Working Together: librarian-faculty partnerships (2004)

Abstract Partnerships between librarians and teaching faculty can help infuse literacy skills more effectively into the curriculum. Information literacy continues to be of critical importance to librarians; many of the outreach efforts to establish partnerships throughout the academy have been initiated by librarians. Teaching faculty who initiate connections with librarians will help facilitate the mutual goal of teaching students to be lifelong learners. Networking opportunities and examples of assignments based on literacy outcomes are discussed. Introduction Information literacy is of critical importance to the library profession. Historically, librarians have initiated outreach to teaching faculty in order to promote and establish the concept in the curriculum. Extensive research about literacy has been conducted and continues in the library field, and it tends to be a library-led initiative throughout the academy. When the value of literacy pedagogy is acknowledged officially and unofficially by both administration and teaching faculty, it is easier to integrate the standards into the curriculum. Collaboration with librarians benefits teaching faculty in several ways, for example, by meeting the demands of higher education assessment requirements, using new technology to find information, and helping to take a preventative stance to reduce student plagiarism. Information literacy is a concept generated by the library profession. Historically, literacy has neither been integrated into a discipline's curriculum nor actively taught within courses because it was assumed that most students would naturally become critical thinkers by the end of their academic experience. In the 1970s librarians began to develop and promote an integrated program for academia by tailoring library instruction sessions into courses (Rockman, 2004, p. 4). Ilene Rockman, manager of the Information Competence Initiative in the California State University System, states that the importance of literacy to higher education is simple: students are entering college and university without basic research and competency skills (p. 9). Paul Zurkowski is credited with creating the literacy concept in a 1974 report to the U.S. National Commission on Libraries and Information Science. This federal agency was created for the library and user and not the library profession. Later, professional organizations like the American Library Association began to develop the literacy concept in 1989 with its definition: To be literate, a person must be able to recognize when is needed and have the ability to locate, evaluate, and use effectively the needed (American Library Association). In 2000, the Association of College & Research Libraries issued Information Literacy Standards for Higher Education; the standards were subsequently endorsed by the American Association of Higher Education. Information literacy is a worldwide concept that has been accepted and promoted by both English and non-English speaking countries (National Forum on Information Literacy). In the United States, several accreditation boards, such as the American Chemical Society and the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools, have incorporated literacy standards into their evaluative criteria. We can conclude that information literacy is one of the liberal arts (along with reading, writing, computational, and thinking skills) essential for career preparation, professional development, lifelong learning, and civic participation in a democracy (Thompson, 2002, p. 225). Culture and Collaboration It is easier in some university campus cultures than in others to create lasting librarian-faculty partnerships in order to embed literacy into the curriculum. …