Information Services Services Management Committee

A quick & dirty collection of the links to some of the information literacy sites

DHM

From: Sophie Bury, sbury@wlu.ca, Mar. 7, 2001

Here are some URLs which I mentioned during the meeting. Please feel free to pass any of these URLs or the reports on to the rest of the committee at UW:·

"Objectives for Information Literacy Instruction by Academic Librarians" produced by the Instruction Section of ACRL/ALA. These are meant to be applied by academic librarians when tailoring the ACRL competency standards to specific instructional situations. http://www.libraries.rutgers.edu/is/projects/

* Some Web sites of relevance at Laurier include

• the information literacy pages which are in the process of being updated - soon information about the proposed Web tutorial modules will appear here too. http://www.wlu.ca/wwwlib/infolit/
  
• the paper which Virginia and Angela Madden presented at WLU about information literacy pilot projects at Laurier: http://www.wlu.ca/wwwlib/infolit/wilu/Paper.html
  
• Angela Madden's instructional pages for the section of the course she teaches at Brantford: http://www.wlu.ca/~wwwlib/infolit/
  
• the various library surveys I mentioned to you http://www.wlu.ca/wwwlib/libinfo/user.html
  
• Site hosted by the University of Winnipeg with links to information literacy programs in Canada: http://cybrary.uwinnipeg.ca/services/il/cdn_credit.htm
  
• LOEX site linking to many information literacy programs in the States. http://www.emunix.emich.edu/~lklopfer/html/IL.html
  
• Directory of online resources for information literacy: http://www.cas.usf.edu/lis/il/

There is also an article which appeared in the Nov. 2000 issue of College and Research Libraries entitled "Information Literacy Instruction in Canadian Academic Libraries: Longitudinal Trends and International Comparisons" by Heidi Julien.

What are the characteristics of model information literacy programs? We need your help in answering that question. The quick way is to jump to http://www.earlham.edu/discus, select "Information Literacy Best Practices," and "Identifying Characteristics of Best Practice," and start contributing. Its that easy. If you want more detail and background please read on. Either way I hope you will give us the benefit of your experience and thinking about information literacy programming.
Thanks.
Tom Kirk Best Practice Convener

Answering that question is the first step in a multi-part program being undertaken by the Association of College and Research Libraries' (ACRL) Institute for Information Literacy (http://www.ala.org/acrl/nili/nilihp.html) . Under the rubric of Best Practice the Institute has selected a group of librarians and other professionals involved in information literacy programs to spearhead an effort to identify the characteristics of best practice.

Because this is a new and emerging field of endeavor the Best Project Team (http://www.ala.org/acrl/nili/projectteam.html) and Advisory Panel (http://www.ala.org/acrl/nili/advispanel.html) are using the Delphi method to identify the characteristics. The Delphi method provides a loosely organized and open ended process of wide consultation with those interested in the topic of information literacy. Instead of a small group of people sitting in a closed room writing a document, we are using the openness of the Internet and some threaded discussion software to obtain and manage the input we receive. The input will be crafted into a statement of the characteristics of best practice.

After several iterations of the draft about which you will be notified as they appear over the next twelve to fifteen months, we expect to select a few institutions that best represent these characteristics. The selected institutions will be invited to a symposium at which the characteristics will be discussed.

As a result a number of publications will be created to inform and stimulate interest in the development of quality information literacy programs. You can read more about this Best Practices Project at http://www.ala.org/acrl/nili/bestprac.html.

This project is part of a larger effort by ACRL to promote quality information literacy program. The other projects are described in detail at http://www.ala.org/acrl/infolit.html.

If you are ready now to contribute, link to http://www.earlham.edu/discus and select "Information Literacy Best Practices," and "Identifying Characteristics of Best Practice," and start contributing. Its that easy.

If you have any questions contact me.

Thomas G. Kirk, Jr. kirkto@earlham.edu
College Librarian URL: http://www.earlham.edu/~libr/libinfo/about/kirktg.htm
Lilly Library Voice: 765/983-1360
Earlham College FAX: 765/983-1304
Richmond, IN 47374

A few months ago I posted a query on STS-L on Information Literacy in a science and engineering curriculum and specifically any information literacy examinations. I was looking through some old e-mails and found some requests for my findings. My colleague Mike Byrnes and I proposed a curriculum for a one credit course which was rejected by our university curriculum review committee because it was too basic. We will revise our proposal and submit it again in the Fall. Here are the results of the research that Mike and I did on the subject:

Institute for Information Literacy Site Map - http://www.ala.org/acrl/nili/sitemap.html

Information Literacy Exam Sample Questions from Weber State University (too elementary IMHO) - http://library.weber.edu/libinstruct/comp/sample.htm

ACRL's Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education - http://www.ala.org/acrl/ilstandardlo.html

Gavilan College Library Plan for the California Community Colleges - http://www.gavilan.cc.ca.us/library/infocomp/toc.html

Introduction to Computers and Information Literacy - a new course to be offered at Utah State University http://complit.usu.edu/.

The Information Competence Development Team at California Polytechnic State University http://library.csun.edu/infocomp/project/team.html

Purdue has a General Studies class on search techniques.We have found a home in the EE technology program, where they have made it a required course for their majors, so we teach a lot of engineering folks. http://gemini.lib.purdue.edu/instruction/gs175/index.html is the main webpage for the GS courses.

This is a very young and in-progress project we're working on: http://twist.lib.uiowa.edu/sciencelit/

We teach a course called "information literacy for the physical scientist" here at Cornell. It is a one graduate level class. Here is the URL: http://www.library.cornell.edu/psl/chem602/

Bruce Slutsky
New Jersey Institute of Technology Robert Van Houten Library
323 Martin Luther King Blvd
Newark, NJ 07102-1982
voice 973-642-4950 fax 973-642-7156
e-mail Bruce.Slutsky@njit.edu

So, I came up with the following websites with links to articles and information, that they each found useful..I don't know if you'll find anything here that you haven't already discovered..but since I had saved my e-mail to them - I thought I would share with you.

**** (This is more Science Information Literacy than Library Information Literacy) ******

Exploration of the factors in the dimensions of scientific literacy http://www.sasked.gov.sk.ca/docs/midlsci/scilmsce.html

Scientific Literacy Skills for Non Science Librarians Issues in Science & Technology Librarianship Fall 1999 http://www.library.ucsb.edu/istl/99-fall/article3.html

Building Websites for Science Literacy Issues in Science & Technology Librarianship Winter 2000 http://www.library.ucsb.edu/istl/00-winter/article2.html

TOC - From: Issues in Science & Technology Librarianship Fall 1997 Previous issues can be found at (http://www.library.ucsb.edu/istl/previous.html)

• Training the Trainers: Creating A Workshop on Teaching Chemical Information [ http://www.library.ucsb.edu/istl/97-fall/article1.html] by Charles F. Huber, University of California, Santa Barbara and Grace Baysinger, Stanford University
• Developing and Delivering Medical Reference Source Instruction in a Special Library [ http://www.library.ucsb.edu/istl/97-fall/article2.html] by James H. Walther and Nancy Speisser, The Advisory Board Company Biological Research and the Library:
• A Collaboration in Online Research and Library Instruction [ http://www.library.ucsb.edu/istl/97-fall/article3.html] by Terri Pedersen Summey, Emporia State University
• Searching Science from the Office: Science and Engineering Workshops [ http://www.library.ucsb.edu/istl/97-fall/article4.html] by Janet Martorana and Rosemary L. Meszaros, University of California, Santa Barbara
• Library Instruction Ideas for Science and Technology: A Baker's Dozen [ http://www.library.ucsb.edu/istl/97-fall/article5.html]
• Science & Technology Resources on the Internet Elizabeth W. Brown, Editor Scientific and Medical News on the Internet [ http://www.library.ucsb.edu/istl/97-fall/internet.html] by William Loughner, University of Georgia

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Best of Luck with all your projects..teaching Information Literacy!

Mary Niederlander, Library Technician/Serials Specialist
Kaleida Health Medical Libraries Buffalo, NY
mniederlander@kaleidahealth.org