Skills for Special Librarians: Teaching Information Literacy

Hello everyone and thank you for joining us for today’s webinar with Lauren Hays. My name is Bradley and I will be the moderator for this webinar titled skills for special librarians teaching information literacy.

Before we start, I would like to provide some information about our company and introduce today’s presenter. Lucidea is a software developing company specialized in museum and archival collections management solutions, as well as knowledge management and library automation systems. Our brands include Sydney, Presto, Argus, ArchivEra, Eloquent, and CuadraSTAR.

Now I would like to take a moment to introduce today’s presenter Lauren Hayes. Lauren Hayes is an associate professor of instructional technology at the University of Central Missouri. Previously, she worked as an instructional, instructional, and research librarian at the at a private college in Kansas City metro area. Prior to working in higher education, she was employed by the National Archives and Records Administration and worked as an intern at the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library and Museum. Her professional interests include the scholarship and teaching of teaching and learning, information literacy, digital literacy, educational technology, and academic development. Take it away, Lauren.

Thank you, Bradley. Thank you for that introduction.

So we are going to jump in and start by defining information literacy.

This is a term that I know you have all, heard and experienced, but I think it’s important that we all start on the same page.

So according to the American Library Association Presidential Committee on Information Literacy, information literacy is a set of abilities requiring individuals to recognize what information is needed and have the ability to locate, evaluate, and use effectively the needed information.

So this definition is likely not a surprise. The ability to locate, evaluate, and use information are core aspects of information literacy and what we support in libraries of all types and specifically in those special libraries.

Critical thinking is necessary and an important part of this definition even if it isn’t specifically mentioned here.

But, critical thinking is necessary because a person cannot evaluate information without being able to think critically about it. So I want you just to keep that in the back of your mind as we go through some of the next few slides, and then we’re going to discuss critical thinking in more detail, later on in this webinar.

So let’s break down that definition of information literacy into some more specific skills.

So the definition of information literacy can be thought of as aligning to specific research skills. We need to think about the research skills we have as librarians and the research skills our library users have, and they’re likely different.

And they should be because we have different, kind of background, information and different experiences with learning how to work with information.

But one thing I always like to point out when discussing information literacy is that we are not necessarily trying to create, other librarians when we teach, but instead, we want to teach broader information literacy skills that our library users can use in their own work.

The skills of recognizing an information need, locating information, evaluating information, and using information, may primarily fit into specific contexts for our library users.

Yes. There are universal skills, but information is always in a context.

So I want you to think about the specific information landscape that your library users are working in and what specifically is needed for them to be able to work effectively in that information environment.

Because those skills, those things that they need to be able to work in that information environment are going to play into a lot of what you do as a special librarian to help teach information literacy to your library users.

The information environment of your library users is likely to include specialized databases.

It could include archival materials.

It could include digital sources.

It could include audio. It could include video.

There’s lots of different things to think about when you’re thinking about the information landscape in which your library users are needing to gather information and to use it to engage in the fields in which they find themselves.

So this might be a minute for you to pause, think about those information landscapes, potentially take some time to map them or describe them just for kind of your own purposes.

And make sure that when you’re thinking about teaching information literacy to your library users that you’re really kind of getting at each of those different aspects of the information environment in which your library users are working.

So I want to highlight in this presentation kind of two main ways to teach information literacy.

So the first is having a discipline specific focus.

As mentioned previously, information is always in a context, and if individuals do not understand the information environment in which they are working, they may have a harder time evaluating the sources.

And the second way to teach information literacy is to use adult learning principles.

And so we’re going to dive into adult learning principles, specifically using andragogy.

But for now, I just want to say that they are important because they can help the learning be more relevant and less instructor led. So when you use adult learning principles, adults can feel that they’re engaged in the learning process in kind of some different ways and a little bit more self directed in ensuring that the information that they’re getting is really aligned with their needs.

First, thinking about that discipline specific focus. I wanna break this down a little bit more. So as you think about teaching information literacy to your specific library users, Think about what their information context is. We’ve already discussed that some.

And in an academic setting, that would often be called the discipline. But you can also think about it as just the field, in which your library users work.

It’s important to note that in different fields or different disciplines, they could often value different things related to information.

So different values can be the different types of research questions that are asked, the various, different source types, different research methods that are used in publications and in what’s considered really evidence of something occurring.

It can also be that different areas of emphasis are placed, on things like the author, the year of publication, the publication venue. I often see those different areas of emphasis really playing out even in the different citation styles that are used in different disciplines.

So some citation styles really value you know, really emphasize the author. Other others can emphasize the year of publication.

Others want to highlight where the information was found. So as you’re thinking about the citation styles, that can even be one way of emphasizing what is valued in that field, and just recognizing that. And so when you recognize that those kind of field specific or discipline specific, areas of focus within kind of an information landscape, you’re able to more tailor your instruction, your with what you’re doing with information literacy to what is needed by needed for your library users.

So then let’s, it’s essential to emphasize the importance of understanding your audience and their field of study. So we’ve talked a little bit about that. But when considering the information literacy skills your library users will need, You can also begin by just getting to know their specific, field and information needs.

And so this can come out sometimes if you do not have a background in the discipline.

It can be important to engage in professional development, and or work with colleagues to learn about the field.

It’s yeah. So it’s very important that you learn the information landscape of the library users that you’re working with so that you can point them, in the right direction and really understand their information needs.

From there, then you can start introducing, library users to those subject specific databases and demonstrate techniques like citation chaining, which I also have seen referred to as, like, the citation tree.

A site for citation chaining involves examining an article’s reference list, define related research, and discovering which other authors have cited the article in question.

So the cited by feature in Google Scholar can be particularly useful for this as this process helps researchers follow the scholarly conversation in their field. So if you can think about I’ve mentioned it was also called, like, a citation tree. It’s kind of hopefully gonna draw, like, a picture here for you. But I often think of the citation tree as if you have an article in front of you.

The article you have in front of you is the kind of the trunk of that tree. Then the roots of the tree are the articles that are included on the reference page, and then the branches of the tree are the articles that have cited the article that you have in front of you. So you can see how the research grows over time, and, you can see the conversation around the particular scholarship evolving and growing as well.

And so this can be a really, I think, useful picture for teaching information literacy to help library users understand that one article is just one article in a much broader conversation and that they need to see, okay, what’s the foundation?

Where is this research, you know, coming from? And where is this research going?

Where are the new conversations happening around this topic?

And those new conversations can be particularly important, to stay current on because it we can often lose some of, you know, being up to date on new topics.

And so making sure that we’re always highlighting, new issues, new articles on topics that are particularly important for our library users.

So now let’s turn our discussion to adult learning principles.

So in my research, and a lot of my work, I have used andragogy, which, and Malcolm Knowles is often considered the father of andragogy.

Andragogy is a theory of adult learning, and it provides many insights into how to create environments that meet the needs of adult library users.

So andragogy is the method and practice of teaching adult learners as opposed to pedagogy, which really focuses more on children.

So andragogy is based on the idea idea that adults learn differently from children and require a distinct approach to our instruction.

Andragogy emphasis emphasizes self directed learning where adults are motivated by internal factors such as personal growth, professional development, and a desire to solve real world problems.

And so there are several kind of assumptions or principles that Malcolm Knowles makes, about adult learners, and we’re gonna dive into those next.

So the core principles or assumptions of Andrey Gautje, you can see there in the middle of this figure.

This figure does come from, the book, Andragogy in Practice, the modern practice of adult education.

So you can see that there.

But those six kind of core adult learning principles are and they’re underlined. A learner’s need to know, the self-concept of the learner, prior experience of the learner, readiness to learn, orientation to learning, and motivation to learn.

So let’s, kind of unpack each of those here, and then we’ll unpack them even more on upcoming slides.

So the need to know learners need to know. You can think about as adults need to know why they need to learn something before undertaking to learn it. So kind of there’s that why, what, and how. They really need those core pieces, defined for them.

There’s also the learner the self-concept of the learner. So adults have a self-concept of being responsible for their own decisions and for their own lives.

So once they’ve arrived at that self-concept, they develop a deep psychological need to be seen by others and treated by others as being capable of being self directed.

And, again, these are quotes from this book.

The role of the learner’s experience or the prior experience of the learner is very important and something that we’re gonna kinda emphasize over and over again here. But adults come to any educational activity with both a greater volume and a different quality of experience from that of youth or children. So it’s just really important to think about what prior experiences individuals bring to any learning setting.

And that’s one reason why if especially if you’re new to a role, in a library to really take some time to get to know, your library users and what they’re bringing to the library.

Readiness to learn. Adults become ready to learn, things that they need to know and be able to do in order to cope effectively with their real life situation.

They have an orientation to learning, which is in contrast to a children’s or youth subject centered orientation to learning, or at least that’s the way we frame it in kind of schooling.

Adults are very life centered, or that you can see as it’s problem centered or kind of task centered in their orientation to learning. So they’re very interested in learning in order to solve a problem or complete a task.

And then lastly, motivation to learn. Adults are responsive to some external motivators such as better job promote or jobs, promotions, higher salaries, and the like. But often, the most important motivators are internal pressures that they place.

And these could be, you know, a desire for increased job satisfaction, self esteem, qual qual more better quality of life, etcetera. So there’s that intrinsic value and personal payoff that is really a part of a motivation to learn.

So adults have many life experiences and motivations that lead to, a need for librarians to use because of different interaction strategies and teaching methods of when thinking about teaching and instructing on information literacy.

Then those approaches maybe we experienced in our own schooling, or especially when working with, younger, individuals.

So let’s I mean, we’ve now talked about all six of those principles, but I want to go into greater detail on each one.

So the first assumption, as we discussed was a learner’s need to know. So in other words, adults need to know why they need to learn something.

And what this means in practice is often that to create experiences focused on adult, kind of library users, The material, content, workshop, or programs need to be relevant, applicable, and have a real life focus.

Adults need to see a connection between the content and why the information is important for them to learn.

When your library users understand the why, they’ll be more receptive to spending time learning that information.

So when working with the, you know, the adults that are coming into your library, one strategy to help them see the why of a particular, you know, particular content is to present it whole apart. And what I mean by that is explain the end goal and then break it down into pieces. So show what they can do at the end, what their really goal is, and then say, okay. How do we, you know, answer this research question, or how do we get this piece of information that you need? And then here’s how you do that.

Often people, when I think when we explain a concept or conduct training, try to explain the steps necessary to complete a task before drawing a picture of what is ultimately trying to be achieved.

But having the whole picture first can really help, individuals understand the relevancy of each step.

So in my own experience, after reflecting on this assumption of andragogy, I think I realized that sometimes I, was often, at, you know, thinking would have tried to explain steps before, explaining the whole picture. So I’ve really tried to change that approach and show the whole picture and then break it down. So that is just a way of kind of changing tactics, and making sure that that why is upfront.

So the second assumption is the self-concept of the learner. So Knowles said that, and this is a quote, as a person matures, his self-concept moves from one of being a dependent personality toward one of being a self directed human being.

So Knowles Knowles went on to write that adults have a self-concept of being responsible for their own decisions and their own lives. So once they’ve arrived at that self-concept, they have a deep they they have developed a deep psychological need to be seen by others and being treated by others as capable of self direction.

So in other words, adults approach all situations with the previous experience.

And this is connected to kind of the prior experience that that we talked about earlier. Oh, we’ll talk about on the next slide, but mentioned earlier, where they have a lot of ideas that they bring to the table and, a lot of knowledge that they already possess.

And they want others to see them as being able to act on those things and act in ways that are capable of getting a job done.

So if adults are not comfortable with something and they don’t feel that they can be self directed, they often might disengage or not be interested in participating because they feel that they won’t be seen, as a capable adult. So it could be that they would just avoid situations where they have to acknowledge they don’t know something.

So this is where it can be really helpful to kind of place yourself as in more of a consultant role, and not think about yourself really as a teacher or educator, but as just a support in a broader, you know, information need in your organization.

And so this can look many different ways in practice, but it really comes down to, again, knowing your library users, thinking about ways that they where there might potentially be gaps in, you know, their information literacy knowledge. But in and, you know, you could potentially offer workshops to help fill those needs, but also make sure that they the individuals coming feel that they have, you know, stake in what’s being taught, that they can be self directed in that learning, that they are capable of doing those things and create situations where they can demonstrate their own competency, demonstrate the knowledge that they bring to a situation, and just make sure that you’re sharing that with them and with others.

So the third assumption is the prior experience of the learner. So Knowles said that as a person matures, he accumulates a growing reservoir of experience that becomes an increasing resource for learning.

So Stephen Brookfield is, another author, who wrote a lot about adult learning, and he emphasized the previous experience of the learner as the primary difference between adults and children.

Adults have life experiences that often impact how they view a topic or how willing they are to take direction.

So when working with the adults and, you know, library users in your organization, it’s really important to make connections and build a relationship.

And this means that as I kind of keep emphasizing, know your, library users, get to know them.

And and and if you are teaching a workshop, on information literacy, ensure that you’re taking time for discussion, and reflection because those are the times when the, adult learners can share that prior experience that they can think about the learning, so they knew that they might be learned, and make a connection to it with what they already know.

So give adults opportunities to discuss what they know, where they might have a need, why it’s important. Give them time to reflect and kind of engage in all of those different processes, so that they can be part so they can bring their prior experience to the learning environment.

Another thing to think about when you’re engaging in any type of learning, activity, whether it is a workshop or even just engaging in a reference, interview at, reference desk or even an email exchange with somebody about an information need is to ask some questions about what experience the individual has with a particular resource or what they’ve done before, to find information on a particular topic. Those types of questions can help you know what might need to be shared or what you can, in a way skip over because they already know those things. So you can really meet them at their point of need.

So the fourth assumption is a readiness to learn. So Knowles stated as a person matures, his readiness to learn becomes oriented increasingly to develop developmental tax tasks of his social roles.

Furthermore, Knowles stated that, and again, this is a quote, adults become ready to learn those things they need to know and be able to do in order to cope effectively with their real life situations.

So adults’ readiness to learn or their specific need to know is typically formed from a situation where where the adults currently find themselves.

Life circumstances are a catalyst for the need to learn new information.

Knowles wrote that adults that become ready to learn those things they need to know and be able to do in order to cope effectively with their real life situations.

So adults are motivated to learn skills that are relevant to their current lives or work. So and this shouldn’t this is likely isn’t surprising at all, but it’s just really important, I think, to make sure that when we’re sharing information about resources, teaching information literacy that were connecting those skills very apparently to current situations where the adults need, have a need. So, most likely, it’s going to be work related, for those, you know, those of us in special libraries. So there’s going to be a particular need, and you might need to ask them what that information need is. You know, be very explicit about it will help you, as the librarian to best support them when you understand the full context of the information need so that you can point them in the right direction.

The fifth assumption is an orientation to learning, and Knowles stated, and this is a quote, as a person matures, his time perspective changes from one of post point application of knowledge to immediacy of application, and accordingly, his orientation towards learning shifts from one of subject centeredness to one of problem centeredness.

So another way to say that is that adults are often goal oriented and prefer learning that has immediate relevance.

So adults need to see a connection between what they’re learning and why the information is important for them.

As stated previously, when adults understand the why, they’ll be more receptive to the new information and will take the learning experience more seriously.

So, therefore, when working with adults, I think it’s best to give them, you know, real life examples, connect it to the work that they’re doing on a day to day basis because, remember, that is related to their readiness to learn.

And just make sure that it’s very clear how learning these information literacy skills can help them solve a task or problem that they may encounter in their job.

When all those things are kind of connected, that can be a very relevant and useful approach to teaching information literacy.

And then finally, the last assumption is a motivation to learn. So Knowles said that as a person matures, the motivation to learn, becomes internal.

And so Knowles also said that adults are responsive to some external motivators, but that they’re more usually internally motivated by those personal or professional goals.

So if we’re thinking about how motivation to learn in adults is intrinsic, think about how that can play a part in what you’re doing when you’re teaching information literacy.

So you’ll probably start to see a connection here with all of these different, kind of main principles of Andrew Gojene.

But if there’s a specific problem or task that the, adult or library you know, adult library user has, they are motivated to complete that task or complete or solve that problem because it may help them, you know, fulfill something in their job. It might just be a personal frustration that they have with their work that they’re not able to do. And so, you know, finding that information or learning how to use that might save them time in their job, or it may just help them answer a big kind of outstanding question or task that needs to be completed so that the work can continue moving forward in a way that gives them, you know, both professional and personal satisfaction.

So think about how that can play, a part of it too.

So that kind of brings us to the end of our discussion on adult learning principles.

I hope that, thinking very specifically about those six principles has given you some concrete ideas for how you can apply these principles in teaching information literacy in your own library settings.

But now I want to shift our attention to critical thinking. Because if you remember with that definition of information literacy that we looked at, early on in the webinar, that critical thinking is an important piece of that definite definition even if it isn’t explicitly stated.

You know, being able to evaluate information really does require critical thinking skills.

So let’s just kind of start by defining critical thinking. So what is critical thinking? And these three points come from work by doctor Daniel Willingham, who is cognitive psychologist at the University of Virginia.

And he wrote that critical thinking is when your thinking is novel, that you’re not simply drawing a conclusion from a memory of a previous situation, that your thinking is self directed, that is you’re not merely executing instructions given by someone else, and your thinking is effective, that is you respect certain conventions that make thinking more likely to yield useful conclusions, and that is a direct quote there.

So how do we teach critical thinking?

So there are some specific thinking skills that have, you know, been discussed, and are useful to know about, certainly, such as, you know, thinking about both sides of a situation and learning how to evaluate evidence.

Evaluation resources such as the SIFT, s I f t method developed by Mike Caulfield is a good tool to use, especially for online, research. And the book Verified by Mike Caulfield and Sam Weinberg is excellent at helping people think about online content, and there’s a lot of really kind of useful strategies in there for evaluation.

However, as Daniel Willingham noted, transferring critical thinking skills to new situations is much harder and much harder to teach, because in in other words, knowing how to evaluate a source is important knowledge to have, but it may be difficult to put those skills into practice if a person is unfamiliar with the information landscape of a particular topic or does not have, a lot of background in the field.

So this is why critical thinking is so closely tied to domain knowledge.

If a person does not know much about a subject, they cannot think critically about it. And there’s a, another quote here from, Willingham who specifically wrote that the process of thinking the processes of thinking are intertwined with this content of thought. That is domain knowledge.

So this statement really highlights the idea that the way we think, our cognitive processes are deeply connected to what we know, often the domain knowledge if we’re working in a particular field.

So in other words, effective thinking such as problem solving, analysis, or decision making, it’s not just a matter of using those general skills, but it also relies on having a really deep understanding of a specific content or subject area that we’re engaging with.

When people think within a domain that they’re familiar with, they draw upon prior knowledge, which allows them to recognize patterns, make connections, and understand context specific nuances.

For instance, a scientist analyzing data on climate change will think differently than someone without scientific training because they possess specialized knowledge that shapes their interpretation of information.

And so this concept is really crucial in both education and professional development.

Teaching thinking skills in isolation may not be as effective because those skills are most powerful when they’re paired with relevant knowledge. When individuals learn to think critically within a specific domain like history or biology, they not only develop thinking skills but also gain the content necessary to apply those skills effectively.

So furthermore, domain knowledge can enhance cognitive processes by enabling individuals to make quicker, more informed decisions. So for example, an experienced doctor can diagnose a medical condition faster than a novice because their knowledge allows them to filter information and zero in on those relevant details.

So there is a some really kind of seminal research on this that that was related to, reading and, like, reading comprehension skills.

And the studies were conducted around, kind of the topic of baseball. And what the researchers found was that if students who typically scored very high on reading comprehension, but didn’t know a lot about baseball, struggled to comprehend a text about baseball, in a in a on a test. But students who generally did not score very high on reading comprehension skills and tests but knew a lot about baseball, all of a sudden scored a lot higher when the text that they were reading was about baseball.

And so that’s kind of some of the first research that really started thinking about the importance of content knowledge, with this idea of and the skill of critical thinking.

So when teaching information literacy skills in the library, it’s going to be important to connect critical thinking and information literacy skills with domain knowledge, and this can be done in a few ways.

First, your library users are going to have prior experience and prior knowledge in the area in which they’re working, so ensure that that is connected to any instruction that you’re giving.

Additionally, librarians can play an important role in aiding library users in staying current with their knowledge by highlighting new journal issues, new books, or teaching about citation chaining, which I was talking about earlier.

So I really encourage you to take time and think about your ways think about ways your library can support the growth of content knowledge in order to support critical thinking and information literacy growth.

Because the gaps in that domain knowledge, especially, you know, current, domain knowledge are go is going to impact the critical thinking and the output that individuals are able to conduct.

So to wrap up this section, for someone to think critically about a topic, they must learn the skills of information literacy, which includes being literate in of in the of the information in the field that they are engaged in.

So kind of as my last encouragement to you, I really encourage you to think about how critical thinking and information literacy are intertwined.

And in your role as a librarian, teach the important skills of information literacy, because these are skills that often need to be taught, including how to use databases, how to find different sources in different information environments, archival material, information online, how to use, you know, Boolean operators, how to narrow searches, how to expand them, how to filter, all really important skills.

But also think about ways that supporting domain knowledge is important.

And then when you are teaching those information literacy skills, think about how you can use the adult learning principles that were discussed here so that, library users can engage in their own research and bring their own background knowledge that they need in order to think critically about the information that they find. So I hope you see how all these pieces are ultimately tied together where we’ve got the information literacy skills that need to be taught.

We use, the adult learning principles to teach those information literacy skills, but then ultimately connect the domain knowledge so that individuals can think critically about the information that they find, and can truly evaluate it and use it in ways that are, effective moving forward.

So I just wanna thank you, for the opportunity to share this information, and I hope that you found it useful.

Thank you, Lauren, for the wonderful presentation. And to our audience, if you have any more questions on any of our software or our company, our contact details are on the screen, and please stay tuned for more webinars and content related to the series.

On behalf of the Lucidea team, I thank you all for attending today, and until next time. Thank you.