Inform Purdue: Information Literacy and Librarians in Higher Ed

November 15th, 2017

On Tuesday (Nov. 14), Purdue University Libraries recognized the research contributions of Libraries faculty members during its annual “Celebrating Research” event. During the celebration, one of the presenters, Associate Professor and Information Literacy Specialist Clarence Maybee, talked about his new book, “IMPACT Learning: Librarians at the Forefront of Change in Higher Education,” which will be available in March 2018.

The book covers how librarians in academic libraries can help enable the success of college students “by creating or partnering with teaching and learning initiatives that support meaningful learning through engagement with information,” states the book’s description on the publisher’s website.

“Since the 1970s, the academic library community has been advocating and developing programming for information literacy. This book discusses existing models, extracting lessons from Purdue University Libraries’ partnership with other units to create a campus-wide course development program, Instruction Matters: Purdue Academic Course Transformation (IMPACT), which provides academic libraries with tools and strategies for working with faculty and departments to integrate information literacy into disciplinary courses,” the description continues.

At Purdue, Dr. Maybee is among the group of faculty members in the libraries and in other academic areas demonstrating the importance of information literacy not only for college students, but also for new graduates and mid-career and long-time professionals–indeed, for everyone.

To create awareness about this importance Maybee, Libraries Information Literacy Instructional Designer Rachel Fundator, with the help of Julia Smith, graduate assistant, and Teresa Koltzenburg, strategic communication director, implemented “Inform Purdue,” a social media campaign to “celebrate information literacy at Purdue. The campaign features interviews with Purdue students, alumni, and faculty in a series of videos and social media posts.

“Purdue Libraries’ approach to information literacy is to teach students to use information in the context of learning about something—much as they will do on the job, or to make personal decisions after graduation,” Maybee explained. “In the ‘Inform Purdue’ campaign, Purdue students, faculty, former faculty, and staff share their own ‘stories’ of teaching and learning about information literacy, and how it helps them to accomplish their educational and professional goals.”

The campaign concludes today with a final video featuring Dr. Maybee (see above).

You can catch more of the videos online at www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfiLH31ZZsO3vwygf_oblFiyZfqZzWV1k or via the Libraries’ news and announcements website at https://blogs.lib.purdue.edu/news/category/inform-purdue/.