Librarian in Residence – Goethe-Institut New York

The site and the architecture of Maritime College are downright impressive. The library is located directly on Long Island Sound In a former 19th-century fort. The library, which formerly served as the college’s dining hall, brings to mind Harry Potter’s Hogwarts. In the entryway one can admire the archives, which address not only marine history in general, but the college’s history in particular. The latter has also been preserved by means of an oral history project involving audio recordings of alumnae, which the library has conducting for three years now.

Shafeek Fazal, Assistant Director, Head of Reference and Access Services, introduced us to the library’s stringent program on teaching information literacy. In the first week of study, all first-semester students attend an orientation session in the library. In the first year of study all students attend a session within their general introductory courses (English, Economics, etc.) that provides extensive information on the library’s collections and databases. In the second through fourth years of study the library works closely with the various departments to integrate into their seminars instruction on the library that is crafted to students’ needs. So it can happen that a student encounters the library in his or her second, third, and fourth years during the study of completely different subjects, becoming familiar with the relevant collections and acquiring the appropriate skills. In addition to this “real-life instruction” the library takes part in the distance learning courses within the college’s virtual learning environment, offering research guides and tutorials on its website. In addition, all students may take advantage of the counseling on research provided by the college’s librarians. These are conducted by the library’s various subject specialists – in order to work in the library one must either have acquired nautical knowledge or a second Master’s in a subject other than Library Science. All librarians are members of the academic faculty.

The library also makes great efforts in the area of performance measurement and analysis. As the librarians are part of the faculty, they also are subject to accreditation standards. Accordingly, the library must demonstrate that its courses deliver a verifiable advancement in knowledge. In addition to the customary collection of statistical data, the library, within the framework of its course offerings, administers to roughly one-fourth of the student body a pre-test as well as a post-test. The tests are evaluated by the library and cover research using the online catalogue, databases, and the Internet as well as the physical collections. Thus can be measured what the students knew before their instruction and in which areas they improved during the course of their studies. The library, of course, uses the test results in improving and adapting their own course offerings.

At the end of our visit we’re allowed to visit the highlight of the library – the ship! Every summer the college’s ship, TS Empire State VI, makes a 90-day voyage across the ocean so that students can meet the necessary “sea time” requirement and experience living on the high seas. As part of the educational process, and also serving as entertainment on board, there is, of course, a library that two librarians supervise for 45 days each. Librarians Kimmy Szeto and Elizabeth M. Berilla enlighten us on their life on the ocean and show us around the ship – a unique experience! How many among you can claim that seasickness, a game of Jeopardy on board, and temporary status as an officer are part of your life as a librarian.

At the Rutgers University Libraries in Newark, Roberta Tipton, one of the three Business Librarians, informs us about an interesting project on standards for information literacy. A task force, which includes librarians of the New Jersey Library Association College and University Section as well as of the Association of College & Research Libraries New Jersey Chapter , has more precisely defined for practice the well-known Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education of the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL). This became the “New Jersey Progression Standards for Information Literacy“, the goal of which is to form the basis for the conceptual framework of information literacy, supporting the collective understanding between faculty and library of the educational goals which students may expect. The Progression Standards for Information Literacy explain in detail which skills students should have acquired by the end of their first and second years in college. This “translation aid” serves, on the one hand, to communicate with faculty, and on the other as a way to continually test one’s own instructional courses for their effectiveness and usefulness.

The first standard of the ACRL Standards (“identifies and addresses information need“) is a skill which, according to the Progression Standards for Information Literacy, students should be able to utilize after the first year of study to:

a) identify research topics or information need
b) draft research question(s) relevant to thesis or information need using unambiguous language
c) use general information sources to identify relevant concepts/vocabulary and inform basic understanding of the research topic or information need.”

At the end of the second year of study, students should be able to:
a) use subject or discipline-specific information sources to better inform an understanding of the research topic or information need and to determine the extent of available information sources before proceeding
b) establish realistic timeline to accomplish research

What I particularly liked about these stages of study is the fact that information literacy is a process – something one acquires gradually during one’s studies. To comprehend that information literacy is an activity that needs to be continually carried out and acquired is, of course, nothing new – but projects such as the Progression Standards for Information Literacy help enormously when applying this to one’s own courses. It is of help, precisely in the planning of courses, in avoiding the tendency to include EVERYTHING. Rather, one should concentrate on ONE sub-goal of ONE standard – and clearly communicate to partners what courses focus on in the learning process and what they do not.

In addition to the Progression Standards for Information Literacy, the task force also provides models for exam standards that demonstrate how the achievement of learning goals can be controlled. One such standard is called “Opposing Viewpoints”, the primary goal of which is the development of a research topic and localization of relevant resources. It makes sense to me that the exam standards increasingly go beyond pure research, extending into the general field of the acquisition of research methods. I have observed something similar in many US libraries – the localization of work with information resources as an essential part of the research process and of research methods is stressed much more strongly in the US than in Germany. At first glance this seems merely a detail, but a second glance makes fundamentally clear to students the role of libraries in their studies. The cry, “We’re here to save your time – so ask us”, uttered during a class in Newark by Ka-Neng Au, also a Business Librarian at Rutgers University Libraries, sounds quite different in this context – like an offer one dare not refuse in terms of successfully concluding one’s studies…