Budget and personnel constraints in recent years, coupled with initiatives to reach more students and faculty, left the presenter's library facing a challenge: How can we build an instruction program that is collaborative, far-reaching, and, perhaps most importantly, sustainable? The library's instruction team, including the presenters, came together to critically evaluate their work with a credit-bearing information literacy course, lower level general education courses, and the training of student workers who staff the combined library services desk. The team identified parts of their workload that while time intensive, did not produce a commensurate impact in terms of the number of students and faculty reached. With these considerations in mind, the team explored the adoption of commercially produced tools that offer a greater level of automation, make it easier to reach more students, and yet do not devalue the important role of librarians.
Coinciding with the library's internal dialogue was a growing discussion on campus of the need to integrate information literacy skills into the university's general education program. In addition, the leadership of the Undergraduate Studies' peer mentor program expressed a similar interest in supporting information literacy.
The confluence of the library's instruction program re-tooling and the increasing campus interest in information literacy have provided and continue to provide a fertile environment for librarians to help shape the development of information literacy initiatives on campus. To this end, a newly revitalized liaison program offers librarians an informal means of listening to and speaking with faculty and students about the information literacy in specific disciplines. At a more formal level, the service of librarians on important campus committees has provided a literal seat at the table from which to contribute to high-level conversation about information literacy on campus.
The presenters will discuss how they and their instruction librarian colleagues came together to critically assess unsustainable, relatively low-impact instruction initiatives. Further, they will discuss their plan to use the Credo Information Literacy modules to better meet the campus need for information literacy instruction and assessment in a sustainable and scalable manner.