This essay raises questions about the future of information literacy in higher education, given the prevalence of the Information Literacy Competency Standards in the library profession for the past 15 years, and the heated debate that took place regarding whether the Framework for Information Literacy and the Standards could harmoniously co-exist. We do not have answers to these questions, but we offer our perspectives on how the Standards have served academic librarians in the past and on how we envision the Framework and the Standards working together to further information literacy instruction. Our conclusion is that the Framework and the Standards serve different purposes and have different intended audiences and are thus both valuable to the profession.
The present Article was immediately suggested by Professor Wechsler's questionings. It is not, however, to be looked on as formal "reply," since I cover here only one part of the ground he goes over, and since my lines of thought are only partly responsive in terms to the questions as he sees them.
Many academic libraries are coping with limited library staff, a burgeoning student population, and constantly evolving curriculum. How can academic librarians ensure that students are receiving a systematic and hierarchical set of information literacy (IL) competencies that will make them agile and adept information seekers and users who can cope with changing modes of information delivery and access? How can they be accountable to students, themselves, and to their institutions? Creating and implementing an information literacy curriculum map (ILCM) can provide a cohesive delivery of IL across the curriculum. A map aligns IL competencies with core courses, specific courses in a discipline, and assessment points. This article will describe the creation and implementation of an ILCM in addressing the needs of stakeholders at colleges and universities. The process of creating and use of the ILCM has facilitated and increased communication among teaching faculty, administrators, and academic librarians at Berkeley College. It has allowed the librarians to be more intentional in their teaching and assessment strategies. Furthermore, an ILCM used in conjunction with an assessment plan has served to make the IL programme and activities more transparent to the institution, thereby ensuring accountability to internal stakeholders and external reviewers.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.