Confronting Information Literacy in an Academic Arts Library

Abstract

The relatively small number of arts librarians who have participated in the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) Information Literacy Immersion since it began in 1999 is a reason to reflect on the place of information literacy in arts libraries. It is a formidable challenge to combine elements of the ACRL Information Literacy Competency Standards1 with relevant ideas extracted from the sizeable body of literature of IL, and to appropriate them in meaningful ways for an academic arts library. There are few, if any, existing formulas in place to create IL programs that can adequately address the particular and idiosyncratic needs of arts students. Immersion provides the tools and methods, in a highly inspiring setting, to create and structure the beginnings of a useful and appropriate IL program for an arts college. The need to create a structured information literacy program at California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) became apparent in 2006 as the result of several factors. The year 2006 marked the restructuring of the liberal arts curriculum as well as the begin ning of a multi-year reaccreditation process, far more rigorous than the previous reaccreditation in 2000. Both of these events indicated a need for the library to consider information literacy more strategically than had been done previously. At the same time, the opportunity for the sole instruction librarian to partici pate in the ACRL Institute for Information Literacy Immersion program occurred, a very timely and welcome opportunity to focus on creating a structured IL program. The implementation of a tangible IL program worked best with a philosophical component?it made sense at CalArts to present IL as a way of thinking in addition to simply designing skills-based sessions for students. We developed the program through an assimilation of the following: the necessary elements of the ACRL Information Literacy Competency Standards, a thor ough review of the existing literature on IL, and sensitivity to the idiosyncratic needs of our visual and performing arts students.