Square Peg in a Round Hole? The Framework for Information Literacy in the Community College Environment

Abstract

ABSTRACTColumn Editor's Note. Community college libraries are deeply underrepresented in the professional literature and organizations of academic librarianship. As a result, the challenges and successes that take place in the community college world are largely invisible to others. This JLA column lifts the curtain to reveal the uniqueness of community college libraries as described by their most passionate advocates: the librarians who work there. Articles in this column pay tribute to the commitment and creativity of community college librarians by providing a platform where they can share their professional perspectives and stories. Want to write for this column? Interested authors are invited to submit articles to the editor at kimreed@cwidaho.cc.Standards, frameworks, or threshold concepts? The Association of College & Research Libraries’ efforts to update and revise the Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education (2000) have opened extensive dialogue not only about the content of the new standards, but about the very nature of the document. Its proposed replacement, The Framework for Information Literacy in Higher Education (2014) took a more theoretical path to describing what an information literature individual understands and how they behave. One common objection to the Framework, however, is that it is too advanced to be applicable in the undergraduate environment, and particularly in community colleges. In this essay, a community college library director takes a critical approach to the Framework to assess its relevance to the two-year college curriculum, grounding the discussion by mapping Knowledge Practices to Performance Indicators in the original Standards. The author recommends that community college librarians take an à la carte approach and integrate relevant elements of the Framework where they are useful without trying to address the entire document.