Pushback: Information literacy does not mean what you think it means

PUSHBACK:
Information Literacy Doesn’t Mean
What You Think It Means
Edited by Kristin Fontichiaro
First Espresso Book Machine Edition | January 2015
University of Michigan Library | Ann Arbor, Michigan

2 | PUSHBACK: Information Literacy Doesn’t Mean What You
Think It Means
Printed on the Espresso Book Machine
University of Michigan Library
Ann Arbor, MI
http://lib.umich.edu
Each essay in this collection is copyright © 2015 by the
individual author and licensed for reuse under a Creative
Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives 4.0
license. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
This book was published non-commercially, with copies
printed at cost. For a free download of this book as a PDF,
visit http://www.slideshare.net/si641/ .
Cover image: “Push” by voodooangel on Flickr. CC-BY-NC-
2.0. http://flickr.com/photos/voodooangelmg/2227353216
To learn more about the School of Information at the
University of Michigan, visit http://si.umich.edu

SI 641: Information Literacy for Teaching and Learning | 3
For our mentors

Think It Means
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Table of Contents
Introduction
Kristin Fontichiaro 8
Whose job is it to teach students
information literacy?
Yiwei Zhu 15
The lifelong road of information literacy
Alexandra Quay 21
Information literacy instruction for beginners:
Adjusting to specific user skills and needs
Jharina Pascual 27
Collaboration, compromise, and expertise:
Course instructors and librarians teaching with
historic materials
Cinda Nofziger 39
Where to go when doctors don’t have an
answer: Information seeking for patients with
rare diseases
Mari Monosoff-Richards 47
Information literacy in the public library:
It’s not just about the computers
Emily Brock 53
Information literacy in “Fluxx”
Erin Kinnee 61
What the difference between an annual report
and a 10-K has to do with information literacy:
Evaluation in context
Sara F. Hess 67

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The long tail of information literacy, or when do
we stop teaching Excel?
Kirsten Hansen 73
Slow and steady: Encyclopedias and
early stages of the research process
Mollie Hall 81
Identity, privilege, and access:
Positing the “Knower” as meaningful
Jennifer Brown 91
About the Class 100

Introduction
Kristin Fontichiaro
40 years ago, Paul Zurkowski first introduced
the profession to the term “information literacy”
and pushed for “a major national program to
achieve universal information literacy by 1984”
(Zurkowski 1974).
In many ways, the profession has made great
strides toward this goal. In others, the
profession has much left to accomplish.
Information professionals know that
information literacy is not a skillset separated
from culture or context: both are needed in
order for students to move fluidly through an
increasingly large and multifaceted world.
Information literacy is about citation chaining
and citation … but it is also about convincing a
professor that sharing one of her precious
handful of class meetings with you is worth the
trade-off in content mastery and conceptual
understanding. Information literacy is about
evaluation and credibility decision-making that
requires that a researcher have some
background knowledge against which to
benchmark the new information … yet many
practitioners bash encyclopedias. Information
literacy is about leveling barriers to

Think It Means
information access and use … yet in the state of
Michigan, merely choosing a career as a school
librarian means you will be limited to working
with middle- and upper-class students.
Decreases in school funding forced school
districts in low-income communities to lay off
their school librarians over a decade ago.
Information literacy is about building bridges
between novice researchers and the
publications of more experienced ones … yet
has yet to conquer the challenges of first-
generation college students who may not have
had a formal introduction to how academics “do
school” and how that might impact how those
first-gens might interact with scholarly
research. And what does information literacy
mean to public librarians, whose charge
transcends education to include entertainment
and community building?
The Fall 2014 classmates of SI 641: Information
Literacy for Teaching and Learning at the
University of Michigan School of Information
considered these questions throughout the
term. Like thousands of librarians and
information processionals before them, they
have looked at their profession’s information
literacy ideals and compared them to their on-
the-ground realities, trying to build bridges to
span the gap.
Had you stopped by our class on a Tuesday
evening, you might have thought initially about
our homogeneity: all women studying at the
graduate level at a prestigious global public
university. But we were, by no means, cookie
cutters in our backgrounds or thinking. Some in
our class identified as people of color, first-

generation college students, or reluctant library
users earlier in life. Some of us were Michigan
natives who had never lived outside the state;
some of us had left and returned. Some came
from across the country or across the globe.
Among us were future public, school, and
academic librarians; a high school teacher; an
archivist; and a professor. Some of us held
down part-time jobs in various libraries while,
during this class’s required practicum,
embedded themselves in others. Some of us had
taught for years; some had never been in front
of a group.
What we shared was a commitment to
information literacy as more than what we
came to call “showing people where to click in
databases.” The students brought a strong
interest in social justice and passion for fair
and equal access, demanding that the discourse
be about more than abstract theory. This
passion was fueled by the political and cultural
backdrop. The protests in Ferguson, Missouri,
bookmarked both ends of the term: first, for the
killing of Michael Brown and later in response
to the grand jury’s decision not to prosecute.
The death of Eric Garner in New York City,
again followed by a decision not to prosecute,
showed us that access issues were alive and
well. There was Gamergate, too, in which
female writers and commentators about video
games were repeatedly harassed and
threatened for articulating that female
characters were under- and unfairly
represented in video games. Clicking on
databases feels trivial against such tumult.
Yet the backdrop was optimistic as well.

Think It Means
Throughout the term, we watched as the
Association of College and Research Libraries
(ACRL) worked through drafts of their new
Information Literacy Framework: was search
strategic? Discovery? A process? Seeing
professionals wrestle with big ideas,
vocabulary, framing, and envisioned action
steps reminded us that information literacy was
about so much more than database clicks. We
cheered on librarian Scott Bonner of the
Ferguson Public Library who, as the single full-
time employee, boldly framed his institution to
be what our forefathers and foremothers
envisioned: a safe space where – in good times
and upsetting ones – community members can
gather, teach, learn, and seek refuge from a
complicated world. As a Ferguson Library
Twitter post stated:
(Ferguson Library 2014)
Additionally, we were grateful to Sandra
Hughes-Hassell of the University of North
Carolina, whose work on underserved
populations and libraries has long been a
beacon for the profession. She cheered us on
and – when it was clear we needed more
resources to help us explore the information
literacy/social justice connection – sent us
enthusiastic good wishes along with resources

that we could explore as learners and as
teachers. All of these actions and events – a
professional organization trying out new
framings, a solo librarian living the ideals of
the Code of Ethics of the American Library
Association, and a professor taking time from
her own busy work to encourage students
halfway across the country – reminded us of the
powerful and transformative meta-ideas behind
every one-shot workshop, computer lab
orientation, and reader’s advisory session.
This is the fourth time that the SI 641 class has
published its end-of-term essays in a free
publication. You can find previous collections at
these addresses:
Information Literacy in the Wild, 2011,
edited by Kristin Fontichiaro
(smashwords.com/books/view/115254)
Everything You Always Wanted to Know
About Information Literacy But Were
Afraid to Google, 2012, edited by Kristin
Fontichiaro
Information Literacy: A Gate or a
Window? 2013, edited by Jo Angela
Oehrli
We collectively titled our book PUSHBACK:
Information Literacy Doesn’t Mean What You
Think It Means because we wanted to make our
private thinking public – to push back against
fixed ideas and preconceived notions. (In fact, in
one of our conversations, we discovered that

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almost none of us had learned until quite late
in our academic lives that we could talk back to
or engage with texts, something we now saw as
fundamental to information literacy. Most of us
realized we learned to take our school texts at
face value: it if was written, its ideas took
precedence over our own.)
For this essay collection, students selected a
topic, grounded in the course’s required
practicum component, to share with the
professional community. Students were
encouraged to write in their own voice. We
prioritized authenticity of writing style over a
particular level of formality, so you’ll see a
range of voices. Some write with advice; others
are contemplative; others reflect on a very
personal aspect of their course growth. They
collaborated on peer review, and, even after the
book was mocked up, submitted rewrites and
improvements.
This is my third iteration of this project, and
this year’s book brought something new: a
surprising number of times in which classmates
cited the ideas of one another in their essays.
This speaks, as I see it, to the sense of
community they cultivated both within and
beyond classroom discussions. Even as the
semester is wrapping up, and I am putting in
the book’s final edits, there are plans for
classmates to collaborate together next
semester on a think piece around information
literacy and privilege as well as a happy hour
meet-up.
All of this would not be possible if the
leadership of the University of Michigan School

of Information did not place deep trust in its
students and instructors. We are trusted to
make decisions that best serve the students in
our class, and that allows us to deeply trust in
our students’ journeys.
We hope that our writings will have value for
you as they have for us and that you will “push
back” on our thinking as well.
Kristin Fontichiaro is a clinical assistant
professor at the University of Michigan School
of Information. Her work focuses on how to
maximize learning in formal and informal
learning spaces. Contact: font@umich.edu.
References
Ferguson Public Library. 2014. Tweet. Nov. 25.
Retrieved December 15, 2014, from
https://twitter.com/fergusonlibrary/status/53727
3221326708736 .
Wilson, Carolyn, Grizzle, Alton, Tuazon, Ramon, et
al. 2012. Media and Information Literacy
Curriculum for Teachers. Paris: UNESCO.
http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0019/001929/1
92971e.pdf .
Zurkowski, Paul G. 1974. Abstract to The
Information Service Environment Relationships
and Priorities. Related Paper No. 5. National
Commission on Libraries and Information
Science, Washington, DC: National Program for
Library and Information Services. Retrieved
December 15, 2014, from
http://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED100391 .

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Whose job is it to teach students
information literacy?
Yiwei Zhu
I came to the University of Michigan after being
an English teacher in a Chinese public high
school. When I first took this course about
information literacy in teaching and learning, I
thought I was going to perfect my computer
skills. The funniest thing is that my
misconception is a common misunderstanding
that is shared by many Chinese high school
teachers.
For me, information literacy is a combination of
both old and new knowledge and skills. Since
the essence of information literacy is what
educators and teachers try to teach their
students over time, including critical thinking;
the ability to identify, locate, search, assess,
synthesize, evaluate and use information
efficiently and legally; digital literacy; and
skills beyond just using Google and Wikipedia,
one would think that I would not feel
disconnected from or unfamiliar with this topic
as a English teacher. However, before taking
this class, I thought the computer science
teachers were the ones who should and could

Think It Means
teach students information literacy. When I
consulted my teachers and colleagues on this
issue, I found that I am not alone in having this
kind of misunderstanding of teaching
information literacy.
After being in class this semester and finishing
my internship at Greenhills School, I now
understand why we in China are falling short of
the possibilities of effective collaboration
between teachers and librarians when teaching
information literacy and the importance of
facilitating this kind of cooperation. First, as
many Chinese educators and scholars have
pointed out, many Chinese teachers and schools
confuse information literacy with technology or
computer literacy. When schools design their
curriculum, information literacy has often been
viewed and confined as a learning goal of
computer class, and the teaching has always
been limited to computer labs and computer
teachers. Considering that the unfamiliar
physical environment of computer labs and
limited exposure to information technology
could bring more stress and barriers to
students, these computer classes in Chinese
high schools are often more focused on teaching
basic computer skills rather than equipping
students with information literacy, which is
regarded as a key skill of 21st century learners.
Second, within the structure of the school
organization, teacher evaluation practices and
schedule inflexibility both contribute to the lack
of collaboration between teachers and school
librarians. Since students’ academic
performance plays a critical role in evaluating
teacher performance, many teachers choose to
spend more class time on helping students

achieve better grades in the standardized tests
instead of teaching critical skills and
encouraging students to explore and discover
unknown knowledge or cultivating student
interests in learning. The busy and fixed time
schedules for subject teachers and school
librarians make it hard for collaboration across
school departments. Third, support and
resources for teaching information literacy to
teachers remain large needs. Since information
literacy is relatively new to Chinese high school
teachers, it is understandable that educators
may have misunderstandings, presumptions,
and even fears about integrating information
literacy into their teaching.
At Greenhills, I observed collaborations
between teachers and librarians. Having been
an English teacher teaching alone, I found that
I had not fully recognized and valued the
chance to learn from librarians. I realized that I
could provide my students with better teaching
if I worked collaboratively with librarians or
other information specialists.
In my opinion, the urgent change we need in
China is to transform our education into a
“whole person” education. We must equip
Chinese youth with exposure to universal
values, information literacy and global
awareness. What China needs is an education
that could cultivate talents and minds that help
China to take leadership and responsibility in
the global arena. As I reflect on my one-year
study at University of Michigan, I find that
most of the instructional challenges we have
discussed in my classes are not exclusive to
America, and these critical issues cannot be

Think It Means
solved solely by America. As China is poised to
be the world’s largest economy, the world needs
China’s cooperation and commitment to solve
global challenges and crises, including fighting
against global warming, hunger, and disease;
and promoting human rights and social justice.
Nelson Mandela once said that education is the
most powerful weapon which you can use to
change the world. With more and more new
problems and challenges coming up, we cannot
afford not to educate the next generation with
critical thinking and information literacy. In
my class discussions, professors and classmates
talked about how digital innovations in the
education can promote equal access to learning,
how free online courses shape the traditional
higher education landscape, how gender equity
in the workplace can facilitate better use of
women’s potential and talents, and how to
change people’s biased attitudes towards LGBT
groups, minorities, and people of color. These
critical issues are what our current generation
faces and what our next generation will
continue to work on. The solutions of these
issues require multidisciplinary knowledge
beyond traditional textbooks, which cannot be
easily found in textbooks or taught by merely
giving students a “one-size-fits-all” standard
answer. Without equipping students with
information literacy skills, it may be hard to
propose or implement an effective solution to
these global issues.
In the book The One World Schoolhouse:
Education Reimagined, Khan Academy founder
Salman Khan (2012) wrote

it’s my belief that each of us has a stake
in the education of all of us … How we
can justify not offering these children a
world-class education, given that the
technology and resources to do so are
available – if only we can muster the
vision and the boldness to make it
happen (Introduction).
In a constantly-changing and globalized world,
China cannot afford not to teach students
information literacy. The dynamic changes and
development of China’s society require future
generations to navigate their ways towards
social justice through conflicts and challenges:
addressing the challenges rather than settling
for the status quo, using their skillsets and
knowledge to be creative and effective in
solving new problems, and being responsive
and prepared when it comes to global crisis and
challenges. If Chinese educators want to change
the inequity and inefficiency in traditional
education institutions, champion a world-class
education that is accessible and inclusive to
students from different backgrounds, and help
students become global citizens who have
multicultural and global awareness, who can
make informed decisions, address critical
challenges, and become future leaders of
society, then we need to give teachers more
training and support on teaching information
literacy, integrate information literacy into our
curriculum across various subjects, and
reinforce collaborations among subject teachers,
school librarians and other specialists to teach
our future leaders information literacy.

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Yiwei Zhu received her master’s degree in
Educational Studies from the University of
Michigan School of Education in December
2014.
Reference
Khan, Salman. 2012. The One World Schoolhouse:
Education Reimagined. New York: Grand
Central.

The lifelong road of information literacy
Alexandra Quay
In a semester filled with its share of aha
moments, a major aha occurred during our
information literacy class and in my coinciding
practicum at a local high school mentored by
their school librarian and information
technologist. I cannot say exactly when it
happened, but there was a point over the past
three months while I was refining my own ideas
that I realized the following: information
literacy is not finite. Of those of us that are
familiar with the term, we may already know
that it is not a literacy of a single thing or
medium, nor does it exist within a single field of
knowledge. Furthermore − and it is here that
my real aha arose − acquiring information
literacy does not happen in a finite amount of
time, be it in a single lesson, during a year, or
over the course of one’s education.
Information literacy changes as we encounter a
variety of experiences, people, and media to
address any number of needs. Despite some
surface likenesses, the skills and resources
required to satisfy a fifth grade research project
on France will be different than a similar
project for a tenth grader in their French class,

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which will be different than a college junior
looking to study abroad in Paris, which will
again be different for someone looking to book a
vacation in France to celebrate their twentieth
wedding anniversary. Each of these examples
reflects the motivations, needs, abilities, and
prior knowledge of the seeker, and a single
information literacy lesson at any given time in
the seeker’s life could not address all of these
things.
Before coming to my aha moment, I was
reflecting on my own information literacy
journey. I was, for the most part, a high-
achieving student until I reached my
undergraduate institution, where I became a
good-enough student who could not research
her way out of a metaphorical paper bag. I
developed an irrational fear of my college
library (Me! A librarian!), partly because I did
not understand how to use it. There were two
large desks in its lobby. Being unable to discern
on my own which one was the circulation desk
and never thinking to ask someone, I never
checked out a book. For research assignments, I
sometimes cited books I found in the library
catalog but had never actually touched. Even as
a graduate student, my information literacy
does not yet feel as if it is at peak performance.
At best, I still have trouble correctly using
citation styles and at worst, I toil through
fruitless searches in databases I don’t really
understand. And yet here I am, ready to
position myself as an expert on information
literacy as a professional.
I know I am not alone in this long struggle
towards information literacy. My experience

working at the library’s reference desk has
confirmed that of those students that make it
through the library’s doors, most of them view
the building as either a quiet place to study or
as a giant printing facility. This is not to
belittle those services, as they are a necessity to
so many. It is, however, disheartening that so
many are either unaware of the vast amount of
information they can attain through the library
or are unable to access this information,
whatever their reasons may be (Kolowich,
2011). Of those lucky few that find something
through the library, the majority does not know
what to do with it outside of inserting a portion
of it into a paper or presentation. Do they know
they cannot only read it, but question it, even
those revered scholarly journals? That they can
criticize it? Add to it with their own thoughts
and research? Even improve it? Until I was a
thirty year-old graduate student, I did not, so I
can only imagine what it must be like for
students younger than me.
On a more hopeful note, I truly believe that this
is where information literacy instructors have
the potential to save the day. Despite our
thoughts on where and how students are doing
their searching, we should be able to recognize
that our students, more often than not, can find
at least some part of the information they are
looking for. More importantly, however, we
have the opportunity to then step in to ask
them: Now that you have found this
information, what next? How will it become
relevant to you? How can you enhance what is
already there?

Think It Means
During my practicum, I created and taught a
two-day lesson for senior English Language
Arts students on managing their digital
footprints, a term that refers to their presence
online, as well as information about them found
online. For probably the first time in their
academic lives, they were tasked with
researching something in which they were
already the foremost expert: themselves. I
asked them to look critically at the images and
information that were retrieved from Google
searches of their names and to think about
what this information might be telling someone
that does not already know them, namely
college admissions departments and employers.
I wanted them to consider not just if the
information was good or bad, but if it was
accurate and if it included details that they
would want a stranger to know. If not, they
should identify what else they might want their
digital footprint to say.
When the students returned the next day, I was
surprised that many of them reported both that
their digital footprint represented them well
and that they did not find much or any
information about themselves online. They
seemed to equate a lack of negative posts,
comments, or inappropriate pictures as a
success, without realizing that no information
about them at all might some day be a mark
against them. If they are competing for the
same spot in a university or a job with someone
who has left a clear digital footprint filled with
information about experiences,
accomplishments, and passions, but their
digital footprint shows nothing, these students
will be at a disadvantage.

Our next step, as a class, was to go over the
steps that they can take in order to build better
control of their footprint and to add content to it
that said something about them. They were
encouraged to start blogs or YouTube channels,
to share and comment on articles, and to go
public with other activities that they might
already be doing, but this time with their
names, not usernames or pseudonyms, attached
to their work. I wanted them to know that now,
more than ever, is the time to begin to
contribute to a larger conversation. They
probably already feel that they have something
to say, but, more importantly, they should know
that someone with influence over their future
wants to hear them say it.
One of the major takeaways that I hope I left
them with was that their digital footprint can −
and should − evolve with them as they get older
and begin their careers. Much like information
literacy, the information that they would want
a stranger to know about them is going to
change. Their digital footprint should reflect
how they have grown and the ways that they
have built on their knowledge, skills, and
experiences over the years.
My hope for my future information literacy
instruction is that I can help students be
prepared for−and perhaps even feel a sense of
comfort in−their ever-changing information
literacy abilities. There is no way that I or they
can predict what their next information need
will be, but hopefully they can chalk each
search process up to an experience in which
they can expect to learn something new,
whether that new thing is information, a tool,

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or a technique. With any luck, my fellow
instructors can embrace this as well,
understanding that we can provide a
groundwork for and guidance with information
literacy today only. Tomorrow may bring
something new altogether, which, if you ask
me, is half the fun.
Alex Quay is a second-year MSI student at the
University of Michigan School of Information in
preparation for a career in school librarianship.
References
De, Krishna. "How To Manage Your Digital
Footprint And Online Reputation."
Krishna De's BizGrowth News. Retrieved December
17, 2014, from http://krishnade.com/digital-
footprint/ .
Jenkins, Henry. 2009. Confronting the Challenges of
Participatory Culture. M.I.T. Press:
Cambridge, MA.
Kolowich, Steve. 2011. “What Students Don’t
Know.” Inside Higher Ed. Retrieved from
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/0
8/22/erial_study_of_student_research_habits
_at_illinois_university_libraries_reveals_ala
rmingly_poor_information_literacy_and_skill
s .

Information literacy instruction for
beginners: adjusting to
specific user skills and needs
Jharina Pascual
My library instruction practicum involved work
within the Reference and Instruction unit of
one of the largest public research universities
in the United States, which provides guidance
for everything from research for
undergraduates to scholarly publishing for
faculty. In addition to class-based instructional
sessions, this library offers a variety of services
that involve direct instruction.
The opportunity to co-teach first year students
various methods of search and navigation of a
large library collection is, needless to say, a
privilege for any library student. However,
participating in the practicum concurrently
with a course in which we were repeatedly
tasked with questioning the efficacy of norms of
library information literacy instruction tended
to leave me less with a concrete set of principles
to present under the guise of “information
literacy” than about what the set of conditions
that a library instructor must consider or
prepare for in order to deliver that instruction.

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Librarians Must Consider Preexisting
User Preferences in Search
Within an academic library, for example,
common practices in instruction often
emphasize the library online website and
catalog. This approach assumes that all
students will choose online resources as a
default and that the most fundamental gap in
knowledge for undergraduates is the sheer
abundance of resources. Certainly, Alison
Head’s research on how freshmen are likely to
be overwhelmed by university resources
justifies the approach (Head 2013).
As with most research institutions in the
United States, however, there is a large
contingency of international students at my
university who bring different experiences and
expectations of libraries from their home
countries. I was tasked with developing an
online Library Research Guide that addressed
the specific questions and needs of
international students in using the library and
its resources. While the nature of the project
already assumes that international students
need targeted guidance in using library
resources, only in the administration of a
survey were my mentor and I able to
enumerate the most useful information needed
by new international students.
Despite my small sample size, the responses
tended to reflect the needs and questions
answered by the international student library
guides I consulted that were hosted by other

institutions1, which was concern for physical
spaces as well as physical (not electronic or
digital) resources. International students, in
this case, considered guidance about the
physical layout of the building or borrowing
print items to be as or slightly more important
than finding online resources. There was also a
viable reticence among students to seek help
from actual library staff and less familiarity
with using the library website and catalog.
While our resulting Library Research Guide
highlighted methods of seeking online
materials and contacting librarians directly, the
section of the website where students were
mostly likely to land featured links to maps,
instruction on using the most basic search
features of the OPAC, and borrowing and loan
policies.
Common practice in academic library
instruction also includes a checklist of
attributes that a student might extrapolate
from resources they find both on academic sites
and the free web: topic, the authority of the
writer, the date of publication, the author, etc.
Even with the inclusion of non-library websites,
this assumes that students will work with a
homogenous set of resources; with the free web,
however, instructors have trouble telling
students that just because a resource appears
on a non-library sanctioned website, it does not
mean that this resource is automatically
verboten in a scholarly project (Meola 2004).
1 See, for example,
http://researchguides.library.syr.edu/internationalstud
ents

Think It Means
In my co-teaching sessions, I tried to bring the
element of “real world” searching to the
traditional checklist by allowing students to
enter keywords via a commercial search engine
and analyze certain page results as a group.
This exercise, as my mentor, pointed out, made
a connection between what students were more
likely to do on their own and critical thinking
about information/resources in the academy; in
other words, it did not combat user preferences
but support them with some instructional
scaffolding.
Search Skills Go Beyond the Academy
I also hope a byproduct from the exercise of
guiding students through a free web search is
that students left with a more nuanced idea of
what kinds of characteristics make free web
resources suitable or not suitable, not just for
scholarship but for everyday or personal
information needs. The example links I picked
to examine, for instance, were all more or less
arguing for the same idea; by asking students
to focus the common arguments between
scholarly and non-scholarly websites rather
than specific attributes, I also hope that
students might use non-scholarly pieces to
leverage their understanding of more
intellectually rigorous materials.
This skill is critical not only for students but for
most people who have to deal with professional
and civic environments that are becoming
increasingly focused on web-based portals and
processes. The American Library Association’s
2013 Digital Literacy Task Force Report warns
that while the digital divide is still evident in
individual and community inequalities in terms

of access to computers and high-speed internet,
that librarians must not confuse having access
with having skills to evaluate online resources.
Over the last ten years, educators and
librarians in particular have produced many
guidelines for information literacy that can be
summarized as:
Skills to search for information in a
variety of formats
Knowledge of how this information is
produced
The ability to evaluate the credibility of
the information provided in these
formats
The ability to use this information
towards problem solving
The ability to contribute information in
way that is substantive, responsible, and
appropriate to the context
Awareness of one’s position among these
information sources, as a consumer,
participant, or source, particularly with
respect to issues of identity and privacy
The ability to use these skills in a
variety of information-centric contexts,
from the school to the workplace
Students can engage in web-based/digital
activities meant to address these outcomes.
Henry Jenkins’ work on transliteracy in
education, for example, provides concrete
examples of students engaging in projects that
amplify their critical thinking and productivity
skills in the digital and web-based applications
that they use on a regular basis, which

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transforms them into active participants in
technology (2009).
Librarians Must Be Aware Of
Limitations In Delivering Instruction
However, not all institutions have those
resource and certainly not all librarians and
educators have the baseline skills to deliver
instruction in that capacity. This gap in the
theory of information literacy instruction and
its material reality is well-evidenced by
UNESCO’s Media and Information Literacy
Curriculum for Teachers (2011), a document
that ironically has the explicit goal of guiding
teachers from different areas of the world in
information literacy instruction regardless of
the resources they have currently available.
One of the significant problems, often
highlighted by a member of the class who is an
international student from China, was that the
document presented an extremely Western-
(and even perhaps North American-) centric
view of information literacy (Zhu, personal
communication, 2014). The framework is meant
to encourage people to be social and/or political
actors, as well to engage in the production and
preservation of information. These kinds of
declarations are bold and optimistic, but it is
hard to view them without skepticism. It should
go without saying to UNESCO that people
around the world have varying degrees of
democratic participation. However, it should
also be emphasized that they also have varying
relationships to “cultural institutions” like
libraries and universities. In the case of the
mostly-Chinese international students I
surveyed, for example, librarians and “regular

people” are not seen as having a reciprocal
relationship; as my classmate from China also
pointed out, Chinese educators in general have
no concept of “information literacy”, at least as
it is defined by their counterparts in the West
and/or North America.
The UNESCO document also presents itself as
developing “a programme of study about media
and information literacy and through various
levels of engagement with media and
information channels.” While it is understood
that the document wants to leave its teaching
structure recommendations generalizable to a
variety of contexts, that high level of policy
discourse leaves much to be desired if you are a
teacher working with, perhaps, inconsistent
access to internet or even a limited number of
texts or other materials to use in class. In these
kinds of cases, what is “media” and how does
one present comparison between different forms
of it? How does one teach digital literacy with
inconsistent access to the digital? Can one
teach these courses entirely from smartphones?
Furthermore, these issues are not limited to the
developing areas of the world. Teaching
information literacy in the United States
continue to be difficult for libraries and schools
with more limited resources than others. For
example, how does one teach the evaluation of
websites to middle school students who still
have not reached middle-school reading levels?
Are there actual books out there for adults who
have low literacy but who do not want to read
books for children? How do we assist in
developing the skills of first generation college
students who lack to the cultural capital to take

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advantage of the abundance of resources at a
modern university library?
Online courses and other web-based tutorials
are thought to be a panacea to increasing
demands both on teachers’ and students time
and money. While the format still demands
high-speed Internet access, asynchronous
elements can provide flexibility to those who
have other life demands than being students
and the virtual/digital aspect means less spent
by educational institutions physical resources.
Unfortunately, there has been little to no study
of how well this method actually works in
helping students learn; I was able to find study
within the last few years comparing students’
learning in online and face-to-face/lecture
format found that foundational concepts were
better reinforced in-person, although learning
could be supplemented by structured, by
asynchronous activities in an online module
(Newell 2008). Unfortunately, there were no
studies that addressed how learners from
specific educational backgrounds might fare
with online coursework; we might want to
study, for example, how first generation college
students who lack previous exposure to
academic research fare with online-only
instruction.
Information Literacy is Contextual
Librarians and other educators have realized by
now that generalized studies and statistics that
assess instruction and learning are not only
limited, but also problematic. If we were
looking to have students reproduce tasks
successfully, for example, this can be done quite
easily. However, the “tasks” required for

students and the benchmarks for success can
vary greatly by the students, discipline, or
institution. In one study, researchers found
that students’ scientific literacy increased
overall when they asked to apply their
knowledge to criticizing articles about science
in mainstream news sources (Tsai et al 2013).
In another study, a researcher presented a
model for teaching information literacy to
students with disabilities (based on Eisenberg
and Berkowitz’s Big6) by creating online
learning modules for younger students (Curcic
2011).
These studies are arguably trying to mark the
same development – information literacy
among students. However, their varying
contexts, student subgroup, and structure
suggest that teaching information literacy in
practice and assessing its outcomes has to be
heavily contextualized, with librarians and
instructors taking into account the base skills
of their patrons, the general or discipline-based
skills that they want to impart, and of course,
they resources that they need in order to
deliver this instruction.
All of this suggests that the primary factor in
teaching, assessing, and making improvements
in students’ and patrons’ information seeking
practices is time. In terms of face-to-face
instruction, librarians and their students need
time to converse with each other, to engage in
hands-on practice, and to process information.
It takes time for students to internalize the
practices that they are learning. This time
needs to be afforded to assessing the
effectiveness of library instruction and other

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services, so that me might know how to improve
our practices. This time is also necessary for
understanding the specific needs and skills that
patrons bring into the library; this involves
devoting time to understanding their current
skills with the online databases, or observing
their preferred methods of searching, so that we
might know how and where to perform an
intervention.
Jharina Pascual is a second-year MSI student
at the University of Michigan School of
Information.
References
Abilock, Debbie. 2012. True – or not? Educational
Leadership, March, 70-74.
American Library Association. 2013. Digital Literacy,
Libraries, and Public Policy. Retrieved December
17, 2014, from http://www.districtdispatch.org/wp-
content/uploads/2013/01/2012_OITP_digilitreport_
1_22_13.pdf .
Curcic, Svjetlana. 2011. Addressing the needs of
students with learning disabilities during their
interaction with the web. Multicultural Education
and Technology, 5(2), 151-170.
doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/17504971111142673
Head, Alison. 2013. Learning the ropes: how freshmen
conduct course research once they enter college.
http://projectinfolit.org/images/pdfs/pil_2013_fresh
menstudy_fullreport.pdf .
Jenkins, Henry. 2009. Confronting the Challenges of
Participatory Culture. MIT.

Meola, Marc. 2004. Chucking the checklist: a
contextual approach to teaching. portal: Libraries
and the Academy, 4(3), 331-344.
Newell, Terrance S. 2008. Examining Information
Problem Solving, Knowledge, And Application Gains
Within Two Instructional Methods: Problem-Based
And Computer-Mediated Participatory Simulation.
School Library Media Research, 11. Retrieved
December 17, 2014, from
http://www.ala.org/aasl/sites/ala.org.aasl/files/content
/aaslpubsandjournals/slr/vol11/SLMR_ExaminingInf
ormation_V11.pdf .
Tsai, P., Chen, S., Chang, H., & Chang, W. (2013).
Effects of prompting critical reading of science news
on seventh graders' cognitive
achievement. International Journal of
Environmental and Science Education, 8(1), 85-107.
Retrieved from
http://search.proquest.com.proxy.lib.umich.edu/docvi
ew/1413414546?accountid=14667
UNESCO. 2011. Media and Information Literacy:
Curriculum for Teachers. Retrieved December 17,
2014, from http://www.unesco.org/new/
en/communication-and information/
resources/publications-and-communication-
materials/publications/full-list/media-and-
information-literacy-curriculum-for-teachers/

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Collaboration, compromise, and expertise:
Course instructors and librarians teaching
with historic materials
Cinda Nofziger
“Can I write my paper as a pop-up book?” an
engineering student asked during a class visit
to a special collections library at a major
Midwestern university. Another student wrote
that he or she “felt like Indiana Jones.” These
student responses are just a couple of the most
gratifying ones to the class session that
incorporated fairy tales, a glimpse at the
histories of the book and of children’s literature,
and an introduction to special collections
libraries. The class session demonstrated the
value of introducing students to historic
materials and allowing them to get their hands
on those materials. It also made me, as an
instructor, aware of the importance of engaged
and close collaboration between instructors or
professors, special librarians, and archivists
when designing and implementing classes that
teach with primary and historical materials.
As a course instructor and a soon to be
archivist, my perspective encompasses multiple
positions and what I write here is an attempt to
reflect my position in and between both of those
worlds.

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Recently, many archivists and special
librarians have been taking another look at
archival education, instruction and literacy for
undergraduates.2 Building on the work of
Elizabeth Yakel and Deborah Torres (2003),
these archivists call for a new approach to
archival education that recognizes the
importance of hands on experience with historic
materials as well as demystifying the spaces of
archives and special libraries. One of the most
significant challenges is to engage faculty.
While history faculty have long encouraged or
required students to work with primary
documents, professors of other disciplines have
not always been made aware of what archives
and special collections hold that might be
relevant for them. As archives make a turn to
focus more resources on instruction,
collaboration with faculty becomes crucial.
As I read about, observed, participated in, and
reflected on teaching with primary and historic
documents, I was struck by how much the
material itself necessitates collaboration among
librarians or archivists and instructors.
Archival and special collections material is
2 See, for example, Sammie Morris, Lawrence J. Mykytiuk
and Sharon A. Weiner, “Archival Literacy for History
Students: Identifying Faculty Expectations of Archival
Research Skills,” The American Archivist, 77.2 (2014):
394-424; Cory Nimer, and J. Gordon Daines, “Teaching
Undergraduates to Think Archivally,” Journal of Archival
Organization, 10.1 (2012): 4-44; and Magia G. Krause, “It
Makes History Alive for Them”: The Role of Archivists and
Special Collections Librarians in Instructing
Undergraduates. The Journal of Academic Librarianship
36.5 (2010): 401.

unique, rare, and specialized, and the needs of
a course that would use that type of material
are also unique. In order for students to achieve
a holistic understanding of those materials, it is
imperative that instructors, and librarians and
archivists work together to design meaningful,
multifaceted learning experiences. Each job
title brings a different perspective and area of
expertise. Faculty and instructors should be
aware that special librarians and archivists
could also provide specialized content
knowledge as well as more general information
and archival literacy expertise. At the same
time, librarians and archivists should recognize
that faculty may have great insights about how
to tailor general information and archival
literacy skills for their particular students, as
well as being able to offer context and
connections for the primary source materials.
Working closely with each other and engaging
each other in the creation of a class can help
faculty and special librarians or archivists
create outstanding classes and good experiences
for students.
I approached the staff of the university’s special
collections department late in the fall of 2014
about bringing my fairy tale’s discussion section
to visit some of their historic books of fairy
tales. This was the second semester I had been
a Graduate Student Instructor (GSI) for the
German Department’s Fairy Tales course, so I
felt confident about the material and was
looking for was to show my students something
new and different. As an aspiring archivist, I
also am always excited about getting my
students’ hands on primary documents when I

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can, to show them the many amazing things
that can be learned from historic materials.
Though I thought it would be fun to let my
students look at historic fairy tales, I also had a
larger purpose in taking my students to special
collections. I thought it would be a good way for
them to encounter some of the themes from our
class in a different format, though a different
lens. We had talked quite a bit in class about
how fairy tales had changed over time. A
favorite paper topic among the students is how
Disney versions of fairy tales differ from
Grimms’ versions. I wanted them be able to
make additional comparisons beyond those two
versions, and the fairy tale books in special
collections offer a multitude of different
interpretations both more gruesome than
Grimms’ and less. I wanted them to think about
the variety of ways the stories had been written
and rewritten.
Secondly, I wanted to give them some hands-on
experience with historic materials. Many of the
students in the class are engineering majors,
taking the course for an upper level humanities
credit. They likely have not, and would not, get
a chance to visit a special library as part of
their undergraduate education otherwise. A
visit was a great opportunity for all the
students. Specifically, I wanted all of the
students to think about what we could learn
about fairy tales by looking at the materiality of
the books — illustrations, construction, paper
quality, binding, text design and layout — that
we couldn’t learn just from reading the tales in
the unillustrated compilation we used for class,

The Collected Grimms’ Fairy Tales, translated
and with introduction by Jack Zipes.
Though I knew the course material and had a
good idea of what I wanted my students to
learn, I wasn’t familiar with the collection, nor
did I know the history of children’s literature in
relation to fairy tales. That aspect of fairy tale
history was beyond the scope of the course.
Further, while I have an inkling about the
history of the book and am familiar with
theories about handling rare books, I was
happy to turn to special collections librarians
who had more knowledge of those topics.
Indeed, I felt grateful to have multiple areas of
expertise represented on the team.
However, I experienced some initial dissonance
about who would be primarily responsible for
the class session. Was I simply turning my class
over to the special librarians, or were they
there to support my teaching? The class session
involved four librarians and myself—all of us
with our own perspectives and areas of
expertise. In our enthusiasm about creating
this class, we all wanted to make sure our
individual pieces, expertise, and voices were
well represented. For faculty, especially those
in the humanities, this may be even more of an
issue. Humanities professors are not trained to
be collaborative. The culture of academic
humanities indicates that an individual is
responsible for her own work, for her own
success, and for her own downfall. To be asked
to give up some power, to rely on other people
in the classroom, to be even a little bit less in
charge can be difficult and feel especially
threating. We worked through these bumps,

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but it is worth noting that collaboration can be
difficult. As much as librarians and archivists
claim to want to work on teams and to value
collaboration, it is hard work. It can feel
inefficient, rather than streamlined, and
threatening, rather than promising.
The university library’s Children’s Literature
Librarian and I designed and taught the class
together, with consultation and input from the
Assistant Director of Special Collections and
two graduate students who work as Library
Assistants in Special Collections. Together, we
planned activities for the class, but most
importantly chose the books the students would
examine. After some initial conversations in
person and via email, we sat together for
almost three hours in a cramped office in the
special collections department. Surrounded by
book carts piled carefully with books of fairy
tales from the 19th century to the present, we
discussed themes, and selected books.
We each wanted to create a class that would be
valuable for the students and would fit within
their larger course curriculum, but within that
larger goal, we each had our own smaller
professional goals, based on our own
perspectives and areas of expertise. The process
of choosing which books to use for the class
then involved negotiation and compromise
among those goals. For example, the Children’s
Librarian and I wanted the students to be able
to page through and play with pop-up books.
She wanted to give students insight into the
construction of the books, and I hoped it would
encourage students to think about the cultural
meaning and significance of turning a fairy tale

into a three-dimensional object. But the
Assistant Director of Special Collections and
the library assistants explained pop-up books
are extremely fragile and some in the collection
are quite rare. As a result, extensive handling
of those books was out of the question. Instead
we compromised, agreeing to allow students to
turn a single page of those books while the
books rested in cloth-covered cradles. Sitting
amongst the materials that we would use in the
class, we were able to work through some of the
friction that had been present in our earlier
conversations and allow our enthusiasm for the
class session we were designing to overcome our
individual concerns about professional stakes.
Though compromise was necessary, the
collaborative approach also reaped benefits.
When we taught the class, each of us addressed
different types of questions during a class-wide
discussion. The students benefited from our
separate but overlapping areas of expertise.
Indeed, they wrote positively about the
experience in their class assessments and three
of them used materials we had looked at as
primary documents for their final papers. This
experience showed me that necessity of close
collaboration between faculty, and librarians
and archivists. The uniqueness of the materials
themselves bring us this opportunity. With
engagement on both sides and awareness of our
different positions, we can create classes that
engage students and inspire them to think
creatively, critically, and in new ways about
what they are studying.
Cinda Nofziger has a doctorate in American
Studies and is a second-year MSI student at the

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University of Michigan School of Information.
She enjoys thinking archival access and user
needs, how historical materials are represented
and interpreted, and the future of analog
materials. She hopes to become an education
and outreach archivist. She enjoys reading
mysteries, biking, camping, and playing with
preschooler.
References
Yakel, Elizabeth, and Torres, Deborah. 2003. “AI:
Archival Intelligence and User Experience.” The
American Archivist 66: 51-78.

Where to go when doctors
don’t have an answer:
Information seeking for
patients with rare diseases
Mari Monosoff-Richards
Crash. The house shook. Again. That meant he
fell. Again. We didn’t know why, and neither
did the doctors. Again. The drugs weren’t
working. Again.
My fifteen year-old self thought I was the only
person who was going through this phase of
mystery, slightly oblivious to the fact that I
wasn’t the only person inconvenienced by this
thing. Disease? Infection? Anything would be
better than not knowing.
Fast forward ten years and my social media
feeds were filled with the ALS Ice Bucket
Challenge. It meant a lot to me, and it was hard
to decide if I found it offensive or miraculous. I
didn’t do it. I had friends who did it for the
attention and did not donate. Other friends
donated with no idea of how ALS has painted
my life. $115 million raised in six months.
When I hear that number my stomach drops.
When people I speak to have actually heard of

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ALS, tears come to my eyes. It was a dramatic
change to my quality of life.
People with rare diseases are used to the
isolation and inattention to their medical issue.
In the United States, the Rare Disease Act of
2002 defines a rare disease as “any disease or
condition that affects less than 200,000 people
in the United States.” A side effect of having a
rare disease is neglect from the pharmaceutical
industry, a lack of research, and a shortage of
knowledge in the health care industry. The
Orphan Drug Act of 1983 was written to
promote the development drugs that would
treat rare (also known as orphan) diseases that
are otherwise financially unsound investments.
Even so, there are many rare diseases that
have small pockets of expertise around the
country and no guarantee that it will be near
by. When a doctor isn’t the expert, who can be
trusted? Where can information be found?
The rise of the Internet has created many
communities, including those for people with
rare diseases. With rare diseases, sometimes
the bulk of reliable knowledge of treating the
disease comes from the patients themselves and
not researchers. Organizations like NORD
(National Organization for Rare Disorders) help
facilitate people finding relevant communities.
There are other similar websites that aim to
link people together. Many associations for a
particular disease also have community
sections. Patients in these groups come together
and create a body of knowledge that can be
used by doctors.

When looking for information on rare diseases,
it is important to look for authority markers –
signs that the website will provide legitimate
and trustworthy information. Just like there
are signs that a person is a doctor, a long white
coat with their name, professional clothing, a
stethoscope, there are signs that the
information on a website is legitimate. These
can be affiliation with a prestigious hospital or
a national association, but these markers can
also appear in a home grown group. It’s
important to look at the content critically. Here
are a few questions to ask:
Why not use academic literature?
There may be very little research being done
about the rare disease in question so there may
be very little published academic content. Not
many people study rare diseases, so there isn’t
much to say. Relevant academic literature may
also be early studies conducted with mice or
other animals, not humans. With small
populations of humans who have one rare
disease, it can be difficult to do a complete
study of people with that disease. Additionally,
access to some academic literature may not be
available publicly; it may be firewalled behind a
costly subscription database.
What does a patient community do?
A patient community can gather many people
with similar symptoms or diseases in a single
location. In online communities, patients and
caregivers have space to share their
experiences, pose and answer questions about
treatment or lifestyle changes, recommend
products or doctors, and provide reassurance
and emotional support.

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Who is the person presenting the
information?
What is their experience with the disease in
question? If they have been diagnosed with it, it
means that they have a personal story to share.
Things that are true for them might not be true
for everyone. They could be biased, meaning
that they have an opinion not entirely based on
fact. However, for people with Orphan diseases
instead of a collected body of research, a
collection of individual stories may help
patients gather ideas that can inform a
treatment plan.
Is it written by a celebrity?
Celebrities are great at making the news but
that does not make them de facto reliable
sources of information. However, their personal
stories can add to an understanding of how
someone is impacted personally or indirectly by
the disease.
Is there a religious orientation to the
content?
If so, check the religious beliefs against your
own and be aware that the treatment options
may be following religious doctrine that you
don’t follow.
Does the website end in .com or .org?
Anyone can purchase a .com or .org domain – a
physician’s office, a pharmaceutical company,
or a swindler. These URL endings do not
indicate the level of quality or reliability of a
site, so it is important to evaluate what the
site’s aims are. Similarly, an organization’s
claim of not-for-profit status does not guarantee
that an organization is providing valuable or

accurate information; nor does it indicate the
percentage of each donation that goes to
research (versus administrative overhead, for
example).
What about .edu or .gov?
Websites for educational organizations end in
.edu, and US governmental websites end in
.gov. These can have legitimate, helpful
information on them. Be aware that web pages
made by professors, staff, or students may be
hosted on campus websites yet reflect personal
(not research-driven) perspectives or
information about areas other than those they
study.
These are just a few questions that can help
determine if a health website has information
that can be trusted. A person with a rare
disease may not have many places to look for
information, but it is important to remember
that not all information should be trusted.
There is nothing better than a trusted doctor
and expert care. Sadly, not everyone has that
luxury.
A good understanding of what makes
information trustworthy can go a long way in
helping both doctors and patients find answers.
Reliable answers can be found in unexpected
places. It is always good to be critical and ask
questions when presented with new
information, whether it comes from a doctor or
the Internet. There might not be a cure, but
easing uncertainty can be a dramatic
improvement in quality of life. It did for me,
and I’m not the patient.

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Mari Monosoff-Richards is a second-year
student at the University of Michigan School of
Information. She hates going to the doctor, loves
doctor TV shows, and plans to be a medical
librarian. She enjoys explaining people that her
library doesn’t have books and she doesn’t spend
her days pleasure reading (if you know of that
job, please send it to her). In her free time she
likes to garden, dance, and read for fun.
References
Orphan Drug Act of 1983, Pub. L. 97-414, 21 U.S.C.
9 §§ 301
Rare Diseases Act of 2002, Pub. L. 107-280,
42 U.S.C. §§ 281
Leigh, Nigel, and Wijesekera, Lokesh. 2011.
“Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.” Orphanet.
Retrieved December 17, 2014,
from http://www.orpha.net/consor/cgi-
bin/OC_Exp.php?lng=EN&Expert=803 .
National Organization for Rare Disorders. 2014.
“For Patients and Families.” Retrieved
December 17, 2014,
from https://www.rarediseases.org/patients-and-
families .

I
Information literacy in the public library:
It’s not just about the computers
Emily Brock
Information Literacy in the Public Library: It’s
Not Just About the Computers
Emily Brock
In the (admittedly limited) research I have
done, it seems to me that when public
librarians write about “information literacy” in
their libraries, they are all too often talking
exclusively about computer training. I can
accept that there are probably a few good
reasons for this. It’s easiest to quantify
information literacy in this way. It’s easy to
say, “Here is a concrete example of how my
library provides information literacy to the
public!” And I get that. It’s also a perfect
example of how libraries are continually
striving to prove their worth. “Look, we’re more
than just books! We’re computers, too!”
But for what it’s worth, I think public libraries
are actually the unsung heroes of information
literacy. Every time a librarian leans over the
desk and says, “Let’s figure it out,” she or he is
practicing information literacy. This can mean

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using technology. Or not. It might mean using
books. Or not. Every time a librarian patiently
explains the same thing for the thousandth
time, information literacy is there.
What I learned in my research is that just
about everything a public librarian does (except
pointing out bathrooms) counts as information
literacy, and that the reason there isn’t much
written about information literacy is because
public librarians are too busy doing it to think
much about it. Public librarians are the sort of
people who think, “Why would I write an article
about how many times a day I teach people how
to download an eBook to their device? No one
wants to read that.” So because information
literacy in public libraries isn’t an occasional,
special event, public librarians can sort of
forget that what they do is information literacy.
For the purposes of the project outlined for this
information literacy class, I led a book club with
a local retirement community and separately
developed a tutorial for a recently launched
local newspaper database. Through some
careful consideration of my time spent on both
the book club and the tutorial, I have come to
the conclusion that the activities I’ve been
doing as information literacy also serve a
broader purpose of community building.
I’ve been working as a part-time reference
librarian at a small public library in a charming
town, and I chose to do my practicum activities
with this same library. The town (“city”) is
about 4,000 people, and the library also services
the surrounding rural areas for a total service
area of about 16,000 people. These people are a

mix of well-educated, upper-middle class white
people, and white farmers. The town has
attracted a lot of young families but also has a
very sizeable senior community with four senior
living centers within the very small city limits.
The property value in the area is pretty high,
and the library is an integral part of the
community, so the library is a very well-
respected and well-funded entity. It sits on
Main Street, right downtown, and has formed
many fruitful partnerships with local
businesses and community organizations.
The library hosts plenty of programs
throughout the year, ranging from various book
clubs with different demographics, to trivia
nights at the local brewery, to a monthly
genealogy instructional session, bi-monthly
computer help, small business consulting,
speakers on varying topics, a makerspace,
summer reading, and much, much more.
I led a book club with one of the local
retirement communities. This independent
living community is full of older people who are
still active but would prefer to live in a
community of their peers. From what I gather,
it’s very similar to a college dorm situation.
There are programs, a fairly open-door policy
where people knock on each other’s doors and
visit regularly, and multiple card playing clubs.
The residents like their living situation, and
the women in my book club are all heavy
readers.
Over two months, I led two separate book club
discussions. The format for these book club

Think It Means
sessions was very standard: we chose a book to
read and had a month to read it.Then we
gathered back together to discuss the book. I
came up with a list of 15-20 questions for each
meeting, and guided discussion as needed.
Our first book was The Little Giant of Aberdeen
County by Tiffany Baker. I should mention that
I had intentionally chosen books that I had not
read because I wanted to be able to expand my
reading repertoire as well. This book was pretty
well-reviewed by critics, and ostensibly
revolving around a young woman who was born
too large and then just kept growing. She grows
up to be the town outcast, especially when
compared to her beautiful sister. Everything
changes, though, when her sister abandons her
husband and young son, leaving our main
character to step in to her sister’s place. I
thought that it sounded like a charming story
that my ladies would enjoy. What I did not
realize was that a main theme of the book was
centered around death, dying, and whether
euthanasia is mercy or murder. For me this is
all fine and good, but my book club ladies were
a little suspicious that perhaps I was trying to
send them a message.
Our second book was The Marriage Plot by
Jeffrey Eugenides. This was not the book that
we had selected as a group, but that title did
not have enough large print copies available
when I needed to order them. The Marriage
Plot was recommended to me by a co-worker
who had used it with another of the senior book
clubs. Eugenides won the Pulitzer for a
previous book, Middlesex, which I knew a little
about and decided my group would find

distasteful, but from the reviews and outline of
the story, I thought that while The Marriage
Plot might not be anyone’s favorite, that it
would do fine. I was wrong. They hated it. In
fact, I’m pretty sure I hated it. They hated it so
much that they didn’t want to even talk about
it. What was fascinating, though, was that even
though they hated it so much, I think we had
the most productive conversation. In this
second discussion, I started us off using a
technique a colleague had told me about in
class, and I found it to be a good way to get the
conversation focused. The method is to pass out
note cards and have everyone write down a
thought about the book and a question. Then all
the cards are passed in to the middle and
redistributed, with everyone getting someone
else’s card. Then we went around in a circle and
read each card aloud and discussed each
question. In this way, we were able to move
from annoyance at the book and into a fruitful
discussion.
Book clubs are an important information
literacy method. They help people to make
connections with the world around them, and
they can teach people about things they had no
clue existed, or enlighten people as to the views
of others. I always made sure to ask what my
group had learned from each book.
There are a few challenges that I faced with my
book group, and the first that comes to mind is
whether I, as a 25 year-old, was a respected
professional or just a kid in my group’s view.
The women in my group were all at least forty
years older than I am and have lived through
an awful lot more than me. They did know that

Think It Means
their book club was a learning experience for
me, and that I was just trying to get my sea
legs. They never treated me like a kid, and they
were patient with my disappointing book picks.
I found that it was a fine line to walk for me
when I interacted with them. I was never sure
how to ask what their experience of a time was,
or how their experience of the world differed
from mine without being offensive.
The biggest thing I like to consider is “What is
the purpose of a book club?” Especially in the
context of being hosted by a library. A book club
is a very common activity hosted by libraries
across the country and the world. What do
librarians hope to accomplish by hosting these
book clubs? I really think that the answer is in
starting a conversation about shared
experiences and, by doing so, building
communities. The situations in the books are
sparks that ignite the sharing of our own
stories and thoughts. The book that everyone
hated? We had the most interesting and
intimate conversation surrounding that book.
One woman shared that the story was too close
to home for her because of the very vivid
portrait it paints of manic depression. She
shared a very personal and emotional story of
her son’s struggle with the same disorder,
including two suicide attempts. It was a serious
and uncomfortable conversation, and I think
that all of us were grateful to be let into her
circle of trust. This is what I mean when I say
that information literacy is about building
communities. For my women, sure, they knew
each other. But I like to think, at least, that by
participating in this book club, they got to know
each other in more meaningful ways, or that

they had conversations on topics that they
would never have thought to discuss before.
Is a book club with six people going to change
the world? Maybe not. But it can’t hurt, and
couldn’t we all use a little more understanding
in these turbulent times?
Many libraries, of course, do the One Book, One
Community style program, where the whole
community is offered the opportunity to read
the same book and come together in various
ways to share their experiences. I think now I
understand why these community reads can be
so valuable. I really believe that a public
library’s mission is to build and better the
community, and doing book clubs and
community reads and starting these
conversations which help neighbors to connect
and come together are very important. By
starting a conversation, a real, substantive
conversation, communities can bridge divides
which may exist, and share experiences from
different perspectives. The hope is that by
sharing these experiences and coming together,
there can be a beginning to understanding.
In conclusion, information literacy in public
libraries isn’t all about the computers. Yes,
computers are important and the skills that
people can learn at the library are great and, of
course, they do fall under the category of
information literacy. Still, public librarians do
themselves short shrift when talking about
information literacy. The everyday help that
public librarians provide, from showing
someone how to print from their email, to
helping someone find their next great read, to

Think It Means
researching breast cancer for someone can be
considered information literacy. And it should!
Public librarians are the humble champions of
lifelong learning. And who knows? That book
club might help to build a better community –
one in which people learn to see each other as
different in appearance or background, but still
fundamentally the same.
Emily Brock is a second-year master’s student at
the University of Michigan School of
Information. She is particularly interested in
how libraries serve their communities. Emily
has a penchant for loud glasses which has only
grown worse since becoming a librarian (not to
stereotype, but let’s be real). She loves to travel,
and if she could figure out how to do it, she’d
love to work internationally for a while. Emily
has been having a great deal of fun working at
her charming library in a charming town, and
really enjoys her work every day.

Information literacy in “Fluxx”
Erin Kinnee
Information literacy is a buzz phrase for
librarians and has been for the last forty years.
However, the definition of information literacy
is not always easy to pin down. Many of us
cannot pinpoint what it means even as we use
the words. SI 641 is designed to give us an
opportunity to see information literacy in action
while working with a real-world organization
and actual people—allowing us to experience
reality than dealing exclusively in abstracts.
Through this project, I have learned that there
are many valid permutations of types of
information literacy, each as valid as the next.
The key is finding what fits your own
organization, its mission, and its patrons. For
me, information literacy is the ability to use the
thing—technology, media, or otherwise—with
which you are reacting.
The library at which I interned is a single-
branch library in a town not far from Ann
Arbor. It is the sort of town where, according to
one librarian, the residents recognize the
librarian’s vehicles and speak to them on the
streets. Many young students will stop by the

Think It Means
library after school to study, read, use
computers, play games, and meet up with one
other. This gives the library the chance to do a
lot of teen programing when teens are already
present in the library, and they are able to get
quite a bit of feedback about these programs.
The program in which I participated — the one
that most clearly showed the concept of
“information literacy” was a new program for
the library. It was hosted on a Saturday, in
conjunction with International Games Day,
when people across the nation and the world
come together to play card and board games.
For this event, the library decided to group
participants together by age. The children’s
games were in the main library, and the teens
and adults were in a conference room that is
out of the main traffic flow of the area. I
partnered with another of the librarians to run
the teens and adult games. Partially as a
result of the conference room’s location, our
attendance was disappointingly low. When the
program began, we had two teens waiting for
the room to open, and a third joined them a bit
later. The girls picked a few familiar games
before following a suggestion from the librarian
for a new card game , Fluxx, that used a Wizard
of Oz theme.
Fluxx starts off with just three rules. Each
player gets three cards, and the player must
draw one card and use or discard one card on
each turn. The game quickly becomes much
more complicated. There are “goal cards” —
cards that immediately change the conditions
under which a player may win the game. Most
of the goals require specific “keeper” cards.

Specific combinations of “keeper” cards
correspond to the “goal” cards. There are also
“creeper” cards—these prevent a player from
winning the game even if they can meet the
conditions of the current goal card.
There’s more to Fluxx, though, like task cards,
which prompt each player to perform some
action like drawing an extra card from the pile.
There are cards that allow a player to get rid of
a creeper and cards that require all keepers and
creepers on the table be collected, shuffled, and
dealt out evenly.
Then there are the rule cards. As each of these
is played, the rules change. Each new rule
remains in effect unless another rule is played
that contradicts it—then the newest rule has
supremacy. These rules can pile up, making the
game confusing, and making it hard to keep
track of even things as simple as how many
cards can be in a player’s hand at any one time.
Despite all of this, Fluxx is the game that those
teens returned to, time and time again. In the
six-hour program, they must have played at
least a dozen Fluxx games, sometimes as a trio,
and some including Jamie and me. They played
competitively and cooperatively, all at once.
Each girl wanted to win, but she also helped
her friends, pointing out when another player
had a majority of keeper cards for a goal if the
other girl did not notice it for herself, for
example. There were times when cards were
played specifically to help another player
(generally one of the girls, not Jamie or myself).
We adults were the interlopers. They let us
play because the game is more fun with more

Think It Means
people as a result of being more unpredictable,
but we were the outsiders in the situation.
So how is this game an example of information
literacy? Well, for one, the girls were required
to read the cards—each one has a description of
the actions that the card preforms, a brief story
about the item that it features, or a story about
why those items are required for a specific goal.
Reading is an important facet of information
literacy. Beyond the reading, the girls were
required to implement the cards they read and
remember that things could change at any
moment. They had to keep track of an ever
growing number of rules— there were fifteen
rules on the table at one point — and use them
to play the game. The information literacy key,
to me, is that usage of the rules, even as they
changed and got more complex—or, in some
cases, disappeared completely with the playing
of a single card. There was no consistency in
this game.
That is the beauty of it, actually. The game is
not the same from moment to moment, and can
never be played in the same way twice. There
is no predicting what will happen next, and
there is no way to engineer the game in any one
person’s favor. It is ordered chaos in a lot of
ways. They were required to be flexible,
focused, and use strategy to decide what cards
should be played at what point in the game, at
least to whatever point a game like Fluxx can
be played strategically. They were required to
keep track of and use every card in their hands
as well as every card on the table in ways that
other card games do not allow players to do,

while the game itself was simultaneously
denying them any illusion of predictability.
From this project, I learned that information
literacy can truly be fun—it is not required to
be focused on databases or research.
Information literacy takes many forms and has
many parts. Games can encompass information
literacy. Kids can learn while they have fun—
and sometimes the game that those “in charge”
think will be the least liked really is the
favorite. Those girls played nearly all day, and
all three said that they would be asking for the
game when they got home – both the physical
version in one of at least a dozen themes – and
the digital version that they could download
onto their mobile devices.
Information literacy is a scary phrase for many
people, particularly when we realize that many
librarians, the very people that espouse the
idea, struggle to define it. However, it seems to
me that there are as many entry points into
information literacy as there are libraries and
patron bases. The librarian’s job is to develop
the type that works for her population, and
work within the framework granted by that
understanding. Information literacy does not
need to be boring or scary, and it need not be
simply database instruction as some would
have us believe. It can be found in the most
surprising places—including a card game.
Erin Kinnee is a second-year MSI student at the
University of Michigan School of Information.

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What the difference between an annual
report and a 10-K has to do with information
literacy: Evaluation in context
Sara F. Hess
The evaluation component of information
literacy is not simple. Whether or not we are
aware of it, no information is produced or used
without being influenced in some way by the
context in which that production or use occurs.
When we teach others how to evaluate
information or look for information ourselves,
that context is something that needs
consideration.
I have often been a bit disconcerted by the way
that information evaluation, as a part of
information literacy, is approached. I’ve seen it
treated as something that can be tackled using
some type of discreet formula or checklist3 that
will always work regardless of any contextual
elements. Approaching evaluation in that way
is tempting as it circumvents the messiness
that information’s context can involve, but I
3 A review of examples can be found in Meola
(2004).

Think It Means
think that an awareness of that messiness is
necessary.
During the fall 2014 semester, I was part of a
team of librarians working with a first-year
Bachelor of Business Administration class at a
top business school in southeast Michigan. The
business school’s library primarily serves the
school’s 3,300 students and 110 faculty
members as well as the school’s staff and
provides certain resources and services to the
school’s alumni, University affiliates, and
community members.
I worked with a class titled Businesses and
Leaders: the Positive Differences, which is a
required course for all 500 first-year
undergraduate students in business
administration (BBA). (As the BBA program
doesn’t start until a student’s second year at
the university, they have sophomore standing).
Each of the fourteen discussion sections in the
class was assigned a librarian; as an intern, I
partnered with my mentor to work with one of
her sections. The course is a relatively new
part of the BBA curriculum; prior to this year,
it had gone through a few pilot semesters on a
much smaller scale. This was the first time
that the course was attempted with a full first-
year class. My mentor and a few of the other
librarians were involved in creating the case
study assignment that we were specifically
asked to work on with the students in our
sections.
Each section had six or so teams of six students.
These teams were asked to select two
companies in the same industry that had

programs or initiatives related to a specific
social issue and to study that social issue, how
the industries the companies were interacted
with that issue, the companies themselves, and
the programs the companies had created or
were taking part in. The social issues teams
chose to focus on ranged from education to
employee well being to the environment. Some
sections selected a theme all teams in that
section would focus on; this was the case in my
section, in which all teams chose companies
with some sort of program focused on urban
revitalization. Among other goals, the
assignment was meant to teach a broad range
of business research skills and resources.
The students had about five weeks to work on
the assignment from the time they were
supposed to have selected an industry, a social
issue, and the companies they would focus on.
Students in our section were openly invited to
contact us via email or in person as well as
participating in the course’s open office hours
and the library’s normal reference service.
Additionally, my mentor and I were given about
an hour’s worth of class time during which to
provide instruction about a week after the
students had made their initial selections.
The goal of the instruction session was
primarily to get students comfortable with
retrieving certain documents — the company’s
annual reports and SEC filings, industry
reports, and social impact reports — from three
specific databases that would be widely used
not only for this project, but also throughout
the students’ undergraduate careers.

Think It Means
Our priority in the session was to provide
students with basic yet critical information they
would need to complete the assignment.
Because our involvement in the class was long-
term, there would be time later in the semester
to help students comb through articles to learn
how the company’s initiatives had played out in
the communities in which they were
implemented, the success of those initiatives,
the impact on not only the company’s
shareholders (those who are financially
invested in the company) but its stakeholders
(everyone with any investment in the success of
not only the company’s urban revitalization
initiatives but the social responsibility of the
company as a whole).
But during this rather basic instruction session,
my mentor said something that, for me, made
the the on-the-ground reality of how we
evaluate resources click into place. She was
talking about the difference between a
company’s annual reports and its 10-Ks (a
document filed by the Securities and Exchange
Commission). An annual report is a document
that is created by a company to share with its
investors how it is doing, while a 10-K is one of
many financial documents publicly traded
companies are required to file annually with
the federal government. Annual reports tend to
be glossy, colorful, and optimistic. If a company
wants to justify a social initiative or program it
created to its shareholders, it will generally
talk it up — focus on the most positive aspects
of it and how much good it is doing for the
program’s stakeholder — in its annual reports.
10-Ks can certainly still have bias and spin, but
as it is a document required by the federal

government, it is more standardized across
companies. It contains more detail about the
company’s operations in the preceding year. In
general, it is more comprehensive.
The difference between the two types of
documents comes down to audience and
purpose. Companies produce them for different
reasons and have different motivations for the
inclusion, exclusion, and presentation of
information based upon why the document is
being produced and who it is being produced
for. This isn’t a phenomenon that is limited to
annual corporation information, though.
Everything our students read during their
esearch for this assignment was produced for a
reason and for a specific audience. Trying to
figure out what the audience and purpose of
each bit of information they uncovered was key
to determining its relevance to and meaning
within the context of the assignment they were
completing. The context of not only the
information’s creation but that of their own use
of it was key to evaluating whether and how it
should be used.
After seeing how my mentor framed evaluation
and adopting her approach as I worked with
students throughout the project, I realize that
audience and purpose are key strategies in
helping students develop evaluative skills.
Others have made similar arguments in the
past; Meola (2004) urged a contextual approach
to website evaluation that relied on comparing
information on the free web against other free
web and fee-based library resources and
corroborating the information presented in each
source with what was presented in the others.

Think It Means
Meola touches on the audience and purpose
portion of the puzzle when he states, “If
corroboration can come from different sources
that have different motivations…this increases
the probability that the information is accurate”
(342). Researchers can reach conclusions about
motivation when they have determined a
source’s intended audience and purpose.
What is most beautiful about this piece of the
evaluation puzzle is the applicability across
genres, types of information needs, and stages
in life. This isn’t something that only works in
the context of annual reports and SEC filings.
Thinking about information in this way has
implications for how we consume information in
school, at work, and throughout our lives. That
is the real power of information literacy.
Sara F. Hess is a second-year Master of Science
in Information student specializing in library
and information science at the University of
Michigan School of Information. She has
worked as a reference assistant at the Kresge
Business Administration Library since 2013
and as a user information services assistant at
the University of Michigan Libraries since 2014
and hopes to continue working in academic
libraries in the future.
Reference
Meola, Marc. 2004. “Chucking the Checklist: A
Contextual Approach to Teaching
Undergraduates Web-Site Evaluation.”
portal: Libraries and the Academy 4(3), 331-
348.

The long tail of information literacy, or
when do we stop teaching Excel?
Kirsten Hansen
Information literacy is a mainstay of activities
in libraries of all types. However, information
literacy in public libraries, as opposed to
information literacy in higher education or K-
12, often looks a lot like what public libraries
have already been doing for a long time –
teaching people how to use information
resources at the library to make their lives
work better. As such, a key component of
information literacy in public libraries is
offering library patrons a variety of computer
and technology classes to assist them in
navigating our increasingly digital world. These
days, technology classes or events may include
coding on Raspberry Pi minicomputers or
Arduino microcontrollers, gaming on Mario
Brothers or Minecraft, resume writing (which
may tend more towards traditional information
literacy) and the like. Traditionally, many
libraries also offer classes in software
applications such as Microsoft Excel and Word.
However, as a working knowledge of these
products becomes more common and more
patrons know how to use these products

Think It Means
already, fewer come to the library for basic
computer classes. Some patrons, though, still
need these classes and in a world where basic
computer literacy, including common computer
software like Microsoft Excel, is increasingly
required for jobs, they are a valuable service
that the library can provide for those few
patrons. The question becomes, what is the
smallest class size that you should still be
teaching to? If there are few patrons that need
a service, should you still provide it? How many
resources should you put into it? This is the
issue that I confronted while interning at a
public library this semester.
I interned at a public library in a charter
township in southeastern Michigan. The single
branch library currently serves over 90,000
residents spread over 36 square miles. The
library has over 85,000 cardholders and in fact
has the highest circulation rate of a single
branch library in Michigan. The original library
for the township began in 1980, with the
current building from 1988, with more recent
upgrades including a redesign of the reference
and circulation area a few years ago. The
community itself has a lot of young families,
and is solidly middle class. The library
circulates a wide variety of content and offers a
number of subscription services to online
content, in addition to offering quite a lot of
programming for patrons of all ages. In essence,
this is a thriving, mid-sized library that serves
its community well, and which is in turn well-
supported by its community.
During my time at the library, I taught two
classes on the very basics of Microsoft Excel.

The first class I co-taught with a librarian, and
in the second class I was the primary
instructor, with a librarian there for support.
The classes oriented patrons to the layout of
Excel and guided them through the setup of a
basic budget; the class itself is designed for
students who have a basic knowledge of
computers (e.g., typing or using a mouse) but
who have never used this software before.
During the class, each student had his or her
own computer in the library’s computer lab and
followed along with the instructor on the
projector at the front of the room. Each student
also received a handout of PowerPoint slides
about Excel which they could follow along with
before and after class, in addition to the screen
at the front of the room. I had four students in
the first class, and seven in the second class.
For such an active library, this is a low turnout,
though my mentor at the library told me that
this was on par with the turnout for other basic
technology classes and that in fact the library
had seen decreasing numbers of attendees in
what used to be very popular basic technology
classes in the past. One could wonder whether
or not it is worth using librarians’ time and
library resources for so few students (not to
mention closing the library’s computer lab to
other patrons for the duration of the lesson).
However, the students who did show up were
very appreciative and for them, learning Excel
appeared to be quite important.
In order to probe this issue further, however, I
was missing a few key components of a truly
effective lesson. For example, I did not ask
students why they wanted to learn Excel; some

Pushback: Information literacy does not mean what you think it means

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