For the most part, information landscapes such as libraries are structured, organized, created, and used by the dominant groups. These spaces may be unfamiliar territory for many students. Humour used in library orientation elicits enjoyment and helps to connect librarians and students. Low and high inference humour used during orientation can…

What perceived role do one-shot information literacy sessions play in the professional status of librarianship? In what way is this perception resulting from and contributing to the feminization of instructional labor? How will criticizing and/or changing one-shots disrupt or perpetuate gender and other forms of inequity? All these questions…

In "Connected Teaching: Relationship, Power, and Mattering in Higher Education," Harriet L. Schwartz presents "relationship as a site and source for learning." It is both where the learning takes place and the mechanism through which we teach and learn, making it the "essential driver of teaching and learning."…

This essay explores the tension between pursuing meaningful work in instruction librarianship and the realities of working in a society in which many jobs provide little fulfillment or pleasure, or, as the journalist Sarah Jaffe puts it, "Work won't love you back." Drawing on a recent conference keynote by Anne Helen Petersen, C. Wright…

The rapid expansion of artificial intelligence (AI) poses challenges as well as opportunities for anyone or anything dealing with digital technologies, including libraries. Libraries and librarians have a twofold challenge in that they simultaneously must consider AI applications in library operations as well as AI skills and knowledge as part of…

This exploratory study examines trends in librarian teaching support for open science (OS) practices in higher education. The study was conducted through semi-structured interviews with academic librarians and a survey that was distributed through academic librarian interest groups. The results indicate that academic librarians have varied…

This project report describes an internal scan of library staff involved in instruction in a large academic library system. 64 semi-structured interviews were conducted and qualitatively analysed in order to produce a summary of instruction across the library system, and both the challenges faced and supports desired by these instructors. The most…

Teaching roles in academic libraries can be accompanied by a great deal of anxiety. This study surveyed librarian attitudes toward their teaching role and librarians' experiences with teaching anxiety. Sixty-four percent of librarians participating in the survey said they experienced teaching anxiety, including 65.10 percent experiencing physical…

This personal narrative describes strategies for incorporating relevant lived experience as narrative storytelling during library instruction in an academic classroom setting. Integrating personal narrative into curriculum is proposed as a technique for expanding instruction librarians' development as teachers and mentors, and for motivating and…

This case study reflects on a long-term collaborative partnership between librarians and writing program administrators to plan, build, implement, and significantly revise two course-specific online learning modules. Of particular interest are contrasts between phase-delineated instructional systems design frameworks, such as ADDIE, and the often…

The shift to online library instruction during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic has created challenges for librarians and staff because of the lack of online teaching and technological competencies. This study examines the competencies of academic and school librarians in teaching information literacy online. The findings have implications for…

The COVID-19 pandemic required library instruction to move into online environments. However, many academic librarians lacked basic competencies to provide online library instruction. This research used a competency-based needs assessment to identify competencies academic librarians need to be successful in providing online library instruction. In…

Curriculum mapping provides valuable opportunities for internal reflection and external advocacy in academic libraries. Librarians at a small liberal-arts college developed a curriculum mapping project designed to measure information literacy interventions with students, despite a lack of a standardized set of courses that all students take over…

From checklists, to processes, to models, information literacy (IL) instructors have sought to better teach students how to evaluate the information they encounter, increasingly through critical information literacy (CIL) pedagogies. CIL engages high-impact pedagogical practices as students direct their learning through dialogue and…

The purpose of this paper is to describe how the Understanding by Design instructional design framework can be applied to design high-quality single-session information literacy instruction. The author describes the Understanding by Design process in detail, noting modifications for single instructional session design with examples from the…