Serving Notice on the One-Shot: Changing Roles for Instruction Librarians

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

1-1-2016

Publication Title

International Information and Library Review

Volume

48

Issue

2

First page number:

137

Last page number:

142

Abstract

As with any library service that emerges at the demand of faculty and students, rather than through strategic and evidence-based planning, library instruction has hadmany iterations since its early days in academic libraries. Through this evolution, library instruction inspired librarians to embrace their roles as educators and influenced a profession-wide movement known as information literacy. With internal evaluations that point to student and faculty satisfaction aswell as external studies that point to at least some impact on student success, it is no surprise that statistics for the primary instructional method of many librarians, the one-shot instruction session, have increased over time. The popularity of this method has overwhelmed public services to the extent thatmany instruction programs cannot meet the demand for requests, nor can they escape the inevitable burnout fromrepetitive content and limited reach that go hand-in-handwith one-shots. At its best, the one-shot instruction session is away for librarians to support student researchers within the context of a course. At its worst, the one-shot marginalizes the pedagogical expertise of librarians whose efforts could result in more sustainable and influential educational initiatives given the space, time, and support to move toward new roles. © 2016 Melissa Bowles-Terry and Carrie Donovan.

Keywords

academic libraries; consultation; information literacy; instruction; instructional design; Public services

Language

English

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