ACRL Institute for Information Literacy Annual Report, 2000-2001

Immersion Program

• Immersion '00, the second Institute for Information Literacy Immersion Program, took place August 4-9, 2000 at the University of Seattle. All 90 available slots were filled. The faculty included Deb Gilchrist (lead faculty); Anne Zald; Karen Williams; Joan Kaplowitz; Susan Barnes-Whyte.
• ACRL's third regional Immersion program was held June 3-8, 2001 in Wisconsin. Craig Gibson was lead faculty with Anne Zald, Beth Woodard, Deb Gilchrist, and Randy Hensley.
• Immersion '01 is slated to return to Plattsburgh State University of New York in August 2-8, 2001. 230 applications were received for 90 available slots; 144 for Track 1 and 76 for Track II. Mary Jane Petrowski acted as lead faculty member along with Deb Gilchrist
• LIRT Executive Board approved a $500 scholarship for a LIRT member to attend Immersion '01.

Immersion Faculty

• Deb Gilchrist accepted the position of Dean of Immersion Faculty.
• Dane Ward was appointed as the newest member of the Immersion Faculty; he will observe the Immersion ’01 program in Plattsburgh.
• The ACRL Board approved funding for an Immersion Faculty Development Retreat that will enable the Immersion faculty to continue developing and refining the Immersion curriculum.

Best Practices Project

The Best Practices in Information Literacy Programming is one of the three prongs of the Institutes’ activities. The Project is currently planned as a thirty-six month project, from January 2000 through Midwinter Conference in 2003. The goals of the project are as follows:

• Develop criteria for assessing information literacy programs.
• Identify model programs that exemplify significant achievement of the criteria.
• Distribute information on the criteria and model programs that exemplify successful implementation of the criteria.

January 2000 – December 2000
Work on the project actually began before January 2000 although it was at ALA Midwinter that the Project Team first met. Prior to Midwinter the work was organizational in nature: getting project funded, making appointments to the Project Team (a core management group of eight people) and the Advisory Panel (a group of seventeen knowledgeable contributors to the work of the project). At the Midwinter meeting we started a Delphi process to develop the criteria for assessing information literacy programs. Through six iterations the group developed a list of criteria, circulated them for comment, and revised the criteria based on comment. Today the criteria, known as the “Characteristics of Programs of Information Literacy that Illustrate Best Practices,” are posted on the web Working Edition dated March 2001.

January 2001 – December 2001
Towards the end of the year 2000 the Project Team began to plan for an invitational conference to be held in Summer 2002, Atlanta. The conference is designed to bring together faculty, librarian, information technologist and academic administrator teams from eight to ten selected institutions. The purpose is to exchange assessments of programs using the Characteristics and to assess the efficacy of the Characteristics as an assessment tool. In September 2001 the conference was announced in C&RL News, on the ACRL Website, the Teaching, Learning and Technology website (TLT Group), and on twenty-one higher education and library listservs. Thirty applications to participate in the conference have been received and the Project Team will be making selections at Midwinter.

January 2002- Midwinter 2003
The Best Practices Conference will be held June 11-13, 2002 in Atlanta. At this conference eight to ten institutions, along with the Best Practices Project Team and Advisory Panel will review their respective programs and examine the Characteristics of Best Practices programming. Outcomes of the conference will include a revised statement of the Characteristics of Best Practice in Information Literacy Programming, program descriptions from the selected schools and other documents which the conference participants deem worthwhile. The final review of those documents will occur at ALA Midwinter 2003 and the Best Practices Project Team will make recommendations to the Institute Executive Committee, the Information Literacy Advisory Committee and the ACRL Board. These will fulfill the final goal of the project.

I would be remiss if I did not express my appreciate the ACRL Board and staff for their support of this project. Your thoughtful comments about and keen interest in the project is much appreciated. I intend the outcomes of this project to justify your support over the past two years. Thanks.

Further information

For more information about the project the following web sources are available:

• “Best Practices and Assessment of Information Literacy Programs;” the complete project description with timetable and specific objectives.
• “Information Literacy Best Practices;” the complete record of the discussions threads that were part of the Delphi process. Also includes discussion of the definition of information literacy which the Project eventually adopted.
• “Characteristics of Programs of Information Literacy that Illustrate Best Practices.” Working Edition, March 2001.
• Best Practices Home page; leads to membership directory of the Project Team and Advisory Panel, and application for invitational conference

Community Partnerships Initiative

This arm of the Institute was "adopted" by ALA President Nancy Kranich as one of her initiatives for 2000 - 2001. Her goal was to increase awareness of community partnerships in general and the committee focussed on her general initiative with the Institute vision of information literacy partnerships within the library community and within the larger community of libraries, profit, nonprofit and others. The committee was to promote awareness, gather opinion and content, provide content, and deliver content. To this end the following program elements took place:

• A Library Advocate’s Guide to Building Information Literate Communities www.ala.org/pio.advocacy was published by the American Library Association. This work was direct result of the liaison between the Community Partnerships Committee and the Library Advocacy, Now! Committee and became one of the foundation information pieces of the first level of ALA's @ your library campaign.
• An information literacy community partnerships website was designed and is currently being maintained. This site includes content and provides examples of partnerships in practice. The website was used by a number of people throughout the past two years including use as a resource at the Denver ACRL conference by program presenters. http://library.austin.cc.tx.us/staff/lnavarro/CommunityPartnerships/Toolkit.html
• Two ALA programs were designed (Midwinter and Annual) to gather information and promote awareness. The first program drew over 150 people who participated in a 1/2 day preconference (free) where presentations on example partnerships were interspersed with lively small group work. Participants, grouped by type of community and then type of library, brainstormed ways to create partnerships. The second program drew 120 participants who heard experts speak on 21st information literacy and then a panel of partners and potential partners discuss ways to form IL partnerships. Small groups then brainstormed use of the @your library slogan in all types of libraries for IL.
• ACRL President Betsy Wilson adopted the partnerships and collaborations theme as well and Julie Todaro worked on President Wilson's committee to assist with and produce monthly columns and to provide a midwinter ACRL discussion on benchmark IL partnerships and collaborative programs. Additional elements of Wilson's theme were (obviously) completed at Annual.

Additional issues discussed (in person, by phone, through email) by the Institute Advisory Group include:

1. Expanding audience of the Immersion programs to include librarians from other types of libraries.
2. Job responsibilities of the Advisory group in general.
3. Work with other ACRL IL groups (including service on Lisa's committee.)
4. Closer ties/expanded discussions with Immersion faculty.
5. Presentation/education of Advisory Group members by Immersion faculty (attendance at Midwinter, Annual and a faculty presentation at Midwinter 2002.)
6. Discussions on number of and location of Immersions programs.
7. Revision of ACRL IL website.
8. Revision of application forms.
9. Expanding Immersion faculty.
10. Filling slots on IL Advisory Group.
11. Ultimate goals/future of the Institute for Information Literacy.
12. Expanding scholarship opportunities for immersion participants.

Submitted by Julie Todaro, Tom Kirk and Cerise Oberman

Appendices

ACRL Best Practices in Information Literacy Invitational Conference

[Prepared by Nancy Becker, editing by Tom Kirk based on input from committee members ]

Purpose:

1. To share ideas and to closely examine and refine the characteristics of best practice in information literacy developed in Phase I. To prepare, publish and disseminate a final version of the characteristics of best practice.
2. To enrich the participants’ understanding of how information literacy programs can function efficiently
3. To provide a greater depth of understanding about the implementation and operation of information literacy programs
4. To develop, publish and disseminate in-depth descriptions of model programs.
5. To field test the concept if best practices approach to assessment of information literacy programming.

Pre-conference:
Descriptions of selected institutions and copies of their questions are mailed to participants in advance.

Conference Schedule

Evening of June 11 – Registration and Welcome
6:00-7:00 Registration and welcome reception

7:00- Dinner with keynote speaker:

• Opening remarks (Tom Kirk)
• Introduction to the work of the project and this conference
• Keynote panel
• Overview of state of information literacy in higher education
• Pep talk on the importance of the conference’s work

Note: It is important that the speaker not shift the agenda of the meeting.
Note: Reflection notebooks that participants will use to record their reflections throughout the conference are distributed after dinner.

June 12 – Validation, models, cautions: Analysis of program elements that demonstrate best practices

8:30-9:00 Introduction by Project Team: Use of best practices methodology of program assessment; role of conference participants in critique of Characteristics of Best Practices in Information Literacy Programming document.

9:00-10:30 Introduction of the institutions (15 minutes/team): Each team briefly describes their best practices in relation to the characteristics, using a focus selected by the Project Team in advance of the conference. The intention is to develop a starting point for subsequent discussions. Since the emphasis of the Best Practices Project is prescriptive, participants will be reminded that they were selected for the conference because they model specific characteristics particularly well. Their role here is to help identify specific examples from the models that can be generalized to other institutions.

10:30-11:00 *Break*

11:00-12:30 Introductions of the Institutions continues
Participation: Audience mines presentations for the most compelling points and notes any questions they may have.

12:30-2:00 *Lunch*

2:00-3:30 Working group session
Five working groups facilitated by BP advisory group members: Groups are formed by pairing institutions with some commonality (e.g., both are research institutions), but which were selected because their programs demonstrate excellence in different information literacy characteristics. (Project Team pairs institutions in advance based on information obtained from conference application)

3:30-4:00 *Break*

4:00-5:00 Discussion session

• Led by facilitators (BP Advisory Group members)
• Purpose is to allow discussion and questions and to encourage cross –pollination of ideas

5:00-5:30 Reconvene entire group; summarize day’s work; wrap-up

Note: Space and materials are provided for groups to continue working throughout the evening or early the next morning, if they wish.

June 13 – Revision of Characteristics

8:30-9:00 Introduction/Summary of previous day’s work/Expected outcome for today

Note: Groups are expected to produce a written draft of their revisions to the Characteristics. (BP team will provide template or checklist to use as framework for potential revisions.)

9:00-10:15 Working session to revise characteristics

10:15-10:45 *Break*

10:45-12:00 Working session to revise characteristics

12:00-1:00 *Lunch* (Copies of final documents made during lunch for distribution to groups)

1:00-2:30 Reading period

• Copies of documents are distributed for participants to read.
• BP team has lunch and makes final arrangements for open discussion.

2:30-3:30 Entire group reconvenes for open discussion

3:30 Wrap-up

• Next steps: outcome documents (includes composite document (posted on Web?) of revisions written by groups). Participants can provide feedback after returning home.
• Concluding remarks

4:00 PM Conference Ends

Budget

Attached is the budget for the project. We are seeking vendor support for the invitational conference and it is hoped that some portion of these costs will be contributed under a “Colleagues” approach similar to the National Conference. On the attached page is the original budget request for the operations of the Best Practices Project Team. Since the Team has two non-librarians and, in some cases, the meetings have been outside the regular ALA Conference schedule these budgets have covered the non-librarians travel to the conference and the expenses of an extra day for ACRL Project Team members. (In fact the group agreed to meet during conference after the initial one so these expenses have been less than projected.)

Earlham College has proved secretarial support, postage, duplicating and electronic communication (e.g., web page hosting, discussion thread hosting).

To: ACRL Budget and Finance

From: Tom Kirk on behalf of the Advisory Committee of the Institute for Information Literacy

Date: January 17, 2000 [Supplemented December 14, 2001]

Re: ACRL Institute for Information Literacy – Best Practices Project

The ACRL Board of Directors approved a grant proposal to the Pew Memorial Trust for a project with three goals:

• Develop criteria for assessing information literacy programs
• Identify model programs that exemplify significant achievement of the criteria
• Distribute information on model programs and the criteria

Unfortunately Pew did not fund the proposal, largely, it appears, because they did not perceive the broad importance of the project to higher education generally; they saw the proposal as mostly profession related.

The Advisory Committee of the Institute for Information Literacy, instead of resubmitting the proposal to other foundations and thus delaying the work on these important goals, has recast the project and time line. The reshaped plan depends more heavily on member volunteers and on some funding from ACRL rather than outside sources.

The time line for the project extends over thirty-seven months from January, 2000 through Midwinter Conference, 2003. The time line extends over four budget years. I have outlined the budget below and am, on behalf of the Advisory Committee for the Institute, requesting funding for the current year. With successful inauguration of the project between now and June we will submit a report to the ACRL Board of Directors and the Budget Finance Committee before ALA

Summer Conference along with a request for funding for the 2000-2001 fiscal year.

The budget support is for the travel expenses of two non-librarians who will be part of the seven person Project Team to attend meetings of the Project Team at Annual Conference (2000). In subsequent years it would be for meetings at both Midwinter and Annual Conferences. Budget support also covers one overnight and meals for an extra day at Conference for the five ACRL members of the Project Team. Additional support is budgeted for telephone and minor office supplies.

These budgets do not include the costs associated with the conference that will highlight the model programs and the criteria which is planned to be held in 2002. We anticipate developing a budget for this conference which would be submitted separately and which might be supported by outside funding.
[Added December 14, 2001.]

The budget for the conference has been approved by the ACRL Board at the level of $49,360. To off-set theses costs the ACRL Information Literacy Consultants have organized a Colleagues-type project to seek vendor support. A number of ACRL leaders have been contacting vendors seeking their support. At this time it is too early to give a full picture of the success.

Send questions, comments and updates to Loanne Snavely.