University Libraries' Information Literacy Program Mission Statement
University Libraries' Information Literacy Program
Mission Statement
As part of the university's student-centered curriculum, University Libraries' Information Literacy initiative will support the Libraries' commitment to promote learning and access through user education in information literacy. Multidisciplinary and client-centered, the Libraries’ community-driven approach will facilitate student growth to afford them the full meaningful access to resources and the acquisition of skills needed for confident decision making and life long learning.
Through our teaching efforts, students will be able to attain the following information literacy skills[1]:
- Determine the nature and extent of the information needed
- Access needed information effectively and efficiently.
- Evaluate information and its sources critically and incorporate selected information into his or her knowledge base and value system.
- Use information effectively to accomplish a specific purpose
- Understand many of the economic, legal, and social issues surrounding the use of information and access and use information ethically and legally
1 Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education
After acquiring the above skills, an information literate student should be able to demonstrate the following competencies:
- Define and articulate the need for information
- Identify a variety of types and formats of potential sources for information
- Consider the costs and benefits of acquiring the needed information
- Reevaluate the nature and extent of the information need
- Select the most appropriate investigative methods or information retrieval systems for accessing the needed information
- Construct and implement effectively-designed search strategies
- Retrieve information online or in person using a variety of methods
- Refine the search strategy if necessary
- Extract, record, and manage the information and its sources
- Summarize the main ideas to be extracted from the information gathered
- Articulate and apply initial criteria for evaluating both the information and its sources
- Synthesize main ideas to construct new concepts
- Compare new knowledge with prior knowledge to determine the value added, contradictions, or other unique characteristics of the information
- Determine whether the new knowledge has an impact on the individual’s value system and takes steps to reconcile differences
- Validate understanding and interpretation of the information through discourse with other individuals, subject-area experts, and/or practitioners
- Determines whether the initial query should be revised
- Apply new and prior information to the planning and creation of a particular product or performance
- Revise the development process for the product or performance
- Understand many of the ethical, legal and socio-economic issues surrounding information and information technology
- Follow laws, regulations, institutional policies, and etiquette related to the access and use of information resources
- Acknowledge the use of information sources in communicating the product or performance
As Instructors of Information Literacy, we hope achieve the above goals by:
- Partnering with university faculty and staff to instill information literacy competencies into the curriculum
- Supporting lifelong learning through advanced information services [Directions : The University of Toledo, March 2007]
- Fostering student success through the university’s living-learning communities
The Information Literacy Program will be continuously evaluated and assessed to determine the effectiveness of this mission statement towards our stakeholders and its correlation to the University Libraries’ Strategic Plan.
