate, either in Track One which con-centrates on the teaching session, or Track Two, center-ing on managing a library instruction program. Both tracksfocus on transforming bibliographic instruction into in-formation literacy. Librarians came from all over NorthAmerica, and a few came from well beyond our bordersto learn about information literacy theory, assessment,leadership and management, learning theories, and per-formance and pedagogy. It’s a wonderful, intense timewhere all we talk about is teaching—the philosophy ofteaching as well as its theory and practiceAt the very first reception in Seattle, one of the partici-pants said to me: “I’m a librarian, not a teacher.” I’vethought about this comment ever since. It sums up nicelythe dilemma apparent to our profession. Libraries havealways been about order. Ever since classification sys-tems were invented, order has prevailed. Order and rules.We knew where those books were placed, we constructeda controlled vocabulary which made sense to us, we cre-ated cards for locating the books, we insisted uponsilence. We were the guardians of our collections. Theindustrial age and its ideology focused upon efficiencyof operations, e.g., the assembly line. This made sense tolibraries. Throw in a real passion for service and bringingculture to the masses, and you have a sense of wholibrarians were.Teaching was not particularly part of our makeup. To-day, in this postmodern era where technology and speedrule, libraries are changing in profound ways. Many li-brarians now teach or train. Often how we teach be-comes confused because we only teach in short sessions,sometimes with content related to the course, but moreoften in a way that seems contrived and must focus on atool. The tools of bibliography were easier to grasp 25years ago. Collections were inside a building; studentsused what the institution owned. Now, students gravitatetoward the Web on computers, and are often more atease with the technology than librarians.Indeed as Mark Pesce points out in The Playful World,traditional-aged students have grown up with comput-ers. This is not a technology for them. It continues to befor most librarians. And, we librarians cannot easily con-trol the computers or the Web or the students. We areaccustomed to providing controlled access to informa-tion. We cannot do that anymore. Students below theage of 25 walk into a library or a lab, or sit at home infront of their computers and tap into a search engine thatwill probably not access anything inside a library. Howstudents use and manage information today differs a greatdeal from how we use and manage it in libraries.What the ACRL Institute provides is a sense that infor-mation literacy, or critical thinking as I prefer to call it,is a way to connect students with information through aprocess that is not about the RIGHT way to do research.Rather it teaches students to think about—to createmeaning—from the information they find. Students inhigh school and college today perceive these comput-ers as mere tools. They do not need lengthy instruc-tions; they do not want to know the “perfect” searchstrategy. They want information. Information literacy,when done well, points to the center of how peopleuse and create meaning from information. As BarbaraMacAdam says in a recent article: “Bombarded withconstant graphic and information stimuli, they expectthe unexpected. The predictable, systematic and orderlyappears unrealistic and unnatural to them” (MacAdam,2000). We librarians want the predictable universe, theright way to do the research process.Moreover, teaching is messy and in the moment. Thereare few straight lines. The conversation, which takes placein an engaged classroom, can veer off into any numberof directions. As we construct more interactive computerlabs for library instruction, we need to think about howAt the very first reception in Seattle oneof the participants said to me:“I’m a librarian, not a teacher.”I’ve thought about this commentever since. It sums up nicelythe dilemma apparentto our profession.SUMMER 2001 15are figuring out their lives and are on their way to adult-hood. We librarians need to focus upon the people weteach and remember that the far more fascinating ques-tions to ask are the why questions, rather than the howquestions. Why is this piece of information credible?Who says? Why is it important that we think about in-formation? If we think that this is important, then thestudents will catch our sense of passion. I think thatteaching is a succession of minor epiphanies. That’s theessence of information literacy. It cannot be accom-plished in one session or in one year of education. Buildupon those epiphanies!ReferencesMacAdam, B., 2000. From the other side of the river: Re-conceptualizing the educational mission of libraries. InBahr A.H. (ed.), 2000. Future Teaching Roles for Aca-demic Librarians : 77-93. Haworth Press, New York.Pesce, M., 2000. The Playful World: How Technology isTransforming Our Imagination. Ballantine Books,New York.this will change how we teach. Teaching content in shortspurts mixed with active learning seems to make moresense in such a setting. Simplifying our content also makessense. Why do students need to know all that we knowabout how to make a catalog work well? Most studentscannot even tell the difference between an index and acatalog. As we progress in teaching evaluative skills aswell as navigational skills, we must think clearly abouthow to ask the questions so that students can build uponthe experiential knowledge they already possess. If theyhave nothing to build upon, the newly heard informa-tion will disappear with their next latte.Information literacy and this Institute focus upon break-ing the process of teaching down into manageable piecesfor librarians and their students. How do you design aclass session so that students will learn one concept? Whatis the one concept that you want to get across in thissession? Why is this important? How do you measuretheir learning? How do you build class by class into aninformation literacy program which works for the cam-pus? The moral of the institute is “think large, but startsmall” and realize that this all will take time. And remem-ber that one librarian cannot do this by herself.The only concern I have with the Institute isthat we librarians are talking with librarians. Weneed to be talking beyond ourselves. Much likethe writing across the curriculum movementwhich had to convince faculty outside of theEnglish Department that everyone on a collegecampus teaches writing and hence thinking, sowe librarians need to focus more on workingwith faculty. How do they use information? Howdo they expect their students to use informa-tion? I am convinced that if we only talk amongstourselves and teach within the library, then in-formation literacy will not take. The faculty ulti-mately teach the content. We librarians fill inaround the edges. I think it would be wonderfulif each librarian participating in this Institutewould be required to bring along a faculty mem-ber, or better yet, a Dean.And when we do teach, we need to think lessabout the right way to do research, the rightdatabases. We need to think more about whowe’re teaching. Ask them what they think theyneed to know for this course. Ask them whythey think they’re here for this 50-minute li-brary class. Listen to their responses. Be readyto shift gears if necessary. Flexibility and theability to listen and then respond are the hall-marks of good teaching. Students crave mean-ing for their lives. I am convinced of that. Be-neath the baseball caps lurk human beings whoAd to go here

From BI to IL: The ACRL Institute of Information Literacy

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From BI to IL: The ACRL Institute of Information Literacy

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