In support of the library’s mission, Instructional Services
addresses the needs of our diverse academic community by teaching
research skills and fostering information literacy among students
and faculty members.
Information literacy is a process rather than a collection of
discrete skills. Fostering information literacy means
"modelling" our thought processes as we do research with our
students, and making our steps explicit as we (1)
determine the information we need in order to effectively pursue
our interests, (2) locate/access the needed information,
(3) evaluate the quality of information obtained,
and (4) use that information effectively and ethically. Not
surprisingly, the St. John's University Core Curriculum Committee
and Higher Education accreditation panels have designated
Information Literacy an "essential" competency across the entire
core curriculum.
As a first step towards better integration of information
literacy at St. John's, our approach has been to increase teaching
faculty and students’ contact with library faculty and resources,
which has afforded teaching and library faculty an opportunity to
get to know each other and provided the instruction librarians a
working knowledge of diverse courses. The second step towards more
properly integrating information literacy in the curriculum
includes widespread faculty collaboration; Library
faculty working directly with classroom faculty to integrate
information literacy more seamlessly into course material, and to
design and modify existing assignments so that they more explicitly
foster students' ability to:
· pose an effective research question
· find reliable, scholarly information
· evaluate information
· synthesize different sources of information
· use information ethically
St. John’s University librarians have designed several online
research resources, including a
research guide booklet, instructional
tutorials, and a module-based Information Literacy
Tutorial that can be integrated into courseware or used
independently by students. The lnstuctional Services department has
also developed a repository of assignments
that address information literacy objectives, such as forming a
research question, finding quality information on a research topic,
evaluating information, and using information ethically -- all
of which allow students to learn information literacy skills
in a more contextualized, meaningful way.
In addition to common hour workshops
for students, Instructional Service librarians hold workshops
for faculty to help them modify
existing coursework and assignments, to integrate online
Library instruction on IL
elements at point-of-need, and to work with the Core
Committee's Information
Literacy Rubric. Please contact us to reserve a place at one of
the workshops or to schedule a 1:1 appointment.
Additional online resources are available in the links area of
this page, and library contacts are listed below. We look forward
to working with you.