Bibliographic Instruction: Planning for the Electronic Information Environment

Abstract

Movement toward an increasingly distributed, electronic information environment places new demands on library instruction programs.Thus, bibliographic instruction should figure prominently in the strategic planning efforts of academic libraries so that it will continue to provide knowledge and skills for lifelong learning in a changing setting.In addition to anticipating new technologies, instructional planning should reflect projected changes in the following: student population, curricula, academic-industrial relationships, scholarly communication, information industry, governmental information activities, schools, public and special libraries, home, work, and income.Ongoing environmental scanning will permit the modification of instructional goals, as necessary, to meet the challenges ahead.cademic research has been enriched in recent years by the use of insights, findings, and models crossing traditional disciplinary boundaries.Similarly, new perspectives on the electronic information environment can be acquired outside the literature of librarianship.Several examples from higher-education literature, airline in-flight magazines, and professional conferences will serve to underscore the differences between librarian and nonlibrarian perceptions of the fast-changing information environment.In a recent Change article, ''Educating for the Information Society," a prominent academic dean observed, People who do not educate themselves-and keep educating themselves-to participate in the new knowledge environment will be the peasants of the information society. 1 Nowhere in Harlan Cleveland's thoughtful discussion of problem solving with computer and telecommunications technologies, however, is the word library mentioned.The only reference to libraries is a photograph of a crouching student searching the bottom drawer of a card catalog.This scene offers a vivid contrast to others of enthusiastic, stimulated students using computers.Cleveland's article, like many others on the social impact of new technologies, is not so much "antilibrary" as "alibrary."The crucial skill for lifelong learning in a fast-changing information environment, he suggests, is "integrative thinking," which he defines as "the capacity to syn-

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