E-Info Labs: Fostering Information Literacy on a Shoestring

Abstract With limited resources, UNB Libraries' instructional librarians have successfully started an information literacy program, originating from a series of workshops that were developed through a collegial working group approach. ********** Like many other academic libraries of similar size and scope, the library at the University of New Brunswick (UNB) in Fredericton entered the limitless information world of the new millennium with limited resources to act as a conduit to that world. The four libraries at UNB's Fredericton campus provide services to two academic institutions, St. Thomas University (STU) and UNB. While STU offers undergraduate liberal arts and professional degrees to 2500 full-time students with 160 teaching staff, UNB offers undergraduate, graduate and professional degrees to about 7200 full-time students with a teaching staff of about 450. UNB also maintains a number of very active research programs and institutes. Library instructional services to these communities have been provided by eight to ten public service librarians who do this in addition to their other administrative, collections, reference and systems responsibilities. Without the benefit of dedicated positions or additional financial resources, bibliographic instruction at UNB Libraries has evolved into an information literacy program originating from a small series of workshops called the E-info Labs. The collegial working group approach of the librarians involved provides a model of program development suitable to a small library system of limited means. The series has helped to foster a campus culture favourable to information literacy, which is now moving from the library into classrooms and into graduate and undergraduate curricula. Early Days of Library Instruction Librarians at UNB have been delivering instruction to students, faculty and staff in one form or another for over twenty-five years. Over the term of its practice, instruction has been offered in various phases, both formal and informal. More often this has been an informal, un-coordinated effort in that reference or information services librarians have delivered instruction at orientation, at the point of need or on demand, rather than from a pedagogical framework. Yet pockets of exciting initiatives existed--for example, a spirited coordinated effort at the launch of the libraries' first online catalogue earned the librarians on staff recognition at a Library Orientation Exchange (LOEX) poster session. This was the early 1980s, when online searching occurred via acoustic coupler and decwriter, computing involved the mainframe and terminal, and the librarian served as information mediary. As the pace of change accelerated, the library was hit with a series of devastating budget cuts affecting staffing and print collections. After several years of such changes, the library system began the 1990s with a vast array of networked CD-ROM resources, the beginnings of web access and no planned approach to helping patrons know about, let alone become proficient in, the use of all the available resources. This one-two punch of declining resources and increasingly complex print and digital information sources resulted in fragmented instruction. Seamans' 2001 thesis covers this territory in an all-too-familiar tale. In building the case for her study of freshmen students' perceptions about their own information acquisition and use, she reviews the literature, history and development of bibliographic instruction cum information literacy. Her summary of the patterns of popularity in instruction, the challenges of appropriate delivery format and curriculum issues should reverberate with many practitioners. To briefly summarize the UNB version, every day librarians faced students at information/reference desks who lacked fundamental information literacy skills. Concomitantly, faculty had difficulty keeping up with the constantly changing suite of electronic resources. …

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