Brittany Brannon is an MLIS candidate in the School of Library and Information Science at Kent State University. In this essay, she makes an argument for incorporating a rhetorical approach when assisting students with their information seeking and use. A rhetorical approach focuses on how the student will use the information they seek, and thus…

As the costs of scholarly and educational publications skyrocket, open educational resources (OER) are becoming an important way to provide content and enhance the teaching and learning experience. Librarians have a key role to play in developing, advocating, and managing OER. For many librarians, however, championing OERs means adding an…

This paper, somewhat an incomplete historical overview and personal perspective, outlines a number of key challenges and opportunities in relation to future directions and developments in information literacy (IL) as a field of research and professional practice. It gives attention to significant foundational (selective) scholarship in the field,…

In this personal exploration of information literacy (IL) instruction at one institution, I look back at three decades of my involvement with pedagogy and how our local practices have reflected national conversations about the field. Anxiety about the identity and purpose of academic libraries in higher education has shaped the ways we have…

A strong position in the institution is vital for any academic library and affects its recognition, resourcing, and prospects. Higher education institutions are experiencing radical change, driven by greater accountability, stronger competition, and increased internationalization. They prioritize student success, competitive research, and global…

An online survey sent to the community of professional librarians in the United States who provide information literacy instruction in academic libraries provided insights into their practices and the challenges they face. Data include current pedagogical methods, client groups of focus, assessment and evaluation, marketing, instructional…

This article proposes that libraries reimagine their information literacy instructional programs using a broader conceptualization and implementation of information literacy that promotes collaborative and personalized learning experiences for students, faculty, and staff, while embracing scalable instruction and reference strategies to maximize…

Ensuring quality library instruction in an online-exclusive First Year Writing (FYW) course is important and challenging. Assessing what the students learned and how is equally important. The authors collaborate and co-teach the information literacy portion of an online-exclusive second semester FYW course at the University of Tennessee at…

This longitudinal study at a large public university surveyed students of the 2008 freshmen cohort over four years about their use of websites and library resources for their research papers. The three goals of the study were to track changes in reported research behavior over time, to see if students' reported source choices were associated with…

Boolean logic can be a difficult concept for first-year, introductory students to grasp. This paper compares the results of Boolean and natural language searching across several databases with searches created from student research questions. Performance differences between databases varied. Overall, natural search language is at least as good as…

Active participation in orientation is hoped to increase understanding and use of library resources and services beyond the effect of tours or welcome lectures. Timed scavenger hunts have been used to orient undergraduate and medical students to academic libraries. This report describes the planning, execution, and evaluation of an untimed…

Education for Instruction Librarians has traditionally centered upon the acquisition of practical classroom skills. While this approach has merit, from a sociocultural perspective of learning, student development emerges more completely through engagement with the communal activities and values that constitute professional practices rather than…

This literature review is intended to examine transformative learning within the context of academic libraries and its applications for librarians. Although the main audience is academic librarians who facilitate student learning, it may also be of interest to other practitioners and researchers who are interested in applying transformative…

This article analyses the information literacy (IL) competencies of high-achieving undergraduate students through the lens of undergraduate research celebrations in a North American University. This article focuses on York University's Undergraduate Research Fair, and shares findings from an analysis of students' IL award submissions including…

In this article, the authors share how a team of librarians used the ADDIE instructional design model to incorporate best practices in teaching and learning into an online, four-credit information literacy course. In this redesign process, the Association of American Colleges and Universities' high-impact practices and e-learning best practices…