Information Services Management Committee

Minutes of the Meeting of January 29, 2001
1:30-4:30 P.M.
Davis

(N.B. meetings scheduled for January 16 and 23 were cancelled because of conflict with Dreamweaver training; the January 30 meeting was rescheduled to January 29)

Present: Marlene Laurence, Wish Leonard, Maureen McCormack, Doug Morton, Susan Moskal, Shabiran Rahman, Susan Routliffe (Chair), Mary Stanley, Jackie Stapleton, Linda Teather

Regrets: Rose Koebel

Guest: Erin Murphy

1. Minutes of Previous Meeting (January 9)

   Accepted.

2. Business Arising from Discussions about PDF and HTML

Linda noted that the Systems Department has reviewed the list of advantages and disadvantages and recommends that it be made more widely available to Library staff. Although we began the discussion about PDF and HTML in the context of two series, How To and Titles, Systems also suggests that preference for HTML be extented to all publications created by the Library. This led to a discussion about concerns that Data Links, TDR’s publication, is to be made available in electronic format only from now on, and in PDF rather than HTML. This is a concern here, but is preferred by Guelph. Susan will pursue these matters.

3. ACRL’s Information Literacy Standards

The Standards were finalized last January and provide us with the impetus to explore opportunities for expanding/redefining the Library’s role with respect to library instruction and helping students to development information literacy skills. The Committee will do some preliminary exploration to develop an understanding of the Standards what might be involved in developing a programme to address the Standards. Susan and Margaret have talked about reviewing the mandate of the Library Instruction Committee and have agreed that it makes sense to delay that until we have a clearer sense of what we’re doing with respect to the Standards.

As librarians who are also members of the Library Instruction Committee, Margaret and Erin will attend ISMC meetings for discussion of the Standards and possible modifications to our current programme. At some point, we’ll need to determine how to engage all liaison librarians in these discussions.

Margaret and Shabiran will attend an OLA Super Conference session on integrating information literacy into the curriculum and will report on that session at our next meeting.

This meeting was intended to provide a forum for an open-ended discussion of ideas/issues/concerns that occurred to people as they read about and thought about the Standards. The following observations were raised during the discussion.

Observations about students

• Marlene started the discussion by noting that the way in which students fill in ILL request forms confirms the idea that they, even at the graduate level, lack basic information literacy skills – in particular, the forms reveal a widespread inability to identify elements of a catalogue or other bibliographic record. For instance, students cannot always distinguish a title from an author.
• The lack of information literacy skills that we see in undergraduates suggests that there is little done in the high schools to help students develop such skills.
• Undergraduates come without an awareness of how big and rich the information resources are.
• Students seem to be particularly lacking in the ability to evaluate the authority of a source.
• In any library instruction session, a range of skills will be evident – the students are not all starting at the same point.
• Many students seem interested in doing the least, with the least effort.
• Students need motivation in order to take the time necessary to develop information literacy skills. The most effective motivation comes from their course instructor, especially in the form of marks.
• A number of people seem to be able to get doctoral degrees without developing information literacy skills – they rely on a network of people to provide them with key material, rather than learning how to locate it themselves.

Observations about course instructors
• In order to integrate information literacy into the curriculum, course instructors must be heavily involved.
• We rely on instructors to provide us with teaching opportunities and we need their interest and involvement in order to have any significant impact.
• Many faculty members appear to be disinterested in, or unaware of, the need for information literacy skills.
• Some faculty members give assignments without seeming to know or care what information research skills the student will need in order to complete them.
• Some seem to believe that their students have the necessary skills, when, in fact, our interaction suggests that they don’t.
• Some seem to feel that if the students don’t have the skills, they should have them and we shouldn’t help them; if students are intelligent enough to get into university, they’re intelligent enough to locate the information they need without us holding their hands.
• Newer faculty members, who are themselves closer to the students’ experience, seem to be more aware of the complexities of using a library.

Observations about the role of librarians and others in the library

• Looking at the Standards forces us to examine the jargon that we use and the assumptions that we make – we have so little time with the students, both during instructional sessions and at the information desks, that we make assumptions about their understanding in order to move along.
• We need to find ways to pre-test students so that we have a clearer understanding of what they already know and where we should start.
• We need to target first year students in core or required courses and introduce information literacy at this point.
• It can take a long time and a lot of patience to cultivate faculty members in order to get them interested in and enthusiastic about information literacy.
• Because the technology keeps changing, we’re spending a lot of time teaching technology skills, at the expense of information literacy skills.
• Librarians are already addressing most of the Standards through their instructional programmes but because we don’t usually know what skill levels the students had before a session and because we rarely get feedback indicating what difference the session made to the students’ achievements, we don’t know if the programmes make any difference.
• Some librarians have done some work on assessment.
• If we are to make any significant in-roads, both liaison librarians and library administrators will have to be involved in promoting information literacy.

Miscellaneous observations

• In addition to addressing the standards through our formal instructional programme, we need to think about ways of addressing them at the information desks and through web pages.
• The standards nest together and are interdependent.
• To what extent does information literacy matter to the campus at large?
• Is a concern with information literacy prominent in faculty literature?
• Recommendation 18 of the Fifth Decade report notes that programs and course requirements should ensure that students develop "the ability to access, evaluate, and use electronic information".
• UW’s decentralized structure means that there is no apparent place for something as cross disciplinary as information literacy.
• Some programmes simply do not require students to use resources made available through the Library.
• As we pursue enhancing information literacy, we may want to collaborate with units such as TRACE and LT3.