Information Services Management Committee

Minutes of the Meeting of March 27, 2001
1:30-3:00 P.M.
Davis Conference Room

Present: Marlene Laurence, Wish Leonard, Maureen McCormack, Susan Moskal, Shabiran Rahman, Susan Routliffe (Chair and Recorder), Mary Stanley

Regrets: Linda Teather, Rose Koebel

Guests: Erin Murphy, Margaret Aquan-Yuen, Helena Calogeridis, James Skidmore

1. Minutes of Previous Meeting

   The minutes of the March 13, 2001 meeting were modified slightly; Susan will advise Rose of the changes.

2. Information Literacy

As agreed at the March 13 meeting, Shabiran invited Dr. Skidmore to join us for this meeting and he was able to. Dr. Skidmore explained that he was first exposed to the term "information literacy" when he served as a member of the Information Literacy Task Force at WLU. He has subsequently built an information literacy component into his Survey of German Literature and Culture courses (GER 291/292) as a means of fostering independent learning and skill development for his students, and as a means of addressing the following problems in the course:

• Content overwhelms the time available
• Literary history overwhelms interpretation
• Students are ignorant of secondary sources
• Students are overly dependent on the instructor

In planning the information literacy component, Dr. Skidmore used the following guiding concepts:

• Integration: fit information literacy into the syllabus
• Purpose: have students gather information they can use
• Quality: inform students about the best sources they can use
• UW resources: get students into the Library
• Independence: require independent decision making

Dr. Skidmore talked about the difference that including information literacy in the course makes and noted that it:

• Introduces literary history without making it the major focus
• Provides a practical introduction to pertinent secondary sources
• Trains students to evaluate information
• Encourages independence

In response to a question about the extent to which information literacy is discussed in literature that faculty members read about teaching, Dr. Skidmore noted that very few faculty members read about teaching and that there is virtually nothing about information literacy in the literature that they might read.

When asked for advice about building support for the incorporation of information literacy into the curriculum, Dr. Skidmore suggested the following:

• Librarians can find ways to help faculty members develop and deliver information literacy sessions and participate in marking written assignments. During his presentation, Dr. Skidmore repeatedly commented on the value of Helena’s contribution to the work that he does to help his students with information literacy.
• Librarians can find information literacy champions among the faculty who are willing to talk to their colleagues about the value of information literacy. He noted that he proposes to do something along these lines at one of his departmental meetings.

When asked what role on-line tutorials might play in helping students develop information literacy skills, Dr. Skidmore noted that they can be of some value but that in-class discussion is also important.

Following Dr. Skidmore’s presentation, the Committee considered what needs to be done next and agreed that we need to articulate what we’d like to achieve with respect to information literacy and then develop a plan designed to achieve the goals or objectives. In earlier discussions, the Committee has considered whether the ACRL standards point to something that we are not already doing through our instructional programme or are largely a definition of what we are doing. We don’t have a clear answer yet, but an important point made at this meeting is that to date we have focused primarily on teaching students how to use specific tools rather than on the broader skills encompassed in the standards. During the discussion, the importance of identifying and involving faculty members, library and university administration, and units such as TRACE in our discussions about information literacy was raised.