Librarians provide instruction for students across disciplines, each with their own teaching and learning practices. An exploration of signature pedagogies will help librarians develop a deeper understanding of student learning. This article identifies reflective pedagogy as a teaching strategy librarians can use to expand upon this learning by…

Information literacy (IL) open learning object repositories (LORs) provide a space for librarians to find and exchange instruction resources and lessons. Given many librarians enter the workforce with little or no formal training or educational opportunities to learn about pedagogy, these repositories are indispensable resources to the Library and…

This article describes using aha moments as an assessment approach to gain a better understanding of student learning in relation to the six frames in the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) "Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education." Librarians asked students to share an aha moment following information…

BEAM is a schema for categorizing the rhetorical positions of authors according to the author's intention or purpose of the information. This Innovative Practices piece critiques common methods of teaching source evaluation and proposes that instruction librarians teach BEAM to students who may struggle using a source once they have located it. A…

Increasingly, tertiary librarians are required to teach as part of their role. There is recognition that ongoing professional development (PD) is required in teaching and learning as this is not generally provided as part of formal library qualifications. Using an education design-based research approach, this collaboration aimed to enhance the…

To meet the growing online and face-to-face library instruction needs of a large research university, a team of librarians set out to develop asynchronous online instruction of sufficient quality to supplement and replace classroom teaching. This report describes the best practices that were identified from a review of the literature, the…

The Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education calls on librarians to teach complex concepts rather than discrete skills, but many librarians have struggled with implementing such teaching. This article reports on a revised lesson for information literacy instruction in First Year Writing classes, created using Grant Wiggins and Jay…

As e-resources become more ubiquitous, and the technologies available to access them more sophisticated, libraries have greater opportunities to reach out to global users. However, this same distance means that some users never even set foot in a physical library. This case study will describe how one large academic library started a business,…

School librarians have always been teachers, even before the term "teacher-librarian" was coined. They teach every time they help students select books, locate and evaluate resources for research projects, or troubleshoot a computer problem. When they assist students, they explain and model the steps they are taking. Teaching for school librarians…

School librarians play numerous roles throughout a day. They are information specialists who keep up with the constant changes in information and technology. It is important for them to keep students up-to-date and teach them to use technology properly. Gaming and technology are both important concepts for 21st-century school librarians to…

This article presents K-12 motivational strategies that focus on different ideas school library media specialists can use to gain and sustain attention in the research topic. Some have come from recent submissions to the S.O.S. database of lesson plans and teaching ideas. A student-directed searching activity for college level library instruction…

Intended for school librarians, the guide describes a 9-week course of study in library reference skills for junior high academically talented students. The course description is presented in a thematic day-by-day and week-by-week format designed for one-to-one and small group instruction. Lesson plans include information on time requirements,…

Describes purpose, materials, and approach for several science-related lessons designed to teach library media skills to elementary school children: (1) Nonfiction Versus Fiction; (2) Desk Dictionaries and Specialized Dictionaries; (3) The Library as a Communication Storehouse; (4) Conducting a Survey; (5) Interpreting Graphs; and (6) Plastics,…

Outlines a lesson plan used by an academic library to evaluate the quality of World Wide Web information. Discusses the traditional evaluation criteria of accuracy, authority, objectivity, currency, and coverage as it applies to the unique characteristics of Web pages: their marketing orientation, variety of information, and instability. The…

Information skills instruction is a fundamental and vital part of K-12 education in the 21st century. "The Handy 5", a proven effective model for planning, teaching, and assessing information skills instruction, was written to help library media specialists and teachers to collaborate more effectively in the teaching of information skills. This…