We have studied numerous articles and websites, theoretical and practical, related to this issue on other campuses. The Leyburn Library self-study report of 1998 lists five goals as part of the library's mission statement. It is within this context that we would like to share our collective thoughts with you. During the planning process that began with the Five Year Plan and will conclude with the strategic plan, the question of how we teach our community to process and evaluate effectively information through technology has been prominent. We would like to add our reflections to this ongoing discussion.
Information literacy is already a key goal of the liberal arts education.
We want our students to recognize the need for information, to know how to access information, to understand how to evaluate information, to know how to synthesize information, and to be able to communicate information. The library committee has been concerned primarily with the second and third of these aspects of information literacy - accessing and evaluating information. In order to better gauge faculty sentiment about these issues, we decided to conduct a survey during the 1997-1998 academic year. We wanted to find out what faculty thought of the library in all its functions, including electronic access to research materials, reserving a series of questions at the end that asked the faculty to judge student use of research materials in the library including electronic services provided by the library. The results confirmed our discussions in committee and reflected the variety of opinions among its members.