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Course instructor as customer.

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Abstract

Teaching librarians have long struggled with the limitations of the one-shot, fifty-minute class. As the influence of information literacy continues to grow in the world of librarianship, many librarians feel additionally overwhelmed with the need to provide an even more complete instructional experience in the classroom. For the one shot, fifty-minute teaching sessions, the struggle seems to be between the teaching of process in doing research as opposed to teaching available sources and how to use them. This article proposes that the course instructor is the key figure in deciding what sources, objectives and competencies should be taught. Adapting the "reference interview" to course instructors should be the library instructor's main tool to accomplish this.

Recently, the buzz phrase, "information literacy" has given life to many philosophical issues within librarianship. Teaching librarians have long struggled with the desire to present the right information in the limited one-time, fifty-minute class that has traditionally been theirs. Recently, some librarians have found opportunity to teach credit courses in addition to the one-shot classes. This has allowed them greater flexibility and opportunity to teach theory along with specific sources. Nearly fifteen years ago when one-shot presentations were the norm, Carol Kuhlthau noted, "traditionally library instruction has been oriented to teaching the sources in the library and not to the process of information seeking." [1] In contrast, today's theory in library instruction seems to be more on the process of learning information gathering skills with less emphasis on the teaching of specific and available sources. Process seems to be at the very heart of information literacy. Application of the theory of information literacy and the practical teaching of specific sources still remain competing issues for many teaching librarians.

Although teaching librarians are finding greater opportunity to teach credit courses, the one-time, fifty-minute class is still the norm for most. A popular idea among today's teaching librarians, is that "information literacy objectives" should be the cornerstone of teaching efforts in the classroom, including the one-shot, instruction session. Many librarians refer to the most recent version of information literacy instruction objectives entitled, "Objectives for Information Literacy Instruction: A Model Statement for Academic Librarians," which was published by the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) in April 2001. [2] In the ideal world all student should be introduced to the fundamentals of information literacy found in the above document. However, in the limited time of the one-shot, library class, the teaching of process in locating information must be carefully weighed with what students need to know about specific sources and how to use them. The single most important gauge of what should be taught in the fifty-minute session is what...

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