able to:
• Determine the extent of information needed
• Access the needed information effectively and efficiently
• Evaluate information and its sources critically
• Incorporate selected information into one’s knowledge base
• Use information effectively to accomplish a specific purpose
• Understand the economic, legal, and social issues surrounding the use of information, and access and use information ethically and legally
Librarians hope that information literacy skills will be introduced to students in elementary and secondary schools, and that information literacy instruction and practice will be incorporated more fully into the higher education curriculum in all disciplines and at all levels, including graduate courses (Rockman). Such in-depth instruction is all the more necessary because in recent decades, academic libraries have undergone radical changes, largely because of technological developments. Not long ago, students and scholars who wished to research a topic needed to spend long hours physically in the library, sifting by hand through a card catalogue and annual bound volumes that indexed journal articles. Now, much research can be conducted from outside the walls of the library, through online catalogues and databases that allow users to conduct far more exhaustive searches and to do so far more quickly. Such ease in searching presents students with new challenges. As librarian Ilene Rockman explains, “the issue is no longer one of not having enough information; it is just the opposite—too much information, in various formats and not all of equal value” (1). Given such wealth of information, continues Rockman, “the ability to act confidently (and not be paralyzed by information overload) is critical to academic success and personal self-directed learning” (1).
Librarians are also adamant that bibliographic instruction be integrated into courses, not addressed solely by librarians in one or two class sessions. As Patricia Senn Breivik, past President of the ACRL and Chair of the National Forum on Information Literacy, states succinctly, “information literacy is a learning issue not a library issue” (xii). For this reason, librarians have expressed interest in forming more collaborative partnerships with faculty. For example, librarian Larry Hardesty has analyzed faculty culture to determine why faculty resist bibliographic instruction in their courses. After determining that the biggest obstacles to this instruction are faculty’s sense of inadequate instructional time and faculty’s reluctance to view librarians as peers, he concludes that librarians must take the initiative in forging better relationships with faculty through one-on-one informal contacts and through publishing about information literacy in sources that are likely to be read by faculty in the disciplines. Also, as recently as 2004, in an essay entitled “Developing Faculty-Librarian Partnerships in Information Literacy,” Susan Carol Curzon coaches librarians on how to interest faculty in the need for student information literacy skills. She advises librarians to relate information literacy to critical thinking, which faculty value already; to discuss information literacy as a lifelong skill; to talk about how information literacy helps students succeed academically; to stress that information literacy is an essential skill in academic life; and to present faculty with data that assesses students’ current information literacy skills.
Perhaps the strongest argument for course-integrated bibliographic instruction is that it improves students’ academic work, as confirmed in an empirical study conducted by librarians David Kohl and Lizabeth Wilson. Based on their study’s data, Kohl and Wilson conclude that “bibliographic instruction taught as a cognitive strategy did increase the quality of student bibliographies to a statistically significant degree” (209). Although their study was published in 1986, prior to the ACRL’s rich articulation of information literacy I have cited above, their qualification that the approach must be “taught as a cognitive strategy” is fully consistent with more contemporary definitions of information literacy. The effectiveness of course-integrated information literacy can be deduced from their discussion of their conclusions:
The traditional, tool-specific approach does not seem as helpful as an approach that focuses on helping students develop a more complex, appropriate, and individualized research strategy for themselves. [ . . . ] If bibliographic instruction is to be effective, it needs to be recast into an approach that begins with the student’s research question rather than the library tool and that focuses on understanding how information is organized rather than simply explaining the mechanics of how to use library tools. (210).
My hope is that the bibliographic skills you learn from this book will not only help you to complete a specific assignment for a course in composition studies but will also increase your information literacy skills more generally, making you more equipped for any research endeavor you undertake.
For Writing and Discussion
1. In commenting on the ease of online bibliographic searches, librarian Ilene Rockman writes that it is easy for students to be “paralyzed by information overload” (1). Have you ever felt paralyzed by too much information when working on an academic assignment?
a. If you have felt paralyzed in this way, describe the experience. Then review the ACRL’s bulleted list of skills that characterize a person with information literacy, cited earlier in this chapter. Which of these skills do you think would most have helped you resolve this paralysis? How so?
b. If you cannot remember feeling paralyzed by information overload, describe any prior bibliographic instruction you have received that you think has helped you to avoid this experience. Then review the ACRL’s bulleted list of skills that characterize a person with information literacy, cited earlier in this chapter. Which of these skills are strengths you developed from your previous bibliographic instruction? Which of these skills do you still hope to improve?
2. Identify someone who has been employed as either a faculty member or an academic librarian for at least ten years. Informally interview this person about how technological developments in the last decade have changed the process they use when searching for academic sources. Summarize the person’s responses; then describe what this interview exercise has taught you about the merits and the limitations of bibliographic instruction.
The Need for Bibliographic Instruction in Composition Studies
We have just examined the need for bibliographic instruction in all academic disciplines; in this section we will examine why bibliographic instruction is particularly necessary in composition studies.
Although he was not the first to call for bibliographic rigor in composition studies, the person who is most often credited with initiating a demand for bibliographic resources in the discipline is Paul Bryant, 1973 chair of the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) and the first to chair the CCCC Commission on a Bibliography for the Profession in 1981. In his keynote address as CCCC chair, entitled “A Brand New World Every Morning,” Bryant lamented that the teaching of composition at the time was notably ill-informed by earlier scholarship. Without an annual bibliography on teaching composition, wrote Bryant, the discipline was ahistorical, like a brand new world every morning, one that permitted “the repeated reinvention of the same pedagogical wheels” (30), which Bryant bluntly described as “wasteful and stupid, to say the least” (31). It is only through a greater awareness of work already done, he wrote, that the discipline can develop in ways that are “as linearly progressive as possible” (32).
Yet several characteristics make composition studies challenging for bibliographers to manage. According to Patrick Scott, who has written extensively about bibliographic problems in composition studies, one of the greatest challenges is the classification of subjects. Unlike scholarship about literature, which can be classified almost entirely using proper names, such as a literary work’s author or title, scholarship in composition studies must be classified by terminology that is often less fixed. Scott
