The library supports the college’s mission and strategic plan to provide a useful education. We consider the Waidner-Spahr Library to be a teaching and learning laboratory. Librarians nurture information literacy as a lifelong learning process and are committed, in conjunction with the faculty of the College, to providing instruction on the location, evaluation, and ethical utilization of information in its many different forms. Our goal is to help students learn to make informed decisions about their information needs and how to fulfill them.
Concepts and approaches to information literacy are taught in multiple ways at Dickinson College:
- through formal library instruction classes and workshops
- through assignments developed within academic courses,
- by individual consultation
- via online teaching tools accessible on our website.
Further, faculty can embed information literacy lessons throughout the curriculum using our online tools including:
- Information Literacy Tutorials
- Research Guides
- Curriculum Scaffolds: FYS Scaffold, English Scaffold
The Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) recommends a rigorous set of guidelines for teaching information literacy, called the Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education. The framework illustrates the complexity of information literacy and demonstrates that information literacy skills should be integrated at appropriate times during the research process. Some of skills associated with each frame should be introduced in the First Year Seminar, while more complex skills can be taught within the context of each major. Briefly, the frames are:
- Authority Is Constructed and Contextual - Information resources reflect their creators’ expertise and credibility, and are evaluated based on the information need and the context in which the information will be used.
- Information Creation as a Process - Information in any format is produced to convey a message and is shared via a selected delivery method.
- Information Has Value - Information possesses several dimensions of value, including as a commodity, as a means of education, as a means to influence, and as a means of negotiating and understanding the world.
- Research as Inquiry - Research is iterative and depends upon asking increasingly complex or new questions whose answers in turn develop additional questions or lines of inquiry.
- Scholarship as Conversation - Communities of scholars, researchers, or professionals engage in sustained discourse with new insights and discoveries occurring over time as a result of varied perspectives and interpretations.
- Searching as Strategic Exploration - Searching for information is often nonlinear and iterative, requiring the evaluation of a range of information sources and the mental flexibility to pursue alternate avenues as new understanding develops.