ACRL News Issue (B) of College & Research Libraries C&RL News ■ March 2002 / 189 CONFERENCE CIRCUIT ACRL programs inspire excellence The President’s Discussion Group at Midwinter by Susan Barnes Whyte Mary Reichel’s theme for ACRL focuses upon learning communities. Midwinter’s President’s Discussion Group underscored that theme as four librarians demonstrated how ACRL-sponsored programs affected their institutions’ commitment to fostering informa­ tion literacy and standards for assessing aca­ demic libraries. Martha McCormick from Indiana Univer­ sity Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) highlighted IUPUI’s efforts to establish some of ACRL’s best practices. She recognized pro­ fessional inertia due to overload, but sug­ gested ways to “push through obstacles to excellence.” Examples of IUPUI librarians’ commitment to excellence included participation in the ACRL Institute for Information Literacy dur­ ing the summer o f 2001 and the library’s re­ cent reorganization and newly created client- based teams, rather than function or depart­ ment-based teams. During this reorganization, the instructional team was dissolved as “an intentional way to spread instructional responsibility” through­ out the organization. With instruction more decentralized, there is the opportunity for enhanced collaboration with faculty through the Center for Teaching and Learning, which is conveniently located in the library. Kathryn Crowe from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG) de­ scribed how the ACRL Competency Standards helped the librarians there persuade faculty that an information literacy standard belonged in the general education program. Interest­ ingly, librarians decided not to use the termi­ nology “information literacy” on this campus; rather they chose “library research skills in­ struction” as a better fit with their curricular vernacular. Librarians at UNCG have written sequenced objectives for library instruction for both first-year and upper-division under­ graduates. Jane Bradford from Stetson University out­ lined the “tangible and intangible effects that have radiated out” from her participation in the ACRL Institute for Information Literacy. Stetson University librarians have accepted “the challenge o f being a teaching/learning library.” They are working more closely with faculty and with each other, have coupled their mission statement with the ACRL Infor­ mation Literacy Competency Standards, and are working on assessing their total library. The Stetson librarians received a commenda­ tion from their accrediting agency for the “ef­ ficacy of the librarians’ efforts to bring infor­ mation literacy into students’ learning.” Bill Nelson from Augusta State, the final speaker, shifted our attention from informa­ tion literacy to the new ACRL College Library Section (CLS) Standards. CLS was the first sec­ tion to incorporate outcomes assessment into its standards. Now the University Libraries (c o n tin u ed on p a g e 192) A b o u t the a u th o r I Susan Barnes Whyte is college librarian at Lin field College, e-mail: swhyte@linfield, edu 192 / C&RL News ■ March 2002 tion o f the course. Typically, in course-re- lated library instruction, the librarian has no role or a limited role in the development of the course syllabus and assignments. Perhaps the most important difference is in the nature o f interaction with the faculty member and the students. The librarian is a part o f the community, not an adjunct expert or guest lecturer. He or she is part o f the give-and- take o f the class and becom es a learner as well as a teacher. The librarian can shift the focus from explaining library resources to meeting the ongoing information needs of the students in the broad information envi­ ronment. O p p o r t u n it ie s f o r a n e x p a n d e d t e a c h in g a n d le a r n in g ro le Involvem ent in learning com m unities can provide academ ic librarians with a window into the thinking o f students w ho have grown up with technolog y and w ho regu­ larly use the W eb to locate all kinds o f inform ation, from registration inform ation to airline schedu les to recently issued gov­ ernm ent reports. Many librarians are aware that this new generation o f students prefers using tech­ nology in a multitasking mode, listening to music via their computer while instant m es­ saging friends as they write a course paper, but those realizations have not had much impact on the way that academic libraries structure their information or services for stu­ dents. We need to learn from students as well as have them learn from us. The learning com ­ munity concept fosters collaborative teach­ ing and learning, where the faculty member can learn from the students as well as the students learning from faculty. We can also discover a whole range o f information needs in a course and opportunistically introduce students to new sources, new search tech­ niques, and critical ways to evaluate infor­ mation. While the time commitment that involve­ ment in a learning community requires limits the number o f such courses that librarians can participate in, librarians who have had the experience feel em pow ered and co n ­ nected to the educational process in new ways and discover new understandings about stu­ dents, faculty, and the use o f information. N o te s 1. Barbara Leigh Smith, “The Challenge of Learning Communities as a Growing National Movement,” P e e r R eview 3, no. 3, 4, no. 1 (Sum m er/Fall 2 0 0 1 ); http://w w w .aacu- edu. org/peerreview/pr-fa01feature 1. cfm. 2. L ea r n in g C om m u n ity C om m on s: Sus­ ta in in g L ea r n in g C om m u n ities Work. Online at http://learningcommons.evergreen.edu/, and Kris Bosworth and Sharon J. Hamilton, C ollaborative L earn in g : Underlying P rocesses a nd E ffective T echniques. New Directions for Teaching and Learning No. 59. (San Fran­ cisco: Jossey-Bass, 1994). 3. Sabine Seufert, “Virtual Communities,” EDUCAUSE NLII Annual Meeting, January 2 7 - 29, 2002. 4. For more information on CNI’s New Learning Communities project see http://www. cni.org/projects/nlc/ and Philip Tompkins, Susan Perry, and Jo an K. Lippincott, “New Learning Communities: Collaboration, Net­ working, and Information Literacy,” In fo r m a ­ tion Technology a n d L ibraries 17‚ no. 2 (1998): 100- 1 0 6 . ■ ( “ACRE p r o g r a m s . . . ” c o n tin u e d f r o m p a g e 18 9 ) Section and Community and Junior College Libraries Section are revising their standards, as well. Moreover, Nelson remarked that com­ m on standards for academ ic libraries are springing forth from this effort. These com ­ mon standards will provide a “flexible frame­ work for any academic library.” Mary Reichel summed up the program by touching on a few of the issues framing the conversation about the academic library. A theme that echoed around academic libraries last fall was the perception that libraries are devoid o f people. Many librarians disagree with this perception. ACRL and its programs can go a long way to refute the empty library scenario. Reichel also touched upon other issues raised during the program, such as burnout for teaching and reference librarians, the need for continued funding for travel to profes­ sional conferences for intellectual resuscita­ tion, and ACRL’s absolute dedication to work­ ing with academic libraries in all areas, from information literacy to common standards. ■ http://www.aacu- http://learningcommons.evergreen.edu/ http://www