My name is Mandi King and I currently live in Denver, CO. I am in my second year as a graduate student at Wayne State University's School of Library and Information Science program with a duel specialization in Health Sciences and Academic Libraries. In a perfect world, I would love to graduate with my MLIS and land a job as a Health Sciences Librarian at a major university. Unfortunately, in this economy, beggars cannot be choosers and as a result, I have spent the past two and a half years gaining experience in public libraries doing everything from shelving books, assisting patrons with technology, working the circulation desk, and answering questions at the reference desk. Although I feel as though my experiences working in public libraries have prepared me well for what life will be like as a "real" librarian, I do wish I had more experience in one area - Information Literacy Instruction! Although I have done some student teaching in the past as an undergrad, I have very little experience in instructing library users on how to become more information literate.
What is Information Literacy, you ask? Well, according to the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL), Information Literacy, or IL, is "the set of skills needed to find, retrieve, analyze, and use information". Due to the proliferation of information on the internet, it sometimes may be difficult for people to weed through a results page to find exactly the kind of information he or she is seeking. That is where a librarian skilled in the art of Information Literacy Instruction comes in! It is up to the librarian to instruct students, community members, and professionals, on how to search for information effectively in order to yield the most relevant results, analyze those results, and use the information that is found in an ethical and responsible way.
The goal of this blog, therefore, is not only to delve into the definition of IL more deeply but to explore other topics relating to how librarians instruct patrons on becoming more information literate. Some of the topics discussed in this blog will touch on learning styles and how different personality types absorb instruction, current trends in Information Literacy Instruction, and the future of IL. I will draw most of my resources from other very well-established blogs that you can examine on your own (links to these blogs can be found in the sidebar) as well as from textbooks and lectures on Information Literacy Instruction.
Please feel free to comment on any of my blog posts. Part of what makes a successful information professional is the ability to not only teach but to learn from others as well!
References:
Association of College and Research Libraries. (2013). Introduction to Information Literacy. Retrieved from ALA Web Site: http://www.ala.org/acrl/issues/infolit/overview/intro
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