The Academic Teaching Librarian's Handbook

Claire McGuinness

• Publisher: Facet Publishing
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781783304622, 9781783304639
• eBook ISBN: 9781783305162
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Library & Information Science
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

The Academic Teaching Librarian's Handbook is a comprehensive resource for academic library professionals and LIS students looking to pursue a teaching role in their work and to develop this aspect of their professional lives in a holistic way throughout their careers. The book is built around the core ideas of reflective self-development and informed awareness of one's personal professional landscape. Through engaging with a series of exercises and reflective pauses in each chapter, readers are encouraged to reflect on their professional identity, self-image, self-efficacy and progress as they consider each of the different aspects of the teaching role.

This handbook will:

provide a comprehensive resource on teaching, professional development and reflective practice for academic teaching librarians at all stages of their careers

explore the current landscape of teaching librarianship in higher education, and highlight the important developments, issues and trends that are shaping current and future practice

examine the roles and responsibilities of the academic teaching librarian in the digital era

introduce the essential areas of development, skill and knowledge that will empower current and future professionals in the role

inspire prospective and current academic teaching librarians to adopt a broad conception of the role that goes beyond the basic idea of classroom-based teaching, and provide practical tools to engage in personal development and career planning in this area.

The Academic Teaching Librarian's Handbook is an indispensable reference, suitable for early career professionals at the start of their teaching journey, as well as mid- or late-career librarians who may have moved into leadership and managerial roles and who wish to advance their teaching role to the next level.

PART 1

Constructing the academic teaching librarian

CHAPTER 1

Shaping the academic teaching librarian

1.1 Introduction: critical issues for academic teaching librarians

Since the beginning of the 21st century, the landscape of academic librarianship has undergone significant transformation, with changes in technology, scholarly communication and publishing, models of educational delivery, student learning preferences and the re-imagined use of space contributing to a constantly shifting service paradigm, with a corresponding effect on the roles that academic librarians are required to fulfil. In this chapter, we discuss six critical issues that have been identified as especially influential in shaping the work environment and professional identity of academic teaching librarians. The critical issues include conceptions of literacy; new literacy frameworks; critical information literacy; social media and ‘fake news’; learning analytics; and e-research and datafied scholarship.

1.2 Conceptions of literacy: terminology and the academic teaching librarian

Personal reflection points

■ What terms do I currently use to describe my teaching work when explaining it to others? Why do I use those terms? Do I use different terms in different contexts?

■ For what reasons might I select one term over another?

■ Do names matter? Do the terms that I use to describe my teaching work have any effect on my teaching practice, or on how it is perceived by others?

■ What existing conceptualisations or perspectives of information literacy, digital literacy or other ‘literacies’ am I currently aware of?

■ What is my personal understanding of information and digital literacy, and how do I articulate it?

In order to support students effectively, it is important for academic and professional services staff to have a nuanced understanding of the terminology in the digital and information literacy fields.

(Secker, 2018, 3)

For 21st-century academic teaching librarians, the terms we use to describe our work carry history and power and convey important information about our role in the academy and society. At a time when competing ‘literacies’ seem to jostle for position with information literacy, Secker emphasised the importance of terminology in clearly delineating roles and responsibilities in relation to student learning in higher education, where she suggested that ‘whether we call it media and information literacy (UNESCO, 2015), meta-literacy (Jacobson and Mackey, 2013) or digital literacy, terminology matters because it helps academics, librarians, learning developers and learning technologists develop a shared understanding of their aims’ (Secker, 2018, 10). The critical importance of consulting with academic colleagues and achieving consensus on terminology when it comes to determining the focus of instruction was underlined by Fister:

If IL [information literacy] is truly to be a joint venture, we cannot leave faculty out of the conversation in which we name what our students should learn. We cannot carry important concepts, like tablets inscribed with ‘thou shalts’, down to the people to guide them. But we can, as librarians, be intentional about encouraging the act of naming.

(Fister, 2017, 75–6, emphasis added)

Fister contended that it is essential to find language ‘that works across disciplines’ (p. 76). Most pragmatically of all, Grassian and Kaplowitz asserted that we risk being stymied in our work, if we fail to adequately define information literacy:

… defining what we mean by IL is central to our task as instructors. If we do not know exactly what IL is, then how do we teach it, and even more important, how do we know if we have succeeded in our instructional endeavours?

(Grassian and Kaplowitz, 2009, 3)

As academic teaching librarians, there are many good reasons for you to reflect on your use and interpretation of terminology. For instance, reflection empowers you to:

■ understand how you perceive and rate your own self-efficacy in relation to what you are expected and equipped to teach

■ articulate your teaching role in connection with the overall mission and strategic priorities of our institutions, and societal goals at large

■ gain clarity about your goals, expectations and desired outcomes for supporting student learning, and understand how they relate to the students’ overall educational and life goals

■ create a basis for shared understanding, communication and productive collaboration with colleagues within and outside the academy

■ build a strong sense of professional identity that is anchored in history, research, shared experience, and appreciation of diverse perspectives and understandings.

The aim of this section is to introduce you to the issues and trends which shape our understanding of information literacy, to explore alternative and overlapping literacies which ‘compete’ with information literacy, and to examine how our approaches to information literacy instruction may be influenced by the terms we use in practice.

1.2.1 The name of the game: does information literacy (still) matter?

‘Information literacy is more significant now than it ever was, but it must be connected to related literacy types that address ongoing shifts in technology’ (Mackey and Jacobson, 2011, 62).

Precisely 30 years after the publication of the seminal report of the Presidential Committee on Information Literacy (ALA, 1989), which placed information literacy on the map, linking it to critical thinking, effective learning and higher educational reform in the ‘Information Age,’ Fister asked if we are on the verge of a ‘third wave of information literacy’ (Fister, 2019, para. 2). This signifies an era defined, not only by the powerful opportunities afforded by the internet, social media, online communities and the mobile web, but also by the widespread commodification and commercialisation of our personal data and digital footprints by a small number of large private companies and by the critical issue of how we should respond to it. ‘If we think it matters,’ she stated, ‘we have a lot to do, and it’s all so entangled and complex that it’s hard to know the best way to approach teaching students about how information works in the world we inhabit today’ (para. 6).

That information literacy still matters is not in question; in 2019, the annual Educause Learning Initiative survey of the higher education community identified ‘digital and information literacy’ as one of 15 Key Issues in Teaching and Learning, describing it as ‘nurturing student competencies in finding, evaluating, and creating digital information’ (Educause, 2019). Moreover, the UK-based Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals’ (CILIP) Professional Knowledge and Skills Base (PKSB), the organisation’s principal framework for professional self-development, identifies both ‘information literacy’ and ‘digital literacy’ as core knowledge and skills areas, under the professional expertise category of Literacies and Learning. Similarly, the Professional Competencies for Reference and User Services Librarians in the USA includes ‘appropriate expertise in information literacy and instruction skills and abilities, including textual, digital, visual, numerical, and spatial literacies’ as a core competence that is essential to professional practice (RUSA, 2017, 4). In the past five years, two leading library organisations – the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) in the USA (ACRL, 2015), and CILIP in the UK (CILIP, 2018) – have revised their official definitions of information literacy to reflect 21st-century trends and influences, as well as incorporating a context-sensitive conceptualisation of information literacy replacing the previous skills-and-attributes-based definitions and standards that were common in the early years of the information literacy movement (Robinson and Bawden, 2018; Julien, 2016; ACRL, 2015; CILIP, 2018).

1.2.2 Terminology in transition

As a term-in-use, however, information literacy remains a ‘phrase in quest of a meaning’ (Foster, 1993, 344), and over time has been criticised for being obtuse, inherently meaningless and value-free, lacking in descriptive power, too library-focused, and overly ambitious in scope. Although the subject of several major research studies over the years (e.g. Bruce, 1997; Delaney, 2014), it has been defined primarily in relation to the contexts in which it is used (e.g. academic, workplace, citizenship), the attributes, skills, knowledge and attitudes it implies (e.g. ability to find, access, evaluate, etc.), and the practices it describes (identifies an information need, uses information to solve a problem, etc.). Belshaw (2009) contended that, although it was coined almost five decades ago, ‘information literacy’ persists, but has ‘undergone a number of transformations to keep it current and relevant’. The evolving models and definitions, or ‘warp and weft’ of information literacy over the years (Fister, 2017) reflect the tremendous social, technological and cultural changes that have impacted on information behaviour, learning, and library practice; from the ‘first wave’ of library-centred bibliographic instruction, which focused on print documents and analogue systems, through the ‘second wave,’ which addressed the changes wrought by the advent of the internet and online information, up to the present day (Fister, 2019). Mackey and Jacobson echoed Fister’s ‘third wave’ description where they observed that, ‘the information age, which initially inspired the information literacy movement, has transformed into a post-information age of decentered content producers in an expansive global network’ (Mackey and Jacobson, 2014, 34). Roberts (2017, 528) suggested that ‘discussion has shifted from the idea of literacy being equated with printed text and the ability to read, to the concept of multiple literacies needed to function in increasingly complex daily life – visual literacy, numerical literacy, digital literacy, media literacy, and others’.

Broadly, it is possible to discern two major transformations in how information literacy has been defined over the years; these transformations have, in turn, influenced the instructional approaches adopted by teaching librarians:

1 First transformation: from information skills to the ‘information-literate person’

The first transformation, from the mid-1990s – 2010s, was characterised by a conceptual change from skills-based, highly prescriptive definitions and information literacy standards, to a ‘relational’ view of information literacy, focusing instead on the subjective experiences and perspectives of the ‘information-literate person’ in a diverse range of contexts (McGuinness, 2011). This transformation was influenced greatly by Bruce’s ‘Seven Faces’ phenomenographic research, which framed information literacy as a personal construct, anchored in individual subjective experience and expression, rather than an imposed or ideal set of desired competences and attributes (Bruce, 1997). Discussion of this transformation continues today; however, it is now understood that earlier information literacy models, such as the ACRL Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education (ACRL, 2000) did not adequately reflect the complex and non-linear nature of a person’s engagement with information, a...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Figures and tables
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part 1 Constructing the Academic Teaching Librarian
• Part 2 Excelling as an Academic Teaching Librarian
• References
• Index