Lessons learned from teaching: Reinventing the librarian in credit-bearing courses

Abstract

Delaware Valley University is a private university located about one hour north of Philadelphia in bucolic Bucks County. The librarians at its Krauskopf Memorial Library have faculty status, which allows us to serve on faculty committees and teach credit-bearing courses. Despite this, librarians have only taught the first-year experience course, which is otherwise taught primarily by staff. This course is heavily scripted and not owned by the faculty, unlike other courses. It does not offer opportunity for course development or for building relationships with teaching faculty, both of which are important for instruction librarians. Most of our instruction librarians only have experience teaching one-shot information literacy sessions and are rarely embedded into a course. Much of the literature on semester-long library classes focuses on information literacy skills. These courses are designed by librarians as an antidote to the one-shot. But what if the information literacy was incorporated into course development? Could students learn research skills in a way that supported the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education and inspired students’ interests?