Information Literacy in School Libraries: It Takes a Community

Abstract

In analyzing the trends discussed in the last column, the editors were struck with the tendency of our profession to compartmentalize information literacy efforts through defining them by distinct constituent groups. Standards and guidelines written for specific user populations are rarely the result of collaborative efforts between professionals in different kinds of libraries. School librarians are intimately involved with information literacy efforts that target youth, yet what they do is sometimes not understood by public and academic librarians who deal with those same students in different information contexts. The editors hoped that a school librarian could shed some light on the challenges and barriers school librarians face when developing programs of information literacy skills in the K-12 environment. Frances Jacobson Harris, as an associate professor on the faculty at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and as a school librarian closely involved with teaching and student learning on a daily basis, is uniquely qualified to articulate to those of us more familiar with adult learners the distinctive and yet somehow similar characteristics of adolescent learners and how programs of information literacy can be effective in the secondary school environment. What follows is Harris's remarkable analysis of the challenges and possibilities that face information literacy educators who care about our youth.--Editors When my oldest son was in middle school, he and his class made an expedition to the local public library to find sources for their research papers. Being a school library media specialist, I decided that this would be a logical moment to go along as a parent volunteer. Throughout the afternoon, I couldn't help but notice the differences in my style of working with the students from that of the reference librarians, as well as the differences in the ways students interacted with the librarians and then with me. While I floated from group to group, inserting myself into conversations and checking on progress, the reference librarians stayed at their desks and waited for students to approach them with questions. While I nosily asked students how they would use the information they found or suggested paths for them to explore next, the reference librarians respectfully delivered answers or showed students how to use specific resources, melting away when finished. The students themselves seemed reluctant to approach the reference desk for help, but were happy to explain their problems when I probed. They appeared to be unperturbed--in fact, sometimes relieved--by my demands, even though I was a stranger, yet were somehow too timid to initiate an encounter at the reference desk. The volunteer experience described in this vignette helped me understand a basic distinction in the roles and expectations of public librarians and school librarians, and the ways in which young adults approach library research. In the public library, the user is assumed to be the arbiter of how much or how little information is necessary, how much or how little help is wanted. The adult services librarians who were working that day seemed to depend on the students to know what they wanted, if not necessarily how to find it. In the school library setting, a reference transaction is also a teaching transaction. A question and its answer never stand alone, without the context of the assignment, the information problem, the overarching story. Probably just as much time is spent with a student on defining an information problem as is spent on finding the information itself. School librarians and public librarians share a common focus in that they both serve students, helping them with their information problems. But there is a general lack of communication among librarians in both settings about what students know, how they are being taught, and what they should be expected to accomplish. If, as just described, the role of the school library media specialist is primarily a teaching one, why do so many students seem to lack basic information literacy skills? …

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