The origin of library instruction in the United States, 1820–1900

User Education and its Present Status in University Libraries in Sri Lanka: An Overview

“…Yet, traditionally there were various forms of user education such as 'library orientation', 'library instruction', 'bibliographic instruction', 'information skills courses', 'on-line instruction' and 'course-related instruction', and various instructional methods and media, such as 'library tour' and 'audio-visual materials' (Downard, 1992). The literature published in the field of library and information science provides substantiation that the above user education methods have a considerable history and information literacy that evolved from those precursors (Fjällbrant & Malley, 1984;Rader, 1991;Snavely & Cooper, 1997;Julien, 1998;Fjällbrant, 2000;Bruce, 2000;Homann, 2001;Seaman, 2001;Sinikara & Järveläinen, 2003;Weiss, 2003;Virkus & Metsar, 2004;Campbell, 2004). According to Seaman, (2001), though instruction activities in library field have developed in the past 150 years, information literacy has only less than 25 years of history.…”

Rethinking library instruction:

“…While the origins of 'information literacy' (IL) can be traced to the bibliographic instruction movements of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the term did not begin to catch on until Zurkowski's report to the US National Commission on Libraries and Information Science in the early 1970s (Zurkowski 1974;Weiss 2004). The adoption of the Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL) Information Literacy Standards for Higher Education by institutions in the United States also raised the expectation, at least in North America, that academic libraries become more actively involved in student learning (ACRL 2000).…”

Improving instruction in medical libraries: the research agenda

“…In a library we are surrounded by many hundreds of dear friends, but they are imprisoned by an enchanter in these paper and leathern boxes;…your chance of hitting on the right one is to be computed by the arithmetical rule of Permutation and Combination,-not a choice out of three caskets, but out of half a million caskets, all alike. [2] Sounds familiar, doesn't it? Even then, when the volume of published information was so much smaller, Emerson recognized that users needed instruction to help them find the information that they required.…”

“…The creation of doctoral programs designed to make graduate-level research the capstone of higher learning in American universities. [2] We should note the emphasis on research here. Among librarians, it seems that those in the health sciences were a little ''late to the party'' when it came to instruction, perhaps because medical schools at the turn of the last century put more emphasis on the acquisition of clinical skills than on the need for independent research.…”