Book expands Information Literacy across disciplines

Ilana Stonebraker, head of the Business/SPEA Library, and G Arave, research and instruction librarian at the Business/SPEA Library, contributed to a chapter focused on applying the Framework in Business Information Literacy. Head of the Education Library Christina Jones worked on a chapter about educating educators, and Scholars’ Commons Librarian Alyssa Denneler worked on a chapter focused on educating health sciences students.

Further, editor Scott Libson formerly served as the librarian for History, Jewish Studies, and Religious Studies at Indiana University Libraries. Scott now serves as Special Collections Librarian at the Yale Divinity Library.

The authors worked to explain the unique applications of the Framework across different specializations. For the education chapter, Jones explained how students assume three distinct roles as undergraduate students, future teachers educating students, and future teachers doing their own evidence-based research for professional development.

“Academic librarians are positioned to demonstrate effective instruction methods with which to build Information Literacy skills that are transferable to a secondary or even primary education context,” Jones explained. “Giving future educators the tools they need to help build Information Literacy skills in students will not only help them succeed in higher education but help them navigate an ever more complex information landscape.”

The work on the chapters was intensive and collaborative; for the chapter focused on applications in business, authors reviewed over 15 years of published work by business librarians to identify applications of the Framework and investigate other standards that they referenced.

“We wanted to bring together the most influential voices in this space,” Stonebraker said. "That’s why there are so many authors—it was a collaborative effort to take a holistic, evidence-based look at what’s already been done and what’s possible next.”

Work on the book provided a unique experience for Denneler as somebody from a generalist background working with subject specialists. “It was really nice to work with health sciences specialists,” Denneler said. “Our goal was to write for an audience of new librarians, or perhaps librarians changing disciplinary areas or working in generalist areas.”