Agenda for our Meeting on Friday, February 13th (10am-12pm)

Location: Ocean County College Library, Toms River, NJ (Room L101D)
Date & Time: Friday, February 13, 2009 (10am-12pm)

• Welcome & Introductions.
• Events & Programs Announcements.
• Update on Progression Standards joint project with VALE_SIL and NJACRL_UE.
• What I learned at VALE: VALE Users' Conference Reactions.
• Shrinking economy and growing enrollment.
• Reader's Advisory: Read any good books lately?
• 2009/10 CJARL Chairperson.
• Electronic Reserves.
• Database news.
• Update on new projects and innovative thinking at your library.
• April/May meeting.
  

Directions to the Ocean County College camous in Toms River, NJ can be found here.

Light refreshments will be served.

Looking forward to seeing you there.

Academic Library Research: Perspectives and Current Trends

Marie Radford, PhD (Rutgers University) has a new book out called, Academic Library Research: Perspectives and Current Trends (2008). Co-edited with Pamela Snelson (Franklin & Marshall). In the interest of full disclosure, I am a former student of Dr. Radford's. For those of us who know her, this book is sure to be a very worthwhile read. I'm looking forward to getting my copy. For more information, go to: http://www.alastore.ala.org/detail.aspx?ID=2515

Notes from Joint Progression Standards Meeting

The following is an account of the Joint Progression Standards Meeting held last Friday. Many thanks to Eleonora Dubicki (Monmouth University) for preparing these notes.

Progression Standards Meeting
Joint Meeting SIL, ACRL/NJLA User Education Committee, and CJARL
Held at Monmouth University
December 12, 2008 10am – 12pm

Participants: Jacqui DaCosta – session leader (TCNJ), Eleonora Dubicki (Monmouth), Gary Schmidt (Ocean CC), Amy Clark (Brookdale CC), Jesse Traquir (Berkeley College), Martin Crabtree (Mercer County CC), Caitlyn Cook (Ocean CC), Ellen Parker (Atlantic Cape CC), Daniel Calandro (Mercer CC), Pamela Price (Mercer CC), Pat Dawson (Rider U), Heather Huey (NJIT), Nancy Madacsi (Centenary), Anne Ciliberti (WPUNJ), Nancy Weiner (WPUNJ), Beatrice Priestly (LBPL and Monmouth), Ruth Hamann (Passaic CCC), Lynee Richel (County College of Morris), Lisa Coats (Monmouth)
VALE executive committee charge – Work together to develop progression standards for students progressing from two year to four year colleges, for the entire group of 52 NJ academic libraries.

Anne Ciliberti – In the recent changes in articulation standards, four year schools must accept credits from 2 year schools. In current definitions of standards, technology and Information Literacy skills are grouped together so that either one satisfies the category, but in reality students need both not just one of these skills.

Many session participants felt that we need to pursue our progression standards recommendations with the Council of Community Colleges, President’s Council (to seek NJ academic officers endorsement.)

Task force – meet in January, March and present at NJLA. Standards should be completed by this summer.

Brainstorming – entire group participated to identify issues and topics that should be addressed by the task force and the documents produced:
- What do we want these standards to be?
- Standards vs guidelines/mandates vs suggestions
- There are K-12 standards for IL, but they aren’t well disseminated. 4 groups. NJ Dept. of Ed. http://www.nj.gov/education/cccs/s8_tech.pdf
- If you get through Middle States accreditation, then school will have addressed IL articulation standards.
- How do you assess whether students have the necessary IL skills when they come to college?
- Heather – it helps to meet with classes multiple times. At NJIT IL is covered in humanities 101 , which meets 3 times – citations, book or articles, evaluate websites.
- Nancy - Focus on our freshman and sophomores to be at when they move to 4 year. What is the competency they should have at end of sophomore year and take this to governing body. Help differentiate between IL and Technology Literacy.
- 2 yr schools have open admissions, how do you address the needs of all types of students – those continuing those who are non-matriculating.
- Mark - Where should IL standards be enforced – librarians, faculty
- Pam - Should there be specific standards for people in professional programs – nursing, therapy.
- Ma Lei: ACRL – standards are the standards and objectives. That’s where should start. Merge with Middle States standards – give visions
- Lynee – needs will be diverse across so all types of students and schools, we should look at macro level which are relevant to everyone – evaluating information and ethical and legal uses.
- Is there a model we would like to follow? What type of wording? Go with simplicity.

Break-out group highlights:

Group 1:
- conceptualizing the document, macro
- Preferred Oswego format, focus on the degree of difficulty. Standards for 1) 1st yr 2) 2nd year
- Copyright only at upper division
- Prefer one page for presentation to groups, bullet point format for simplicity in presentations
- Outcomes assessments (by institution)
- Broad framework to cover difference student contexts, include non-traditional and DL learners

Group 2
- Progressive statements
- non-jargon language to communicate effectively to administrators/non librarians
- Use ACRL standards as a foundation- benchmarks, incoming proficiency, second level
- Assessment – where does it happen, how is faculty involved?
- IL should be embedded in the curriculum

Group 3
- Need to sell information literacy to admin, faculty – highlight IL failures that have been in the news. Context is very important.
- Ethical/Legal/economic issues important in lifelong learning (ACRL5)
- Important to understand “critical thinking” as many faculty see IL – IL not always addressed outside of library
- Need to have a broad foundation
- Simplicity (ACRL too detailed)
- Need to add another layer of experience to Bloom’s taxonomy to include active learning, significant, intentional learning

Group 4
- Accreditation – suggest models as a mandate
- Checklist for competency – simplify wording
- Role of the librarian
- Skills assessment/ outcomes
- Evidence
- Critical thinking

Group 5
- Simplicity in the document produced, eg. SUNY, Rochester
- What should be mastered by end of freshmen and sophomore years? Or expectations by credits – 30 credits, 60/64 credits
- Individual schools can contextualize our document
- Simplified ACRL standards 1-5 eg. SUNY, Eg. 1) Information need – one sentence explanation, then identify competencies needed
- Rows – Standards then competency (how you demonstrate)
- Columns – Level (1st and 2nd) and Upper
- Use a brief introduction to explain the proposed standards ½ - one page

Resources which were shared with participants prior to the meeting or mentioned during the session:
- Middle States IL: http://www.msche.org/publications/Developing-Skills080111151714.pdf
- Core Library and Research Skills Grad 9 – 14+ (Rochester Regional Library Council)
- Information Literacy Learning outcomes for SUNY Oswego Undergraduates
- Criteria for Information Literacy Competency (New Jersey City University)
- California State University Checklist of Information Competencies
- NJ skills assessment chart for K-12: http://www.state.nj.us/education/techno/techlit/tapin/2ci_skills_array.pdf
- NJ Dept of Education website: http://www.state.nj.us/education/techno/techlit/compare/
- NJ Dept of education, Professional and Educational standards: http://education.state.nj.us/cccs/?_list_cpi;c=8;s=1;g=12

December 12, 2008 Joint Meeting at Monmouth University

Below are some excerpts from an e-mail distributed by Jacqui DaCosta (TCNJ) regarding our December 12 joint meeting with VALE_SIL and NJ_ACRL_UE.

[begins]
On Friday December 12, 10:00-12:00, we will be meeting at Monmouth University, Magill Commons Room 109 (for directions, please see below and on agenda). If you need any further information on the venue or parking, please contact Eleonora Dubicki (edubicki@monmouth.edu)

The purpose of the meeting is to start the process of producing some IL benchmarks/standards that would enable institutions to assess students in the transition from 2 to 4 year colleges, at different stages (e.g. First Year, Sophomore, etc.). It would be really helpful if you could take a look at some of the links and documents attached, prior to the meeting, as these might guide and help us to get off to a running start:
http://www.cccnj.edu/library/informationliteracy.cfm (Cumberland CCC)
http://www.oswego.edu/library/instruction/outcomes.pdf (SUNY Oswego)
http://www.msche.org/publications/Developing-Skills080111151714.pdf (See App. 1 - NJ City Univ)
http://www.topsy.org/ICAP/Standards&Outcomes.pdf (Bay Area Community Colleges)
http://www.fiu.edu/~library/ili/outcomes.html (Florida International University)
You might also want to look at:
http://www.bergen.edu/gened/Distribution_Policy_F7.pdf (Gen. Ed, Foundation Course Goal Categories)
http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/acrl/standards/objectivesinformation.cfm (ACRL generic objectives)
[ends]

Stephen Bell on Teaching Information Literacy Skills, from ACRLog 11/25/2008

Here's an interesting post on today's ACRLog from Stephen Bell, in which he addresses the debate about how to best provide students with the information literacy skills they need: librarian taught for-credit-information literacy courses, or information literacy integrated across the curriculum. Bell references articles/blog posts by William Badke and David Watt, which are also worth a look.

CJARL Meeting - December 12, 2008 10am-12pm

Information literacy is hardly a new concept among librarians. However, it now seems like the rest of the world is finally starting to catch up to us. Over the past few years, a growing number of non-Librarian faculty in high education have begun to realize that accessing and interpreting information is increasingly relevant to student success.

This is good news.

What’s even better news is that many of our academic Librarian colleagues throughout New Jersey are also noticing this trend. Just as we’ve been discussing information literacy competencies and standards during our CJARL meetings, our colleagues on the User Education committee of the New Jersey Chapter of ACRL and VALE’s Shared Information Literacy (SIL) committee have been doing the same.

The progression standards are currently being conceived according to two areas: (1) high school to collegiate progression and (2) 2-year college to 4-year college progression.

That said, it’s about time that we convene all three groups for a kind of “mini-summit” geared toward hashing out our thoughts and ideas on progression standards.

Eleonora Dubicki of the NJACRL-UE committee has graciously arranged accommodations for the joint meeting to take place in Magill Commons (part of the dining/conference facilities) at Monmouth University from 10am-12pm on Friday, December 12, 2008.

This meeting will take the place of our previously-scheduled meeting from 10am-12pm on December 12.

It promises to be a great meeting.

-Gary

"Panel Issues Guide to Using Copyrighted Material in the Classroom"

This brief article from "The Chronicle of Higher Education" refers to a very interesting--and handy--report created at American University in D.C. on the subject of copyright. The report is written in easy-to-understand language that many teaching faculty will appreciate:

The guide argues that discussion of copyright in education has too often been shaped by copyright holders, "whose understandable concern about large-scale copyright piracy has caused them to equate any unlicensed use of copyright material with stealing." The authors say they hope their work will help professors understand their rights better under current law.