Information literacy at a distance - collaboration between a university library and two public libraries
Ola Pilerot
Skövde University
SWEDEN
Paper: 1/2 hour
Convergence & Continuity
This paper describes the preparation and deliverance of a credit-bearing course in information literacy aimed for distance education students. The course has taken shape through collaboration between Skövde University Library and two public libraries within the same geographical region. During the last few years Sweden has seen an increase in commitments to enhance the information literacy education efforts within the public library sector. One of the results of these efforts is that a large number of public libraries have introduced a new kind of library position, the "study librarian". The public libraries that are involved in this course have recently employed study librarians that have played an important role in outlining and preparing the course and they have also functioned as supporting instructors.
The paper focuses on the advantages of collaboration between university- and public libraries but it also gives an account of the contents of the course with emphasis on its theoretical and pedagogical starting points.
Traditional bibliographic instruction has had great faith in information resource focused training. The technical procedures in the information search process have often been the most emphasized aspects. The course described here - which is greatly influenced by Christine Bruce's relational model of information literacy - has instead placed more emphasis on the theoretical aspects of information literacy that can be described with a few, for the course very central terms: information use and -behaviour (more emphasized than information searching); information assessment; and search processes. Bruce's statement that "learning to be information literate, in this [the relational] model, involves becoming aware of different ways of experiencing information use through engaging in relevant information practices and reflection" is the governing idea through the course. The course includes the following sections: Information literacy and the information society; Libraries and information searching; Internet, (mainly the World Wide Web); Search techniques and search strategies; and Information use.
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