Welcome
2. a. Brief history of why ISMC has been considering the Standards
Convergence of a few of things:
1) The 1999 report of the Information Services Review Team included recommendations about expanding upon and improving our curriculum-integrated library instructional programmes and in this context recommended "a review of the focus and efforts of the User Education Committee" so that the Committee's work support specific recommendations associated with expanding upon and improving…2) In the fall of 99, the User Ed Committee spent some time on a self-review and some changes were brought about at that time. At more or less the same time, terms of reference for ISMC were being developed and the Committee was established towards the end of the year. At some point in the next few months, the idea of ISMC conducting a broader review of the terms of reference for the User Ed. Committee was raised. In the fall of 2000, ISMC developed a list of topics for future discussion and included a review of the terms of reference of the User Ed. Committee on the list.
3) In January 2000, the Association of Research and College Libraries, ACRL, endorsed its information literacy standards. Since these Standards and the accompanying Objectives for Information Literacy Instruction speak very much to the need to integrate information literacy into the curriculum they seem to provide a good basis for our acting on the recommendations included in the Information Services Review report. Looking at the Standards and Objectives was also included in the fall 2000 list of upcoming topics for ISMC.
In January of this year, I spoke to Margaret Aquan-Yuen and we agreed that it was best to defer a review of the terms of reference of the Library Instruction Committee until we had figured out what we were doing with respect to the Standards. We also agreed that she and Erin would join ISMC meetings whenever the Standards were to be discussed. (Note Jackie's role on ISMC).
2.b. Review of ISMC discussions to date
In broad terms, ISMC has been working to develop an understanding of the Standards/Objectives and to identify questions and issues associated with them. We've asked a variety of questions such as what's new, what's much the same, how do we move forward, who needs to be involved as we try to move forward?
1st Meeting, January 29
This meeting was intended to be open-ended discussion to help members develop some familiarity with the Standards and what they might mean for us. Members read the Standards before the meeting and came prepared to share questions or observations that occurred to them as they read the Standards. To a large extent, the observations focused on the existing environment and challenges that need to be overcome in order to help students develop effective information literacy skills (e.g. in any given class a range of skills will be evident; many faculty members seem to have little or no interest in information literacy skills).
2nd Meeting, February 6
During this meeting, Shabiran reported on an information literacy session that she had attended at OLA. Speakers from Brock, Laurentian, and Senaca College spoke about information literacy activity at their libraries but there was no particular reference to the ACRL standards. Each of these libraries is trying to improve its instructional programme but there doesn't seem to be anything concrete yet. There is, however, a trend towards the development of on-line tutorials as a way of strengthening programmes.
During this meeting, the Committee agreed to find out more about what other libraries such as Guelph and Laurier may be doing with the Standards.
We also agreed that librarians on ISMC, as well as Erin and Margaret, would attempt to compare a session, or sessions, that they currently deliver with the Standards as a way of beginning to understand the extent to which we may already be incorporating elements of the Standards into our programme.
3rd Meeting, February 27
Following up on the idea of learning what Guelph and Laurier are doing about the Standards, I learned that Guelph hadn't started to do anything specific. However, Laurier had been actively exploring the Standards and working to incorporate them into their instructional programme. This work began in the fall of 1999 when Sophie Bury was hired as a Reference/Special Projects librarian and was asked to prepare a proposal for the development of a campuswide information literacy program at WLU. Sophie joined our meeting to describe what WLU has been doing and to answer questions that we might have. Among other things, we learned that implementation of a campuswide program is now largely focused on the development of on-line tutorials to be ready this fall. Following her meeting with us, Sophie provided copies of three reports that she and the WLU Information Literacy Task Force prepared. Copies of these reports are available for any of you who would like them.
The discussion with Sophie confirmed something that the Committee had begun to suspect - developing a comprehensive programme to address or incorporate the Standards/Objectives can be a large, complex, and daunting undertaking.
4th Meeting, March 13
We used this meeting to summarize what we had concluded so far, to identify outstanding questions, and consider what we might do next. Among the things concluded was that it would be ideal to aim for full integration of information literacy across the curriculum and that we can improve our instruction programme by using the Standards/Objectives. We also agreed that it would be useful to know more about what faculty members think about the need for information literacy skills and agreed to invite Dr. Skidmore, from the Germanic and Slavic Languages and Literature Department, to a future meeting. (Sophie had told us that Dr. Skidmore had been at WLU before coming to UW and had been a member of the Information Literacy Task Force.)
5th Meeting, March 27
Dr. Skidmore joined this meeting to talk about his experience with information literacy. He noted that he was not familiar with the term until he joined WLU’s Task Force but in the meantime has come to understand the value of integrating information literacy into the curriculum, and explained how he is doing this. He also answered some questions that the Committee had raised in earlier meetings, e.g. to what extent is information literacy discussed in literature about teaching that faculty members read and how can faculty members be encouraged to begin taking information literacy seriously.
6th Meeting, April 3
Used this meeting to plan a meeting with librarians and we continued to explore various questions, e.g. will the Library Instruction Committee be responsible for co-ordinating future work associated with moving forward with the Standards, will we establish a task force, or what?
7th Meeting, May 1
As I mentioned earlier, in an earlier meeting, librarians on ISMC and Margaret and Erin thought that they would spend some time comparing the Standards to a session, or sessions, and at this meeting those who had had a chance to this shared some of their observations (these are noted in the minutes of that meeting which will be available next week).
At this meeting we also talked about the possibility and desirability of a day-long workshop about the Standards. I'll talk more about that at the end of this meeting.
Overview of ISMC Discussions
As noted earlier what ISMC has done so far is largely exploratory, in an attempt to identify questions and issues associated with the Standards. Overall, Committee members, including Erin and Margaret, feel that we should try to strengthen our instructional programme, that integrating information literacy into the curriculum is highly desirable and that we can use the Standards to this end. At the same time there are concerns about things such as who's going to do what, how we engage others on campus in discussions about the importance of information literacy and develop commitment to the idea, whether we adequately staffed to do anything very significant, the impact moving forward may have on workloads.
2.c. Purpose of Today's Discussion
Because library instruction is a core responsibility for all liaison librarians, it's important to engage all of you in discussions in order to: 1) begin to develop a shared understanding about the Standards and Objectives 2) get your ideas about what we might do with them 3) get your ideas about the process that we might follow to get to wherever it is that we're going. In addition to liaison librarians, other public service librarians and members of the Library Instruction Committee were invited, largely for the sake of awareness building.
The meeting is intended to be open ended and exploratory. We'd like to keep the discussion relatively broad so that we can identify questions/issues/concerns that need further examination and that might help set a direction. If we begin to get too narrowly focused on details associated with any specific question or issue, I'll suggest that we start to broaden out.
Linda is taking notes and will prepare a summary of the ideas/questions/ issues raised. ISMC will review today's discussion as part of determining what we do next.
We'll aim to end the meeting at 11:30 but if the discussion is still active and people would like to stay on, we can go to noon - but no later. There are three specific things that we'll talk about towards the end of the meeting - the workshop that I alluded to earlier, a forum for continuing this discussion, and articles that ISMC has been reading about information literacy and that we can share with you.