Type of Presentation
Individual paper/presentation (20 minute presentation)
Target Audience
Higher Education
Location
Room 211
Abstract
Michele Santamaría, Delaware County Community Despite greater academic commitment to information literacy, professors frequently request content in an information literacy session without fully understanding the types of skills librarians are trying to teach. Should librarians use the customer service model and teach what professors want or should they teach the information literacy skills which they know students need? This paper will not argue for a simple solution to this question, but instead explore the underlying variables and assumptions influencing this dilemma. As such, this paper will address how both parties are operating under different pedagogical models, with librarians frequently prioritizing research as a process while professors predominantly focus on research as content or tool-driven. Along with this discrepancy in teaching models, the effectiveness of communication between the two parties can play a major role in the effectiveness of information literacy instruction. Furthermore, because community college librarians tend to "generalists," rather than "specialists," they may feel less empowered to challenge what the professor wants out of the session. Community college librarians may think they lack the authority to question the effectiveness of a lesson plan because they lack the professor's authority over "content." Even if content is best left to the professors, librarians, at every academic level, should assert themselves more strongly when it comes to information literacy, negotiating outcomes with academic equals rather than serving professorial customer needs. Using qualitative data gathered from faculty and librarians, this paper will explore the variables underlying this pedagogical dichotomy and offer some possible solutions to resolve this issue.
Presentation Description
By analyzing how the pedagogical models of librarians and professors differ, this presentation will explore how collaboration between professors and librarians must go beyond simply discussing the parameters of an assignment. Communication must go deeper, addressing the educational priorities of both professor and librarian, so that fundamentals of information literacy instruction are not put aside in favor of content-driven instruction. While this problem manifests itself at all academic institutions, this paper proposes that the issue may be exacerbated when community college librarians, who are “generalists,” rather than “specialists,” may feel less empowered to challenge what the professor “wants,” as opposed to insisting upon the information literacy skills which “need” to be emphasized. By analyzing qualitative data gathered from faculty and librarians, the paper will begin to propose some possible solutions to this multilayered dilemma.
Keywords
Library-faculty collaboration, Pedagogical models, Information literacy instruction
Publication Type and Release Option
Presentation (Open Access)
Recommended Citation
Santamaría, Michele, "Collaborating with Faculty: Give Them What They Want or Give Them What They Need?" (2009). Georgia International Conference on Information Literacy. 15.
https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/gaintlit/2009/2009/15
Collaborating with Faculty: Give Them What They Want or Give Them What They Need?
Room 211
Michele Santamaría, Delaware County Community Despite greater academic commitment to information literacy, professors frequently request content in an information literacy session without fully understanding the types of skills librarians are trying to teach. Should librarians use the customer service model and teach what professors want or should they teach the information literacy skills which they know students need? This paper will not argue for a simple solution to this question, but instead explore the underlying variables and assumptions influencing this dilemma. As such, this paper will address how both parties are operating under different pedagogical models, with librarians frequently prioritizing research as a process while professors predominantly focus on research as content or tool-driven. Along with this discrepancy in teaching models, the effectiveness of communication between the two parties can play a major role in the effectiveness of information literacy instruction. Furthermore, because community college librarians tend to "generalists," rather than "specialists," they may feel less empowered to challenge what the professor wants out of the session. Community college librarians may think they lack the authority to question the effectiveness of a lesson plan because they lack the professor's authority over "content." Even if content is best left to the professors, librarians, at every academic level, should assert themselves more strongly when it comes to information literacy, negotiating outcomes with academic equals rather than serving professorial customer needs. Using qualitative data gathered from faculty and librarians, this paper will explore the variables underlying this pedagogical dichotomy and offer some possible solutions to resolve this issue.
