Faculty Toolkit

Information literacy is the set of integrated abilities encompassing the reflective discovery of information, the understanding of how information is produced and valued, and the use of information in creating new knowledge and participating ethically in communities of learning. These skills are fundamental not only to the way we approach scholarly research, but also to the way we engage with news, media, and other types of information in our day-to-day lives. 

Everett Library offers instruction services that focus on information literacy concepts and techniques in scholarly research. Our instruction is informed by the six frames identified in the Association of College and Research Libraries' Framework for Information Literacy in Higher Education: 

• Authority is constructed and contextual;
• Information creation is a process;
• Information has value;
• Research is inquiry;
• Scholarship is a conversation; &
• Searching is strategic exploration.

Based on these six threshold concepts, instruction librarians can help students learn to:

• Understand the information landscape of a topic or discipline;
• Identify knowledge gaps and formulate research questions;
• Use multiple search strategies and tools to locate and access information sources;
• Evaluate information sources for their suitability to the need at hand;
• Produce particular types of assignments (e.g., annotated bibliography, literature review);
• Acknowledge the intellectual work of others through correct citation practices.

Plan Ahead
Since we do not have the ability to visit classrooms for instruction sessions, we ask that you incorporate one of the six workshop dates into your syllabus and require attendance to ensure that students gain these critical research skills. Please reach out to your liaison librarian for more information or for any questions around scheduling. 

Collaborate With Us
The more we know about your course and your learning outcomes, the better we can serve your students' needs, so please plan to share information about your class with us. Knowing the goals of your course also helps us as we meet individually with students following a library instruction session. We are happy to discuss the various ways we might support you and your students both before and after library instruction. 

Prepare Your Students
Students benefit most from library instruction when it's connected to a research assignment or learning outcome in their course. Whether in one workshop or multiple individual sessions, we can work with your students throughout all stages of the research process. We want your students to be confident in their resources and know that we are here to help!

Goals of First Year Instruction:

• Understand the process of research and how to evaluate information
• Find scholarly and other related sources
• Evaluate information sources using general criteria
• Identify primary, secondary, and tertiary sources
• Evaluate resources in relation to research questions
• Incorporate sources into research projects