In the 2011-2012 school year, the instruction librarians at Augustana College, Illinois, changed their assessment approach in the college's required first-year sequence to focus on higher-level information literacy concepts. The librarians replaced a quantitative assessment instrument with performance assessments, which they integrated into their first-year library sessions. Although the sequence is taught by many faculty with diverse assignments, these new assessments could be applied organically across sections yet provide generalizable results. This case study describes that assessment project and its initial findings, analyzes the project's implications, and suggests how other college libraries might adopt similar qualitative assessments.
The concept of authority—its definition and the consequences thereof—receives intense scrutiny in library scholarship. This article intervenes in that conversation by arguing for a particular approach to authority within librarianship. The article begins by reviewing the significant areas of contention within library scholarship on authority. It then analyzes the theoretical literature on authority—specifically cognitive authority, or the question of where we place our intellectual trust—from philosophy and information studies in order to explicate the concept. Finally, it builds on that explication to argue that librarians should embrace a fully constructionist view of cognitive authority, because committing to constructionism will make information literacy pedagogy both more rigorous and more just.
Purpose -This paper aims to provide a guide to significant primary and secondary resources relevant to the study of Emily Dickinson and her poetry. Design/methodology/approach -Online catalogs, bibliographies, and the worldwide web were searched to identify relevant items. In some cases, citation analysis and other bibliometric measures were used to determine the highest-impact sources. Items were annotated after personal examination by the author. The paper is divided into two main sections: primary sources (anthologies, databases and web resources) and secondary sources (bibliographies, databases, biographical resources, reference resources, monographs, journals and web resources). Findings -The paper introduces each resource, indicating its scope and contribution to the study of Dickinson. It acknowledges in particular the developments in recent Dickinson scholarship. Originality/value -Dickinson remains popular among both scholars and laypeople, but the most recent bibliographies of Dickinson scholarship date to the late 1980s. This guide provides a late twentieth-to early twenty-first-century update to those earlier works.
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