LIBRARY INSTRUCTION AND INFORMATION LITERACY AT KCC

An Operational Definition of Information Literacy

In view of the above commitment and the frequently voiced uncertainty regarding the meaning of information literacy, an operational definition is seen in order here. First use of the term has been widely attributed to Paul Zurkowski, who in 1974 described as information literate individuals who were “trained in the application of information resources to their work.” The American Library Association would expand on this definition in a seminal report issued in 1989. A presidential committee appointed by the association identified information literacy as a set of abilities involving recognition, location, evaluation and use of information and linked its increasing importance to the rapidity of information growth and the scope of its attendant technological changes:

Information is expanding at an unprecedented rate, and enormously rapid strides are being made in the technology for storing, organizing, and accessing the ever growing tidal wave of information. How our country deals with the realities of the Information Age will have enormous impact on our democratic way of life and our nation’s ability to compete internationally… people, as individuals and as a nation – must be information literate. To be information literate, a person must be able to recognize when information is needed and have the ability to locate, evaluate, and use effectively the needed information. ( ALA presidential Committee on Information Literacy, Final Report, 1989)  

All subsequent attempts in the library literature at further or alternative delineation have in essence preserved the core of the ALA definition and only succeeded in enumerating more elaborate lists, the nature of the lists being dependent upon the particular perspectives of their individual proponents. They have ranged from acceptance and expansion of necessary skills, insistence on user experiences, to emphasizing processes. All the approaches, whether behaviorist, constructivist or relational, ended up listing concrete skills, expectations, and experiences attendant to, resulting from or representing evidence of achievement of the requisites of the ALA definition. They have helped to further illuminate and in some instances concretize the 1989 definition, even when their proponents questioned ALA’s basic approach. The ALA definition remains, however, the most widely accepted; and it gained such status not merely because of its pioneering nature, but also because of the succinct manner in which it captured the essence of the evolving necessity to be captioned information literacy.
 

Library Instruction and Information Literacy

The library's instructional librarians acknowledge that the goal of preparing information literate students is one that encompasses the entire educational process, and provides unique opportunities for the contribution of librarians. The specialized expertise and role of librarians positions them well to provide instruction in skills and concepts needed for information literacy. Instructional librarians can teach and familiarize students with the strategies and structures for navigating the vast resources available to them in library catalogs, bibliographic databases, on the Internet, and in print resources. Librarians can also offer an understanding of the scholarly communication process, of the process of information generation and flow, wherein information is seen both as a building component of knowledge as well as transferable knowledge itself. They can demonstrate the implications of such understandings for the ways in which students interact with information, and how students may best retrieve appropriate information from multiple sources. With an awareness of the complexity of the information universe they have to navigate, students can be taught preliminary strategies for evaluating retrieved information to ensure pertinence and veracity, encouraging their selection of the most appropriate and reliable sources for their tasks.

Furthermore, by reinforcing concepts of intellectual property and familiarizing students with and encouraging them to consider legal and ethical dimensions of information use, instructional librarians can make students aware of the need for proper citation and attribution and introduce them to the various citation styles, their points of commonality and divergence. Instructional librarians contribute to the campus-wide effort at combating plagiarism by reinforcing the unethical nature of such temptation and practice. They can encourage and show students how to follow the accepted codes of proper academic communication and urge them to be ethical in their incorporation, construction and communication of information and knowledge.

Library-Faculty Collaboration and Students’ Information Literacy

At Kingsborough Community College, the library seeks to build on the opportunities that course related and course integrated bibliographic instruction presents for information literacy education. Consequently, instructional librarians seek active and extensive collaboration with faculty in initiating and supporting the information literacy education of KCC students. The library encourages, solicits and supports classroom faculty requests for instruction and librarians-faculty exploration of course integrated information literacy initiatives. The library also encourages classroom faculty participation in the shaping of the content of library instruction. Such collaboration ensures the general and disciplinary acculturation of students to the research process, and to those indispensable fundamentals for successful independent research that constitute the cornerstone of lifelong learning.
Information literacy can be best fortified through the development and encouragement of classroom activities that require students to actually find, evaluate and use print and electronic sources of information and knowledge available through the college library, its numerous databases and indexes, and the Internet. Assignments, research projects and course work that involve extensive use of such tools and resources provide the best opportunities for teaching, learning and achieving information literacy. The library hopes to work in partnership with classroom faculty to achieve such a teaching-learning environment at KCC.

Written by: Dr. Edward Owusu-Ansah, Chief Librarian