Lori Arp and Beth S. Woodard, Column Editors
Joyce Lindstron and Diana D. Shonrock, Guest Columnists
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As more institutions of higher education recognize the importance of information literacy, the collaborative role for librarians is growing. Integration of information-literacy instruction is the key to successful student learning, and librarians are using various collaborative models on teams and as co-instructors in courses, learning communities, and campus-wide information-literacy initiatives. This article looks at some of the successful programs on college and university campuses.– Eds.
As the importance of information literacy grows within the academy, so does the importance of the role of librarians as integral members of the teaching and learning mission of the college and university. There is now a growing emphasis on teaching and learning as a component of the mission of twenty-first century libraries. At the same time, there is a growth in collaborative endeavors involving librarians and teaching faculty in efforts to reach larger numbers of students. Instead of relying on reference encounters in the library and formal library instruction, librarians are working to promote collaboration with faculty and campus units in an effort to integrate information literacy into the curriculum. Although the concept of librarian and faculty collaboration is not new, the commitment to an integrated approach has not become a trend. A review of recent literature and searching the Web showed that new forms of collaboration are making broad inroads into academic programs. This article highlights new developments in collaborative interactions in which the role for librarians is as a partner in the classroom and part of an integrated process.
The Importance of and Definitions of Integration
The need for librarians to collaborate with faculty in order to enhance the teaching and learning process has been acknowledged as both significant and as a challenge for the field since the inception of library instruction. The recent literature continues to articulate this need, identifying successes and failures in collaboration, as well as further defining what it means to collaborate.
The importance, and yet, difficulty, of engaging in successful collaboration has been well documented. In a preface to a 1995 article by Farber, Shirato noted that Farber stayed with the subject of faculty and librarian cooperation for such a long time because “he rightly recognizes it as one of the most essential ingredients in effective library instruction…. Success in this area has been hard-won… and in many ways the battle is not yet won.”1
Winner agrees that collaboration is essential and also notes its difficulties, identifying the areas where collaboration often fails. She comments that there is still “no widespread acceptance of the librarian’s role in curriculum planning and course-integrated instruction. Teaching faculties are appreciative of the support given by librarians; however, librarians are not universally recognized as playing an integral role in course planning and teaching.”2 Winner suggests that simply working with faculty is not enough; collaboration is only successful when the interaction between librarians and faculty results in an integration of the library into all elements of curriculum planning.
Many agree with this assessment. In 1995, Rader outlined three factors on which successful integration of library and research skills (information literacy) into the academic curriculum depended:
- library administrators had a long-term commitment to integrate library instruction into the curriculum;
- librarians and faculty worked together in curriculum development; and
- the institution had a strong commitment to excellent educational outcomes for students in the areas of critical thinking, problem solving, and information skills.3
Simons, Young, and Gibson expanded on the concept of integration as a critical component to programming in their development of the “learning library.” They defined the learning library as having:
active programmatic partnerships; curricular integration; sustained interactions among students, faculty, and librarians; and extension of influence into a ‘multiplier effect.’ The library becomes an essential component of students’ formal education and informal research needs. Rather than an external ‘add on’ to the educational experience, the library, as information resource and gateway, is a primary catalyst for cognitive, behavioral, and affective changes in students.4
Collaboration, then, continued to be the focus of a large body of literature that agreed that it is an essential element to successful teaching and learning. As Wilson observed, “Collaboration is key if librarians are to educate their clientele to be critical and self-sufficient users of information.”5
Characteristics and Skills Needed for Successful Collaboration
In addition to emphasizing the need for and more clearly defining the concepts of collaboration and integration, the recent literature has begun to articulate and define the elements of successful collaborations and the skills that librarians need in order to successfully interact with faculty. While many articles suggest these skills indirectly, there is a growing body of literature that specifically addresses this topic.Lippincott has written several articles on the importance of collaboration that emphasize the broad range of skills required to operate in a digital world and to work with faculty in educating students to find, critically evaluate, and use information successfully. She suggests that to be most effective, these collaborations should involve librarians in the development of the learning program. Librarians must be fully prepared and feel competent to work with classroom faculty in teaching students how to use technology to access information and then how to utilize critical thinking in the selection of information. She notes that there are a variety of factors that encourage success in cross-sector collaborative teams, including a “willingness to shape a common mission outside of the unit-specific mission; interest in sharing jargon and definitions of technical terms; willingness to learn aspects of the other partners’ expertise; and ability to appreciate differences and not criticize or stereotype others’ professions.”6In a 2002 study to attempt to identify the elements that create a successful collaboration, Ivey interviewed seven librarians and seven academics who were already working in partnerships in an attempt to identify the elements most important to collaboration. She defined four behaviors essential for successful collaborative teaching partnerships:
- shared understood goals;
- mutual respect, tolerance, and trust;
- competence for the task at hand by each of the partners; and
- ongoing communication.7
In 2004, Bell and Shank took the concept of integration one step further with the idea of a “‘blended librarian’ as an academic librarian who combines the traditional skill set of librarianship with the information technologist’s hardware and software skills and the instructional or educational designer’s ability to apply technology appropriately to the teaching-learning process.”8 Librarians and academics are becoming increasingly aware of the need to provide programs that develop student communication and research skills (information literacy). The examples of programs that exemplify information literacy or new methods of communication are well documented in the literature. However, the need for these two to become one–or integrated–is now emerging along with the need to understand what forms a successful collaboration.
New Methods for Successful Collaboration
Many college and university libraries are attempting to promote collaboration by having subject-specialist librarians serve as departmental liaisons. As such, they can make contact with the departmental faculty and develop relationships that will hopefully lead to opportunities for information-literacy instruction for their discipline. The goal is to bring departmental faculty and librarians together to improve student learning through course-integrated information-literacy instruction. Whether the collaborations result in single, well-timed instruction sessions related to class assignments, or become more involved with team teaching, they achieve the goal of integrating information literacy into academic programs. There are numerous examples showing that the depth of librarian involvement is growing, from librarians teaching information-literacy instruction as an add-on, to librarians as team members, or librarians in a coinstructor role. The examples selected for this article illustrate the characteristics of successful integration models. Most represent the first-year experience, as this is where most of the efforts for integration of information-literacy instruction into classroom instruction are taking place.
Integration into Specific Courses
Mathies outlines how a library liaison to Butler University’s College of Business Administration effectively built relationships that resulted in a 93 percent increase in the number of information-literacy instruction sessions over six years. This eventually led to the opportunity to collaborate with business-course instructors on a new course for freshmen business majors. The librarians worked to identify learning objectives for course instruction, and planned multiple library-instruction sessions that covered all of the instructors’ course objectives including group participation and an emphasis on critical thinking about information resources.9
At the University of Auckland Business School, information-literacy instruction in an electronic format was embedded in a compulsory introductory management course taken by students in their first semester. The modules of an online tutorial were designed to complement and to be accessed in conjunction with course assignments by students in multiple sections of the course.10 “Through cross-disciplinary collaboration on course design, delivery, and assessment, librarians and teachers created a student-centered information-literacy program for developing the skills identified… as being essential for business students, e.g., to effectively locate information and critically evaluate its usefulness.”11
At Penn State University, librarians collaborated with faculty in the First-Year Seminar in the School of Information Sciences and Technology in developing and delivering course-integrated library instruction employing problem-based learning. Pelikan and Cheney have written about using problem-based learning to help students discover through experience how the library, its resources and their use, and varying approaches to research are basic to problem-based learning.12 The development process involved close cooperation between faculty and librarians in developing the content for the multiple sessions for this team-based learning, where the librarians are functioning in a co-instructor role.
As Thaxon, Faccioli, and Mosby point out, difficulties in implementing collaborative programs are not uncommon. However, what distinguishes the collaborative endeavors mentioned here is not the time commitment for the librarian, the number of sessions being taught, or the number of students being reached; it is the level of librarian involvement in terms of goal setting and course development.13 Whether viewed as subject expert, as team member, or as coinstructor, librarians have been successful in developing course-based integrated instruction that can result in successful student learning, but librarians have also been successful in integrating information-literacy instruction into courses through learning communities.