GCC Library Information Literacy Mission Statement
The mission of the GCC Library Information Literacy program is to support teaching and learning for students of all types in all courses. We seek to ensure that all our students are fully competent in the skills they need to access, evaluate and use the masses of information available in the 21st century world of knowledge and data. We support their learning in the College but, importantly, see our role as empowering them to become life-long learners – people able to use the skills they learn in the College to carry on learning and adapting to the changing workplace they will encounter when they leave the College. Through aligning skills necessary for success with our four year partner institutions, GCC Library IL program also supports a meaningful and seamless transition to these institutions. We do this through programmatic incremental and planned information literacy instruction that is regularly evaluated, uses traditional and electronic formats and that is supported by helpful and friendly informal teaching at all times. Key to success here is collaborating with teaching and administrative colleagues across the College that facilitates effective and coherent teaching.
ACRL Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education
This Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education (Framework) grows out of a belief that information literacy as an educational reform movement will realize its potential only through a richer, more complex set of core ideas. During the fifteen years since the publication of the Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education,1 academic librarians and their partners in higher education associations have developed learning outcomes, tools, and resources that some institutions have deployed to infuse information literacy concepts and skills into their curricula. However, the rapidly changing higher education environment, along with the dynamic and often uncertain information ecosystem in which all of us work and live, require new attention to be focused on foundational ideas about that ecosystem. Students have a greater role and responsibility in creating new knowledge, in understanding the contours and the changing dynamics of the world of information, and in using information, data, and scholarship ethically.
The Framework opens the way for librarians, faculty, and other institutional partners to redesign instruction sessions, assignments, courses, and even curricula; to connect information literacy with student success initiatives; to collaborate on pedagogical research and involve students themselves in that research; and to create wider conversations about student learning, the scholarship of teaching and learning, and the assessment of learning on local campuses and beyond.
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Authority Is Constructed and Contextual Information resources reflect their creators’ expertise and credibility, and are evaluated based on the information need and the context in which the information will be used. Authority is constructed in that various communities may recognize different types of authority. It is contextual in that the information need may help to determine the level of authority required. |
Information Creation as a Process Information in any format is produced to convey a message and is shared via a selected delivery method. The iterative processes of researching, creating, revising, and disseminating information vary, and the resulting product reflects these differences. |
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Information Has Value Information possesses several dimensions of value, including as a commodity, as a means of education, as a means to influence, and as a means of negotiating and understanding the world. Legal and socioeconomic interests influence information production and dissemination. |
Research as Inquiry Research is iterative and depends upon asking increasingly complex or new questions whose answers in turn develop additional questions or lines of inquiry in any field. |
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Scholarship as Conversation Communities of scholars, researchers, or professionals engage in sustained discourse with new insights and discoveries occurring over time as a result of varied perspectives and interpretations. |
Searching as Strategic Exploration Searching for information is often nonlinear and iterative, requiring the evaluation of a range of information sources and the mental flexibility to pursue alternate avenues as new understanding develops. |