College and Research Libraries Guest Editorial Wor~ing with Our Teaching Faculty In 1935, E. W. McDiarmid chronicled the "information explosion" of that time, not- ing that in the United States alone, some 8,000 new books would be published an- nually. McDiarmid called for both edu- cators and librarians to be concerned "that students shall attain by experience an ability to use intelligently the stores of books that are almost everywhere made available for public use." 1 Over fifty years later in 1989, the American Library Association Presiden- tial Committee on Information Literacy issued its Final Report, which chronicled the information explosion of our day and issued a similar admonition. The Com- mittee wrote: Ultimately, information literate people are those who have learned how to learn. They know how to learn because they know how knowledge is organized, how to find information, and how to use in- formation in such a way that others can learn from them. They are people prepared for lifelong learn- ing, because they can always find the information needed for any task or decision at hand.2 There are probably few academic li- brarians who would disagree with this statement. Indeed, most would consider information literacy to be one of the most important hallmarks of an educated per- son, and its transmission to be one of the most valued products of a student's in- dependent use of the library. But if our professional literature is any indication, the fact is that academic libraries touch too few lives. Apparently, the reason for this does not lie in anything that libraries are themselves doing, but rather in what teaching fac- ulty are neglecting to do: they are not requiring their stu- dents to independently find, use, and evaluate information as an integral (and graded) component of the courses they teach. In 1962, H. L. Sutton authored an opin- ion piece in Saturday Review entitled "Is the Library the Heart of the College?" Sutton was reacting to a previously pub- lished article which discussed college stu- dents' reading habits, but only mentioned in passing the role of the college library. He noted that he was "professionally of- fended and personally miffed" but not surprised: Ignoring the library as a stimulat- ing means of teaching is not unchar- acteristic of some college teachers and administrators. They piously mention the library as 'the heart of the college,' but by inaction in course planning and teaching they demonstrate that the library is an appendage-and not too important an appendage at that.3 Sutton was critical of academic librarians who were either "reluctant to 'invade' the province of the teacher [or who had] given up." 4 Sutton's piece was continuing a thread of professional discourse and research begun in the 1930s by librarians and scholars such as E. W. McDiarmid and A. C. Eurich, and continued thereafter by Harvie Branscomb, Larry Hardesty, Ken- neth Allen, and John Lubans, to name but a few. One of the most notable of the re- searchers into this area of inquiry, Patri- 377 378 College & Research Libraries cia Knapp, provided a useful summary of this research in her book College Teach- ing and the College Library when she wrote: We do know, from one investigation after another, that most students use the library very little, that some stu- dents apparently manage to do ad- equate college work without using it at all. Studies have shown, more- over, that the few who use the li- brary a good deal are not necessar- ily the brightest nor the most suc- cessful students on the campus. The obvious implication of all of these studies is that the library's contri- bution to the educational program has been overstated. Use of the li- brary is not an essential element, perhaps not even an important ele- ment, in the education of the college student.5 Although published in 1959, there is little in the way of research since the pub- lication of Knapp's book to contradict these findings. Study after study from the 1960s onward has indicated that there is no reliable correlation between library use and academic achievement; that a rela- tively small proportion of library users usually account for a disproportionately high amount of a library's circulation; and that student library use is most often driven by faculty demand. It is this latter finding that really controls the first two, for teaching faculty really do not hold the expectation about student library use that librarians do. This is despite the fact that most of these faculty would probably sup- port the values which are intrinsic to "in- formation literacy." If such be the case, what can academic librarians do? Certainly an ongoing com- mitment to instruction is part of the an- swer. But even more valuable would be finding ways to persuade teaching fac- ulty to increase the library's involvement in their curriculum development and in- structional methods . There have been September 1995 some experiments along these lines. Pa- tricia Knapp recounted her own experi- ence by commenting that such involve- ment "has great potential but that it can achieve significant results only at consid- erable cost. It requires more staff and bet- ter staff, librarians who have real under- standing of the educational process and boundless perseverance and commit- ment."6 Part of what is needed is additional research and study on the behavior of teaching faculty in the various disciplines and on why they have adopted the par- ticular course objectives and teaching methods they have, as well as on what librarians can do to influence these fac- ulty to incorporate library research as a valued element of their classes. What are their expe<;tations of how their students will make use of information resources, both on-site and remotely? How do they expect some of the new technologies such as the increasing availability of full text to affect their teaching styles? Do they even think about their students using in- formation resources at all, and if not, why not? How do librarians forge effective partnerships in the design of curriculum, course outcomes, and teaching strategies that value information literacy? Of course, these are educational questions, and not generally considered to be part of the re- search agenda of librarians. But the stu- dents we serve might benefit if we were to become more professionally involved with these broader educational issues. This may seem problematic to the aca- demic librarian already hard pressed to provide even minimal services to an ex- isting (if proportionally small) clientele. After all, there are many other compel- ling issues vying for our attention such as dwindling budgets, skyrocketing seri- als prices, the challenge of developing virtual libraries while maintaining the physical ones, the unabated and frenetic pace of technological change, and increas- ing demands for accountability. But we should not let such issues allow us to take our eyes off the prize. And the prize is an enriched educational experience for all postsecondary students; an experience that truly leads to "information literacy." In a recent article in Change magazine, Kenneth Green and Steven Gilbert speak to the importance and timeliness of this issue: Information access, or information literacy (to use the ALA term) will be so vital for the growing cadre of knowledge workers and profession- als in the coming century; conse- quently, the challenges information technology poses cut across all aca- demic disciplines and across all oc- cupational and professional fields. Guest Editorial 379 It is an issue higher education insti- tutions across the United States can- not ignore-but one that many fac- ulty have no idea how to address and for which few teaching materi- als have been designed. It is an area where communication, cooperation, and collaboration among faculty, faculty support staff, and librarians will be essentiaF Broader involvement in educational and pedagogical issues has existed as a challenge for academic librarians throughout most of this century. Today it resonates as both a challenge and an op- portunity that we cannot afford to ignore. ROBERT K. BAKER Notes 1. E. W. McDiarmid Jr., "Conditions Affecting Use of the College Library," Library Quarterly 5, no. 1 (1935): 59. 2. American Library Association Presidential Cqmmittee on Information Literacy, Final Re- port (Chicago: ALA, 1989), 1. 3. H. L. Sutton, "Is the Library the Heart of the College?" Saturday Review (Apr. 21, 1962): 62. 4. Ibid., 63. 5. Patricia B. Knapp, College Teaching and the College Library (Chicago: ALA, 1959), 1. 6. Patricia B. Knapp, "The Reading of College Students," Library Quarterly 38 (1968): 302. 7. Kenneth C. Green and Steven W. Gilbert, "Great Expectations: Content, Communications, Productivi~ and the Role of Information Technology in Higher Education," Change 27, no. 2 (Mar./ Apr. 1995): 14. IN FORTHCOMING ISSUES OF COLLEGE & RESEARCH LIBRARIES Who Cites Librarians? A Citation Analysis Study of Library Science Terry Meyer and John Spencer Collection Development Strategies for the University Center Library Laura Rein, Maureen Connors, John Walsh, and Charlene Hurt The Effect of CD-ROM Instruction and Assistance on Search Operator Use TrudiE. Jacobson and Janice G. Newkirk ABLE. The reliable and popular Glockenspiel of the Neues Rathaus (New Town Hall) in Munich, Germany, delivers timely entertainment twice every day. In subscription management, reliability counts. That's why EBSCO maintains the most current, accurate pricing and publisher information available ·to place your orders right the first time and to minimize addi- tional billings. Our per-issue fulfillment rate is unsurpassed. 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