ACRL Framework For Information Literacy Research Articles

Framing first-year writing course guides: a content analysis

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to determine the extent to which first-year writing course guides contain instructional content and whether the ACRL Framework for information literacy has been addressed in these guides.Design/methodology/approachFirst-year writing course guides were identified from American Research Libraries websites and examined for instructional elements. These elements were categorized using a rubric that mapped the Framework to instructional content. Qualtrics was used to organize and analyze the data.FindingsMost first-year writing course guides include instructional content, but less than half incorporate the Framework in some way. Guides that do incorporate the Framework focus on “searching as strategic exploration” and “research as inquiry”.Practical implicationsThis paper provides librarians with practical information on first-year writing guides and includes examples of how the Framework might be addressed.Originality/valueThis study contributes to the literature on research guide content and is the first to invent first-year writing course guides.

Applying the Framework as a reflective tool: A teacher learner perspective

If you teach information literacy (IL) according to the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education,1 then you have been introduced to terms like knowledge practices, dispositions, and troublesome knowledge. You may have also read several articles debating the Framework (for a quick overview, read Lane Wilkinson’s “The Problem with Threshold Concepts”).2 Regardless of where teaching librarians stand on the Framework, the discourse surrounding it doesn’t adequately address its potential as a reflective tool (as opposed to addressing student learning alone). This is ironic when considering that, at its core, the Framework’s foundation is based in “critical self-reflection, as crucial to becoming more self-directed in [a] rapidly changing ecosystem.”3

What the framework means to me: Attitudes of academic librarians toward the ACRL framework for information literacy for higher education

Findings from in-depth interviews with academic librarians reveal initial perceptions of the value of the new Association of College and Research Libraries' Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education and information about individual experiences in implementing the framework into information literacy skills instruction. Fifteen academic librarians, recruited through the ILI-L listserv, participated in Skype interviews that averaged 50 min in length. Participants shared that the Framework has had an impact on their teaching, helps them to better articulate the role of the librarian and the concept of information literacy, supports collaboration with faculty, and presents new empirical research opportunities for academic librarians. At the same time, acceptance of the Framework by librarians has not been universal, implementing the Framework into one-shot information literacy instruction is difficult, and full implementation of the Framework may require a restructuring of how information literacy education is approached.

Book Review: Teaching Information Literacy through Short Stories

The ACRL Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education, adopted in 2016, “encourages information literacy librarians to be imaginative and innovative in implementing the Framework in their institutions” (ACRL Framework, appendix 1). In this spirit, authors Brier and Lebbin have collected eighteen very short stories—typically one to three pages in length—whose themes raise questions concerning the nature of authority, the process of searching, and the creation and value of information. Following each story, the authors add discussion questions designed to initiate philosophical conversations among librarians, instructors, and students about significant topics in information literacy.

Supporting multimodal literacy in library instruction

PurposeStudents interact with information in many ways throughout the day, code switching between modes depending on their needs. Educators are finally realizing that composing in more than one mode is not only important, but also necessary. The purpose of this study is to examine the role of the academic library, the ACRL Framework and information literacy instruction in creating ethical, inspired users.Design/methodology/approachThis paper looks at previously published work on multimodal discourse, how libraries have supported modes in the past and how the ACRL Information Literacy Framework highlights the need to teach students and faculty how to compose in many modes.FindingsLibrarians are already well-versed in many literacies, including information, visual and media. They are familiar with multimodal tools and the ethical issues related to the use of images, videos and sound files. While professors are proficient in subject matter, librarians are experts in the paradigm shift from print to multiple modes; therefore, by teaching faculty and students to locate, evaluate, use ethically and cite various modes, librarians become the primary resource on campus for creating multimodal artifacts. The strata used by Kress and Van Leeuwen, coupled with the ACRL Framework, are a model for future instructional design.Originality/valueWhile much has been written on visual literacy, little is written on library support of multimodal discourse or combining several modes in one argument. This paper is alone in reviewing the past support of multimodal literacy in libraries and gives some sample activities for use in the academic library.

Frame by frame: Using the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy to create a library assessment plan

Inspired by the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education, librarians at the Carl B. Ylvisaker Library at Concordia College-Moorhead decided to scrap our old information literacy assessment plan and start from scratch. We began by digging into the library’s past assessment plans in an attempt to gain insight into how the organization’s priorities have changed over time. The earliest assessment notes we uncovered were from 2005 and featured a new student orientation pre- and post-test, administered to a random sample of library users. The focus then was on incoming students’ information literacy abilities and how much they learned during library orientation. A sketch of an abandoned assessment plan from 2010 marked a turn to assessing the library’s instruction program and featured the use of focus groups along with a survey in which alumni were asked how the instruction program may have impacted their life after college. With this pivot towards instruction, the library developed a list of learning outcomes and tracked them to the ACRL Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education. This list was used in-house for designing assignments and linked on our library web page to provide faculty with an overview of the program.

Diving Deep: Reflective Questions for Identifying Tacit Disciplinary Information Literacy Knowledge Practices, Dispositions, and Values through the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy

The ACRL Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education combined with the Decoding the Disciplines model provides a structure for critical reflection to help unearth and clarify tacit, or unspoken, expert disciplinary processes and values related to information literacy. This article details a pilot project designed to explore the process of unearthing unspoken assumptions about disciplinary information literacy through reflective questions designed using the theory of Decoding the Disciplines and the structure of the Framework, and details themes which emerged from several of the author's experiences with librarians and teaching faculty working through the reflections. The themes are presented as potential further sites for inquiry and to generate ideas for identifying and addressing discipline-specific roadblocks, both practical and cultural, through the Framework.

It’s all relative? Post-truth rhetoric, relativism, and teaching on “Authority as Constructed and Contextual”

Within the current climate of political polarization and discussions about “post-truth” rhetoric, many academic librarians are debating how the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education1 does or does not address “post-truth” thinking and rhetoric. Most of these discussions have centered on the Authority Is Constructed frame, which describes source authority as determined largely in communities and within specific contexts, rather than as anything absolute or universal. The concept of constructed authority can potentially be understood as an affirmation that authority is purely a matter of opinion or subjective evaluation, or that there are no consistent or objective indicators of credibility. On the other hand, the notion of authority as entirely objective misrepresents the social nature of knowledge creation and renders invisible the sociocultural structures and systems that powerfully share what is considered knowledge.

Research, Writing, and Writer/Reader Exigence: Literate Practice as the Overlap of Information Literacy and Writing Studies Threshold Concepts

The publication of the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy has led scholars and teachers of writing and information literacy to identify ways of connecting threshold concepts of both disciplines to help students more easily and effectively acquire the transformed perspectives on research and writing. We argue that the practice of addressing writer exigence connects the concepts of IL and WS under a single literate practice. As the motivating matter of discourse, the perception of a particular exigence leads writers to identify a useful audience to address that exigence. Noting that audiences have their own exigencies for reading as well, we explain that writers must construct their texts in ways that signal a text’s exigency for readers, an effort that includes selecting the performances of evidence and writer legitimacy through information literacy. By teaching writing and researching as the literate practice of resolving the writer’s exigence by constructing exigency for particular readers, instructors can effectively link the six Frames of the ACRL Framework and Writing Studies threshold concepts and explain why concepts of both are essential and inextricable.

Navigating Roadblocks: First-Year Writing Challenges through the Lens of the ACRL Framework

Effectively integrating the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy into existing instructional models requires that librarians first understand the host of challenges that many first-year students encounter when conducting research for the first time. This study employs qualitative analysis of semi-structured student interviews to explore how students conceive of and pursue the research process, and how they try to mitigate—and in some cases surmount—the roadblocks they encounter. Although students reported several difficulties, three main roadblocks arose: challenges with understanding academic articles, challenges with the topic/theme of the course, and challenges with navigating the physical space of the library. Our findings demonstrate how students employ a variety of strategies to overcome these obstacles. We engage scholarship on information literacy and the Framework, which elucidates how honoring the affective domain of learning in designing instruction could steer students towards more successful research strategies.

In the News

Welcome to the December 2017 issue of C&RL News. Digital humanities remains a major trend in academic and research libraries. In this month’s Perspectives on the Framework column, John E. Russell and Merinda Kaye Hensley discuss the intersection of digital humanities, digital pedagogy, and the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education in their article “Beyond buttonology.”

Enabling Authentic Assessment: The Essential Role of Information Literacy

We report on a study of an authentic assessment task in an Australian business school, where the 2015 ACRL framework for information literacy was applied to support the development of critical thought. Contextualised in an ongoing, meaningful partnership between a liaison librarian and an academic, the study involved pre- and post-engagement evaluation of learners’ decision-making about information sources that would best support a business presentation to a senior executive team. The pre- and post-evaluations were mediated by engagement with learners on the constructed and contextual nature of authority, which involved a detailed set of guidelines and online discussion facilitated by an information services librarian and the academic convening the subject. We found that students are already sensitive to a constructivist paradigm in selecting information sources. However, the depth of critical enquiry in evaluating ‘authority’ was uneven. Notwithstanding the robustness of the guidelines that we developed to support the evaluation of information sources, we found that it is important to provide further support to learners in working through the application of a constructivist frame.

News from the Field

The ACRL Framework Advisory Board announced the launch of the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy Toolkit in conjunction with the 2017 ALA Annual Conference. The ACRL Framework for Information Literacy Toolkit is intended as a freely available professional development resource that can be used and adapted by both individuals and groups in order to foster understanding and use of the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education.

When Research Does Not Start with a Question: Teaching with theFrameworkandVisual Literacy Standardswithin Art and Architecture Librarianship

AbstractWhile much has been written about implementing the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education in various classroom settings, this article addresses mapping the ACRL Visual...

Faculty perceptions of teaching information literacy to first-year students: A phenomenographic study

This study examines faculty perceptions of teaching information literacy and explores the influence of these perceptions on pedagogy. The study adopted an inductive phenomenographic approach, using 24 semi-structured interviews with faculty teaching first-year courses at an American public research university. The results of the study reveal four qualitative ways in which faculty experience teaching information use to first year students that vary within three themes of expanding awareness. The resulting outcome space revealed that faculty had two distinct conceptions of teaching information literacy: (1) Teaching to produce experienced consumers of information, and (2) Teaching to cultivate intelligent participants in discourse communities. When information experiences are intentional, and involve using and teaching information use while learning the discipline content, this becomes “informed learning”, which is a pedagogical construct developed by Christine Bruce (Bruce and Hughes, 2010) that involves experiencing information in new ways while learning disciplinary information behaviors and content. This study gives new insight into the nature of this “informed learning” in first-year college courses and reveals that faculty create cultures of inquiry in their classes and, in so doing, treat information literacy as central to their disciplines. In addition to providing a more substantial understanding of faculty perceptions of teaching information use, the study indicates that the new ACRL Framework for Information Literacy and the changes to SCONUL Framework reflect an approach to teaching information literacy that will be welcomed in the college classroom.

From service to synergy: Embedding librarians in a digital humanities project

ABSTRACTDefinitions of the term digital humanities vary, and its place in the academic library is still being explored. Yet exploration is indeed taking place, at large research institutions as well as, increasingly, at smaller colleges and undergraduate libraries. This article details an innovative digital humanities project carried out at an institution of 2,300 undergraduates, where a creative institutional partnership was the key to its success. The project has provided an outstanding opportunity to address the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education, while embracing the growing trend on many campuses to showcase student research.

Book Review: Rewired: Research-Writing Partnerships within the Frameworks

On many campuses, writing skills and research skills are supported in separate instructional silos. When it comes to college composition assignments, however, writing and research are interdependent, and this close relationship is evident in the many common elements shared by the Council of Writing Program Administrators (WPA) Framework for Success in Postsecondary Writing and the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education. How the core concepts in these frameworks interconnect and how librarians and writing instructors can work together to implement them in the classroom is the focus of Rewired.

Seeing the world through adult eyes

How does the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy reflect our current understanding of adult learning theory? Is it beneficial to students whose life situations mean they are uniquely challenged to balance a variety of roles and obligations, and whose primary focus may not be a career in academia? How can we, as librarians who work more and more with adult students, incorporate the best of adult education theory into our information literacy instruction?

Who invited the librarian? Studio critiques as a site of information literacy education

The ACRL Framework for information literacy for higher education, the guiding document for academic instruction librarians in North America, encourages a deep connection between information literacy and discipline-specific teaching practices. In the context of art librarianship, one means of attaining this connection is via librarian participation in studio critiques. Critiques enable librarians to identify the similarities between the research process and the creative process, making information literacy relevant for art students. In two different institutional examples, the ACRL Framework provides a conceptual grounding for studio critiques as a collaborative space between librarians and faculty, where students learn lifelong information literacy and critical thinking skills that enrich their artistic work.

Learning to look critically: teaching and learning visual literacy in art and design librarianship

Teaching and learning visual literacy within art and design librarianship presents several unique challenges. Librarians are better equipped than ever to meet these challenges with the help of ACRL Visual Literacy Competency Standards and the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy in Higher Education, which provides an exciting opportunity to situate visual literacy within the contextual definition of information literacy for art and design students. In mapping these two documents together the author found several ways to address the more critical components of information and visual literacy in more nuanced and meaningful ways. While art librarians have often addressed visual literacy needs to varying degrees and in creative and practical ways, a more systematic approach is needed as we move forward.