A Seat at the Table: Information Literacy Assessment and Professional Legitimacy

Abstract

This qualitative study explores academic librarians' perceptions of and experiences with information literacy assessment, focusing primarily on issues of professional identity, agency, and power. Findings from in-depth interviews reveal that instruction librarians view teaching as integral to their professional identity and use assessment to legitimize that identity, both personally and at the institutional level. While this suggests that assessment has the potential to elevate the status of librarians on campus, the interviews also highlight ongoing professional and organizational tensions that hinder assessment efforts and inhibit librarian agency. The authors recommend more transparent communication, among other strategies, to address these challenges.

Relegating expertise: The outward and inward positioning of librarians in information literacy education

“…Librarians have typically felt unsure about their teaching identity (e.g. Davis, 2007;Detmering et al, 2019;Julien and Pecoskie, 2009;Walter, 2008;Wheeler and McKinney, 2015), and a lack of training is often identified as a barrier to engagement in the field (e.g. Walter, 2008).…”

“…At the same time, teaching faculty continue to exert significant influence over the ways in which librarians view and understand their engagement in teaching. Librarians are seen to participate in assessment practices, for example, to assert their legitimacy to campus faculty as well as to validate their teaching identity (Detmering et al, 2019). These findings echo those of Julien and Pecoskie (2009), who use Goffman’s work on gift-giving to illustrate that librarian relationships with teaching faculty are characterised by dependence as well as deference and disrespect.…”

Leveraging Online Tutorials and Performance Assessment to Improve Information Literacy Instruction

“…The effectiveness of oneshot instruction has been questioned by librarians since the 1960s because of the lack of time to adequately cover the necessary material and lack of follow-up opportunities with students (Phipps, 1968). A recent qualitative study of academic librarians' experiences with information literacy assessment found the same challenges encountered in the 1960s still prevalent today, including lack of assessment training, lack of campus support, and lack of appropriate assessment tools (Detmering et al, 2019).…”

“…The increasingly competitive budgetary climates at higher education institutions have required academic libraries to demonstrate how their information literacy instruction impacts student success (Detmering et al, 2019). Information literacy is defined as: the ability to think critically and make balanced judgements about any information we find and use.…”

Assessment of higher education students’ information problem-solving skills in educational sciences

“…Reported assessment gathers interviews and questionnaires where individuals inform of what they would do or feel concerning an information task. Semi-structured interviews have been used to gain a deeper and more nuanced understanding of participants' feelings about information literacy experience (e. g., Detmering, McClellan, and Willenborg, 2019), and also to qualitatively complement other instruments to assess digital literacy (e.g., Hsu, Wenting, and Hughes, 2019).…”