Conference Agenda

The promotion of information literacy is a standard task at many university libraries and an important part of their range of services. Teaching information literacy at university libraries include research skills, skills for academic work and writing, digital literacy, data literacy, copyright literacy and skills for recognizing fake news and fake science. While course content and didactic methods have already been discussed many times, the focus of this contribution will be on the organizational structures of this core library task. For the promotion of information literacy in libraries to succeed, distinctive and clearly defined organizational structures are indispensable.

The German Rectors' Conference emphasized the importance of governance as early as 2012 in its recommendations “Higher education institutions in a digital age: rethinking information competency – redirecting processes”. This contribution analyses which organizational structures university libraries in Germany have now established to teach information literacy and which standards they use. The results of a quantitative survey are presented, on the basis of which it was investigated whether a department, a subject area, a working group or individuals are responsible for teaching information literacy, which tasks are performed and which management structures exist. It becomes clear that no organizational model has yet established itself in Germany and that many libraries work with internal standards or without any standardized guidelines at all.

These results form the basis for the “Recommendations on the organizational structure of the promotion of information literacy at university libraries” of the working group information literacy in the Bavarian Library Network, which also addresses the topics of course development documentation of course material as well as course evaluation and course review. The recommendations see transparent organizational structures with clear leadership and defined task prioritization, accompanied by further training, coaching and generally recognized information literacy standards as a clear success factor for the promotion of information literacy in university and library work.

Our intention is to present the lines of development from the existing program of training courses and workshops in the field of literature research and information literacy to the new concept of training offers at the Library of the Helmut Schmidt University/University of the Federal Armed Forces Hamburg. This progress is significantly influenced by the results of a user survey and other evaluation methods, such as the number of participants in the training courses.

A description of the changes that AI has brought to the field of research and academic work will serve as a starting point. Working with AI and digital tools seems easy. As a result, information literacy is often no longer seen as a skill that students need to acquire. But students often lack an understanding of how these digital tools work, the opportunities they offer, and the risks they pose (Reinmann). To adapt our workshop program to these technological and social changes and needs in the academic context, we use the results of our evaluations and the AI competency framework for students (Miao). This will allow us to expand our workshop program for both students and academic staff, making it more attractive and user-oriented.

In the talk, we will present our current services. We will also share the results of the evaluation of our training courses and workshops over the past two years, as well as the results of the library user survey conducted in January 2025. In consideration of the results, we will present our plans for redesigning our offerings. We will expand our training offerings based on the skills mentioned in the Framework Information Literacy (Klingenberger). We will also share insights and initial lessons learned from the redesigned workshops.

In a fast-changing world, libraries, as institutions providing access to reliable information, must be early adaptors to technology change. Our assumption: The new workshop and training program is just the first step into the future.

References

Framework for information literacy for higher education. (2015). Chicago: Association of College & Research Libraries. Retrieved January 29, 2025 from https://www.ala.org/sites/default/files/acrl/content/issues/infolit/framework1.pdf

Grahl, T. (2023). Kurs- und Beratungsangebot für Promovierende der Ingenieurwissenschaften an Hochschulen für angewandte Wissenschaften. Information – Wissenschaft & Praxis, 74(1), 42-50. Retrieved January 30, 2025 from https://doi.org/10.1515/iwp-2022-2250

Klingenberger, A. (2016). Referenzrahmen Informationskompetenz. Berlin: Deutscher Bibliotheksverband. Retrieved January 29, 2025 from https://www.bibliotheksverband.de/sites/default/files/2020-12/Referenzrahmen_Informationskompetenz.pdf

Miao, F.; Shiohira, K. (2024). AI competency framework for students. Paris: United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. Retrieved March 19, 2025 from https://doi.org/10.54675/JKJB9835

Reinmann, G. (2023). Deskilling durch Künstliche Intelligenz? Potenzielle Kompetenzverluste als Herausforderung für die Hochschuldidaktik. Diskussionspapier Nr. 25. Berlin: Hochschulforum Digitalisierung. Retrieved January 29, 2025 from https://hochschulforumdigitalisierung.de/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/HFD_DP_25_Deskilling.pdf

Although Ray Oldenburg mentions libraries only briefly in his seminal work on defining the fluidity of public spaces at the end of the 20th century (Oldenburg, 1989), the idea that libraries act as third spaces has taken root in library and information science (LIS) literature. For example, the term “third space” was used in 364 scholarly journals, dissertations and theses and trade literature in the database Library & Information Science Collection between 1990-2024. While use of the term within the LIS literature includes reference to libraries as physical places, as, for example in Kawartani (2024) or Bouaamri and Ágnes (2024), much of literature applies the term to discuss libraries as hybrid and programmatic (Kranich, 2005).

Does the concept of “third space” extend to the electronic and digital realms of libraries, such as library web sites and digital libraries? Library web sites are themselves libraries of information. They provide information that refer users to the physical aspects of libraries, such as library spaces and their hours, physical collections, and the presence of human expertise. At the same time, library web sites contain information that was born to be included in them, such as tutorials, frequently asked questions (FAQs), access to the electronic content of library collections, to name just a few examples. To add to the fluidity of conceptualizing libraries as hybrid and programmatic “third spaces,” digital libraries are formal information systems, and computer scientists have theorized that they are spaces and have societies that interact with their spaces (Gonçalves, et al., 2024). We would like to propose that the concept of “third space” may be partially shifted to apply to libraries in the digital realm, broadly defined.

In discussing the overlap of the physical and the virtual in libraries, we will speculate on the sort of information literacy and communal networking libraries may be able to develop when we no longer access physical “third spaces”.

References

Bouaamri, A., & Ágnes, H. B. (2024). State of public libraries in Morocco. Library Management, 45(1), 1-20.

Gonçalves, M. A., Fox, E. A., Watson, L. T., & Kipp, N. A. (2004). Streams, structures, spaces, scenarios, societies (5S): A formal model for digital libraries. ACM Transactions on Information Systems, 22(2), 270–312.

Kawaratani, L. (2024). Social spaces. Library Journal, 149(11), 14.

Kranich, N. (2005). Civic Partnerships: The Role of Libraries in Promoting Civic Engagement. Resource Sharing & Information Networks, 18(1-2), 89-103.

Oldenburg, R. (1989). The great good place: cafés, coffee shops, community centers, beauty parlors, general stores, bars, hangouts, and how they get you through the day (1st ed.). Paragon House.

Library instruction and outreach programs commonly survey participants at the end of the class or outreach event to determine their attitudes to the session and what they have learned. Librarians use this information to decide what changes might be needed for future instruction opportunities and to contribute to broader assessment efforts. However, gathering this type of formative input has been challenging as we have observed a steep decline in student responses to these surveys in our library over the past 5-10 years. Similar declines have been observed across our university, and educational researchers around the world have also experienced a decline in student response rates (e.g., Possamai et al., 2024). Motivated to strengthen our programmatic assessment, our library research and learning department sought alternatives to traditional quantitative measures of the impact of library instruction and outreach. This presentation will share the three alternative assessment approaches we used and will discuss the benefits and drawbacks of each of these approaches.

Our library is part of a large, research-intensive university in the Western United States. Our library instruction and outreach program serves a diverse constituency including traditional undergraduates, returning nontraditional students, online students, graduate students, and faculty. We teach topics from basic information literacy concepts to advanced data management skills. Like other library instructors exploring assessment options (e.g., Luetkenhaus et al., 2015), we wanted to assess what students were learning, but we also had questions about the alignment of what we were teaching with broader curricular expectations. Gathering these insights was necessary to ground our understanding of the effectiveness of our instruction and outreach programs and to learn where changes might be needed.

We selected three sample focus areas of programmatic interest that cut across multiple aspects of our instruction and outreach work. We explored a range of alternative, qualitative techniques for gathering feedback including focus groups, interviews, and document analysis. Most important was our selection of alternative stakeholders who could serve as proxies for the feedback we lacked from students. This presentation will describe three ways of approaching this type of programmatic assessment and how we translated what we learned into changes to our instruction and outreach practices. This presentation will describe and compare the qualitative assessment techniques used. Presenting a range of alternative programmatic assessment strategies will help others consider whether new ways of approaching assessment might benefit their library.

References

Luetkenhaus, H., Borrelli, S., & Johnson, C. (2015). First year course programmatic assessment: Final essay information literacy analysis. Reference & User Services Quarterly, 55(1), 49–60.

Possamai, A., Possamai-Inesedy, A., Corpuz, G., & Greenaway, E. (2024). Got sick of surveys or lack of social capital? An investigation on the effects of the COVID-19 lockdown on institutional surveying. The Australian Educational Researcher, 51(1), 21–39. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13384-022-00569-6

Information literacy encompasses the critical ways of thinking and acting that guide our interactions with information and our ability to create new knowledge. Many instructors expect that students will develop and demonstrate their information literacy through research assignments but are often frustrated with the results, because students (as novices) and instructors (as disciplinary experts) are seemingly speaking different languages. Academic librarians have sought to bridge this gap by providing instruction directly to students, with mixed results. An alternative method, in which librarians use faculty development programming to teach the teachers how to integrate information literacy, is gaining increased attention, although assessment of the efficacy of these efforts is still limited (Smith, 1997; Cowan & Eva, 2016; Removed for peer review, 2021).

At [university name], library staff support inclusive and equitable teaching practices through instructor development. In [workshop name], a five-part professional development workshop, we incorporate pedagogical strategies aimed at increasing instructor understanding of concepts and vocabulary related to equity and inclusion as they are connected to information literacy and expectations for research assignments. We use these strategies in conjunction with the Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education (ACRL, 2016), to help instructors clarify their research expectations for students. We believe that the ways of thinking and knowing articulated in the Framework remain part of a hidden curriculum for many students. Instructors develop assignments and expectations for performance based on these ways of thinking and knowing, but they are not always explicitly or transparently taught or discussed with students.

Our presentation explores if this kind of library-led instructor development programming is effective for integrating information literacy into courses and/or curricula. We conducted semi-structured interviews with nine workshop participants, representing a range of disciplines, who received a grant to incorporate workshop content into a course redesign. We then coded the interview transcripts using Framework, including the descriptive text for each of the six information literacy threshold concepts, as well as the associated knowledge practices and dispositions. Through this analysis, we explore the ways in which instructors integrated information literacy into their courses after participating in [workshop name], and which elements of the Framework align with the participants’ course revisions.

Our analysis revealed that participants considered information literacy to be a source of empowerment for students, helping them to be more confident in college and giving them marketable skills in their professional lives. In addition, many instructors felt empowered and reported transferring their learning to their other courses or initiating program- or curriculum-level conversations about information literacy. Our study suggests that making the faculty our students can be an effective way to integrate information literacy into the curriculum, and that more emphasis on the “teach the teachers” approach could significantly transform the teaching of information literacy.

References

Cowan, S., & Eva, N.C. (2016). Changing our aim: Infiltrating faculty with information literacy. Communications in Information Literacy, 10, 163-177.

[Citation removed for peer review]

Smith, R. L. (1997). Philosophical shift: Teach the faculty to teach information literacy. 8th National Conference of the Association of College and Research Libraries.