Information Literacy at UB
What IS Information Literacy?What we've done at UB to promote information literacy:The Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL) defines information literacy as the "set of skills needed to find, retrieve, analyze and use information" (ACRL, 2000). The emphasis is not only only information seeking but on critical evaluation of information and the ethical use of information in the university and beyond.
What we're currently doing:Langsdale Library Reference librarians have worked with teaching faculty to increase the level of library instruction in the classroom. In the last three years, classroom instruction has grown 86% in business and 47% in liberal arts. Librarians taught 67 classes for 1079 students during the 2004-2005 academic year (for more on instruction stats, see Annual Comparison Chart and Course Integrated Instruction 2004-2005).
We worked collaboratively with faculty and administration to sponsor an Information Literacy workshop in March 2005 to present the concept of Information Literacy to UB faculty. Faculty and librarians from other Maryland universities shared their campuses' efforts to incorporate information literacy into the curriculum.
We have developed pilot programs with both MSB and YGCLA courses to assess students' information literacy skills. Here are sample lesson plans for the Criminal Justice and Management (1 and 2) courses with powerpoints (1, 2, 3) for Management.
What we hope to do:We continue to work with instructors in several courses in YGCLA and MSB to develop an integrated approach to information literacy in the classroom.We are involved in the Educational Offerings subcommittee of the Middle States Self Study to examine how information literacy is currently facilitated and how it can more fully integrated into the undergraduate curriculum. We are active in a Lower Division Initiative subcommittee identifying needs of first-year students.
We have created a number of online HTML and video tutorials that can be used in either online or face-to-face classes as a supplement/complement to our classroom instruction. We hope to add to this list of tutorials in the coming months.
We would like to develop a systematic approach to incorporating information literacy into the existing curriculum here at the University of Baltimore as well as the potential lower division courses.
With that goal in mind, we have developed a program mission statement and are developing subsequent objectives and a timeline. We plan to create a Information Literacy Task Force with faculty, librarians and students to guide our efforts.
We envision information literacy to span the curriculum from first-year student to graduate student.
For more information:
Contact Thomas Arendall-Salvetti at tarendall-salvetti@ubalt.edu.