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The benefits of buy-in: integrating information literacy into each year of an academic program
Justin Harrison and Lorna Rourke
University of Guelph, Guelph, Canada
Abstract
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to describe the integration of information literacy into each year of a Bachelor of Arts and Science (BAS) program at the University of Guelph, Ontario, and to explain the role of librarian mentors in this program. Design/methodology/approach The paper reviews the literature related to mentoring and librarians, explains the BAS program, and outlines the librarys integration into the BAS curriculum. It discusses mentoring, assessment, and future goals, and provides some librarians observations and advice. Findings The paper demonstrates the benefits of librarian-student mentoring and of integrating information literacy into each year of an undergraduate degree program. Practical implications Since the mentoring of students by librarians is rarely mentioned in the literature, this description of our mentoring program may inspire other librarians to set up librarian-student partnerships at their institutions. Our successful application of information literacy into every year of a degree program and our partnerships with faculty and students may serve as models for other libraries. Originality/value The experience of the University of Guelph library may show other libraries how to integrate information literacy into a program efficiently and effectively. Keywords Curricula, Mentoring, Librarians, Academic libraries, Information literacy, Information literacy Paper type Case study

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Introduction At the University of Guelph, Ontario a mid-sized institution focusing on teaching, learnercenteredness, internationalism and collaboration the library is working with an emerging, dynamic program that is receptive to innovation and partnerships. Through the efforts of three librarians at the university, the new Bachelor of Arts and Science program enjoys an integration of ongoing, increasingly more complex information literacy (IL) lessons, assignments, and perspectives into a four-year degree education. An element of the library integration that has worked particularly well is a formal relationship established between each first-year student and a librarian. We call the librarians who work with these first-year students mentors, based on the Oxford English Dictionary definition: A person who acts as guide and adviser to another person, esp. one who is younger and less experienced (Oxford English Dictionary, 2000). This mentoring relationship includes one-on-one consultations and guidance for the students in their graduating year; this student-librarian collaboration enables the students to define and refine their major research areas and sources of information. While developing a formalized mentoring relationship with a whole class of students poses many challenges, both for the coordination of librarian effort as well as

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work flow issues that inevitably arise, it can prove to be a constructive and rewarding outlet for librarian research expertise. The librarian mentors are able to see the immediate and ongoing benefits of their tutelage, and the students gain valuable insight into the research and scholarly process, a process with which many students struggle. For their part, the students in the mentoring partnership felt strongly that it was a beneficial experience that enhanced their studies. The librarians had an opportunity to work closely with students and faculty in this program, due in large part to the buy-in of the program chair, the faculty, and, most importantly, the students. This article will describe the collaborative approach used to address IL issues in a formalized, curricular way, and why it worked for us[1]. The projects main benefits as well as some of its challenging elements will be highlighted. Literature review While much has been written on the integration of library services and expertise into the university curriculum, there is very little in the literature on librarian-to-student mentoring of research skills, which is one of the most noteworthy aspects of our integration program. Among the few articles relating directly to librarian-to-student mentor relationships include ones describing librarian/library school student mentorship (Hallam and Gissing, 2003) and librarian as blog mentor for students (Reichardt and Harder, 2005). While these approaches to librarian-to-student mentoring are certainly valid and useful, they fall outside the scope of this case study. A useful article that does discuss research mentoring by librarians to students, though within the focused framework of academic integrity only, is by Wood and Warnken (2004). However, again, this article falls outside the scope of the present discussion, as the nature of the mentorship mentioned is limited to reference desk interactions, as opposed to a formalized, one-on-one, ongoing relationship in which a mentoring librarian participates in a students evolving research. Other research has been done on the effective results of librarians mentoring professionals, often in a clinical or health setting, such as works by Haigh (2006) and Murphy and Adams (2005). However, the mentorship relationship we will discuss revolves around senior-level university students who are very likely to be pursuing graduate degrees. Thus, a different set of mentor/patron objectives exist than would be found in a professional workplace such as a hospital or clinic. Also, many articles have been published on the subject of librarians mentoring each other. The idea of librarians mentoring newer professional colleagues, often regarding leadership skills and professional development objectives, is well discussed in the literature, most recently by Mosby and Brook (2006), Neal (2006), Mosley (2005), Mavrinac (2005), and Finley et al. (2005). These works provide professionals with ample suggestions and case studies about improving ones career performance and growth. However, librarians who are exploring or are attracted to the idea of a librarian mentor program specifically aimed at university students will benefit from our experiences and findings. The program and its students The program itself, the Bachelor of Arts and Science, is a four-year honours program leading to a BAS degree. A unique aspect of this program is that the students pursue

double minor specializations, rather than concentrating on a major. The two minors include one in the Arts (Humanities or Social Sciences) and one in the Sciences. For example, students can combine minors in Fine Art and Biology or Philosophy and Physics. This double minor requirement provides the students with an opportunity to undertake research and to stimulate their intellects in original ways through an unconventional pairing of disciplines. Complementing the double minors that each student chooses is a required, common stream of integrative core courses that enables all BAS students to address a wide spectrum of academic content and methods, immersing themselves in the cross-disciplinary heart of the program. It is in this core stream that we focus our IL integration efforts. The programs values are central to its curriculum, speaking directly to the kind of graduates the program hopes to produce. These ideals involve three main approaches to teaching and learning, within which contexts librarians tried to place our IL lessons and assignments. The approaches are experiential learning, international perspectives, and approaching academic principles within a social context. One course, for example, requires the students to work in a local homeless shelter, providing them with the opportunity to develop real-world skills and experiences and to understand important social issues. How we got involved As instruction librarians, we are always searching for ways to promote our services and expertise to faculty, knowing that library research skills are a vital part of a successful, well-rounded university education. We also know, however, that successfully persuading faculty to include an in-class library instruction component can be a real challenge. We were fortunate in this area in our efforts with the BAS program by virtue of having an established librarian champion as the Chair of the program. Dr Donna Pennee, an English department faculty member, had enjoyed a long and successful relationship with her liaison librarian, Lorna Rourke, who had taught library instruction sessions for many of Dr Pennees undergraduate English classes. When the BAS program was created and Dr Pennee became chair, her understanding of the value of the library proved to be a key ingredient in our efforts to integrate IL into all four years of the programs curriculum. We had a champion in place, and at one of the highest curriculum levels. At the same time, things were changing on campus in a way that provided another boost toward integrating the library more deeply into course curriculum. In the past, much of the focus at the University of Guelph had been on research and graduate education. In recent years, though, there was an informal yet perceptible trend among various campus communities toward undergraduate teaching, innovation, a culture of collaboration, and learnercenteredness. These values were recently articulated and emphasized in a White Paper written by Dr Maureen Mancuso, the Vice-President (Academic) of the University, The lighting of a fire: re-imagining the undergraduate

learning experience (Mancuso, 2005). With this shift toward new values, we saw an opportunity to frame our librarian expertise and services, and we seized it. With the new focus on collaboration, innovation, and undergraduate teaching, we were able to reframe our expertise and

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services as librarians, demonstrating that the time was right for the library to become more deeply involved with an emerging and unique program that prided itself in thinking beyond the conventional. Integration into the curriculum As noted, Dr Pennee was already a strong believer in the value of IL. When she initially approached the library regarding an IL component for the BAS program, she was thinking of having librarians provide IL sessions to the first year students. However, we felt that we had an opportunity to contribute a more value-added IL experience than usual: we would do away with simply exposing the students to library instruction in their first year, and would instead concentrate on scaling IL sessions throughout the four year degree. With this ongoing integration, we hoped to provide the students the chance to build on what they had learned earlier in their degrees, applying their maturing education to developing more advanced IL skills over time. Consequently, we were able to embed IL outcomes into the curriculum at the program level, enhancing all levels of an undergraduate education. We chose to work in the core integration stream courses in order to reach all the students. We placed the IL outcomes within the context of these cross-disciplinary courses. Rather than basing our efforts on the traditional ACRL IL Standards, we modeled our work on the Seven Pillars of Information Literacy of the British Society of College, National and University Libraries (2004). The essential tenets of this model are that IL be embedded into the curriculum and that it be scalable; hence, we introduced concepts repeatedly and at an increasingly sophisticated level as we moved throughout the four years of the program. Our goal was to have students, who began the BAS program as novice library users, move through the IL pillars to become proficient or even expert researchers and users of information. For example, in the first-year course, we knew that most of the students were 17 years old and likely to be very new researchers. Therefore, we introduced library and research concepts and created an assignment that involved the use of basic library reference tools such as online and print encyclopaedias. As the students level of IL competence improved, we moved on to more sophisticated assignments and research tools. We helped them tackle sources such as journal articles and websites, and later with creating a sophisticated annotated bibliography in their final semester. We were able to provide two 1.5-hour IL sessions to classes in each of the four years of the program. It is worth noting that in addition to securing two scheduled class slots for library instruction, we were also given the opportunity to create and mark a graded assignment for each course. The library component was worth 10-15 percent of the final grade in each of the core courses. As all instruction librarians know, a library assignment that is worth marks is much more credible and significant than one that is optional or done out of interest! Mentoring and student assessment A particularly successful aspect of our integration into the BAS curriculum has been our mentoring program. In their last semester, students in the final integrated BAS course (the Arts & Sciences Honours Research Seminar) are paired with a librarian for

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the term. The librarian provides the student with research assistance and guidance as the student prepares and writes a major (20 pages) interdisciplinary research paper. Librarian and student are paired based on the students research topic and librarians interest and expertise. They are required to meet at least twice each semester, although in many cases there were several additional meetings. Librarians were able to address areas of concern, help clarify topics, introduce resources and refer to services. In many cases, students ended up narrowing, broadening, or completely changing their topics based on their discussions with the librarians. In addition, students became aware of services and resources they had not discovered on their own, such as Learning & Writing assistance, procrastination workshops, and library services such as GIS and Data resources. The mentoring program, while not without its complexities, was an unabashed success. Dr Donna Pennee, our original champion, notes: The opportunity for our senior cohort to have one-on-one research mentoring is part of what makes the BAS program unique. Students and librarians provided a written assessment at the end of term: all indicated that the program had been useful and positive for them. In many cases, students and librarians developed strong bonds, staying in touch long after the course and program came to an end. Assessment by faculty During a focus group conducted by the Universitys Teaching Support Services staff, teaching faculty of the program commented that the library integration was a resounding success. Faculty who had not yet worked with us expressed an eagerness to do so. Through our integration into the BAS curriculum, faculty have come to realize that the librarian instructors are important partners in future curriculum development. Dr Pennee recently wrote: You have provided innovative classroom instruction, assignments attuned to the facultys course plans and the students needs, support for the faculty not just in contributing to the curriculum but in actually grading the assignments you have carefully designed. There have been other benefits to working with faculty in the BAS program. Those faculty are now inviting librarians into the classes they teach outside of the program in departments such as History and Philosophy; they are connecting with liaison librarians they may not have interacted with had they not learned first-hand the value of IL instruction. We acknowledge the need for more formalized assessment of all the partners in the BAS/Library collaboration, and we plan to introduce a survey for the BAS faculty in the coming year. It is important to ask their opinions about our IL instruction and whether it contributes to student success, and to make changes based on the feedback we receive. Future goals/next steps Because of our successful IL integration into the BAS program, we will continue to be

integrated into the BAS curriculum; in fact, we have been offered the opportunity to participate in even more of the core BAS courses next year. In addition, on the strength of this and other projects, the recent University of Guelph Library Integrated Plan: 2006-2010 (University of Guelph, 2006) focuses on the need for collaboration in the form

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of increasing library instruction integration into the curriculum whenever possible to aid in teaching, research and production of information literate graduates. The plan also identifies the need to create learning outcome measures and articulate them within curricular skill designation. Thus, we will continue to integrate into curricula generally, and more specifically we will work to spread the mentoring model more widely. However, expansion does pose many practical challenges, including the time demands such an extended effort will require. To this end, some careful thought and planning will be needed to identify key stakeholder groups, departments, and programs to target for growth in our mentoring project. Another potential challenge is the increase in librarian workload that will result from a greater number of mentored students. The library will need to look closely at whether it can even support a significant expansion of the mentoring with current staff levels, as it could necessitate an increase in the number of librarians and consequently an increase in the librarys human resources budget, something that is always a challenge and often not possible. We are also planning other future steps relating to our BAS experience. We are working with campus Teaching Support Services to develop effective teaching, assessment, and assignment creation and grading techniques to bolster our professional curriculum development abilities and general instruction skills, which librarians often do not get formal training in. We are also exploring the possibility of a peer to peer mentoring program for the BAS program, in which the upper-level students mentor the beginning students on research and library orientation, based on the successful librarian-student mentoring model. We have also been invited to investigate ways in which IL can be imbedded into the entire Bachelor of Arts program. This is an exciting and challenging prospect, considering that the BAS program has less than 400 students and the BA program has 4,000! Again, though, as inspiring as this opportunity is, it will necessarily involve many librarian-hours devoted to it, thus raising the above-mentioned workload issues. Our observations and advice Over the three years we have been involved with the BAS program, we have learned a few things! Here is some advice to instruction librarians who would like to explore curriculum integration and/or mentoring: . Feedback from students, faculty and librarians is essential. Embed some kind of required assessment into the courses; our students are required to complete an evaluative assignment, describing how the librarys involvement worked for them. Based on student responses, we have improved some aspects of our involvement in the program. We also sought and used feedback from the mentoring librarians and the faculty. . Our ten mentoring librarians were happy to participate, and they continue to volunteer in spite of their busy schedules. They view the opportunity as unique and valuable. One librarian noted: It was a privilege to work with a student in a context where there was more sustained, intentional contact than what is possible at the reference desk. Librarians and students both commented on how much they had learned from each other.

Three of us have overseen this project two liaison librarians and the manager of IL. In a practical sense, it would be very difficult for one person to manage the workload associated with this endeavour. Spreading the duties over three peoples schedules allowed for more quality time to be spent on the project. In addition, working as part of a librarian team, each with a different learning, work, and teaching style, has provided the opportunity to learn from each other.

Concl usion While much of our BAS program involvement happened by our seizing a chance opportunity, it has developed into a successful and evolving model for the integration of IL into each year of an academic program. No one could have predicted that forming a strong bond between a librarian and an English professor ten years ago would lead to the librarys intense integration into a degree program! Librarians should seek and celebrate their champions, partner librarian mentors with students, and find a colleague or two to work with in organizing the project. Also, it would work best if a project charter were adopted by library administration to formalize the structure of such a project, in order to ensure institution-wide acceptance and enthusiasm, rather than starting with an idea and hoping for the best. Aligning and rooting a project such as IL/curriculum integration or librarianstudent mentoring within the context of an organizations strategic priorities will also increase the chances of effective long-term delivery and success. With buy-in by librarians, students, and faculty, you may find yourself reaping the benefits of program integration.
N o t e 1. The authors wish to acknowledge their collaboration with K. Jane Burpee, Manager of Reference & Information Literacy, University of Guelph Library. Refer ences Finley, P., Skarl, S., Cox, J. and van Derpol, D. (2005), Enhancing library instruction with peer planning, Reference Services Review, Vol. 33 No. 1, pp. 112-22. Haigh, V. (2006), Clinical effectiveness and allied health professionals: an information needs assessment, Health Information & Libraries Journal, Vol. 23 No. 1, pp. 4150. Hallam, G. and Gissing, C. (2003), The QUT/ALIA Queensland student mentoring program, Australian Library Journal, Vol. 52 No. 2, pp. 149-61. Mancuso, M. (2005), The lighting of a fire: re-imagining the undergraduate learning experience, University of Guelph, Guelph, available at: www.uoguelph.ca/vpacademic/whitepaper/ lightingofafire.shtml (accessed June 12, 2006). Mavrinac, M.A. (2005), Transformational leadership: peer mentoring as a values-based learning process, Portal: Libraries & the Academy, Vol. 5 No. 3, pp. 391-404.

Mosby, A.P. and Brook, J.D. (2006), Devils and goddesses in the library: reflections on leadership, team building, staff development, and success, Georgia Library Quarterly, Vol. 42 No. 4, pp. 5-10. Mosley, P.A. (2005), Mentoring Gen X managers: tomorrows library leadership is already here, Library Administratio n& Management, Vol. 19 No. 4, pp. 185-92. Murphy, J. and Adams, A. (2005), Exploring the benefits of user education: a review of three case studies, Health Information & Libraries Journal, Vol. 22, s1, pp. 4558.

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Neal, J.G. (2006), The research and development imperative in the academic library: path to the future, Portal: Libraries & the Academy, Vol. 6 No. 1, pp. 1-3. Oxford English Dictionary (2000), Oxford University Press, Oxford. Reichardt, R. and Harder, G. (2005), Weblogs: the use and application in science and technology libraries, Science & Technology Libraries, Vol. 25 No. 3, pp. 105-16. Society of College, National and University Libraries (2004), The seven pillars of information literacy, available at www.sconul.ac.uk/activities/inf_lit/sp/seven_pillars.html (accessed June 12, 2006). University of Guelph (2006), University of Guelph Library Integrated Plan: 2006-2010, Vol. 12, p. 2006), University of Guelph, Guelph, available at www.cio.uoguelph.ca/documents/ LibraryIntegratedPlan2005.12.02.pdf (accessed June 12, 2006). Wood, G. and Warnken, P. (2004), Academic original sin: plagiarism, the internet, and librarians, Journal of Academic Librarianship, Vol. 30 No. 3, pp. 237-42. Corresponding author Lorna Rourke can be contacted at: lrourke@uoguelph.ca

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