The New Instruction Librarian: A Workbook for Trainers and Learners

Candice Benjes-Small · Rebecca K. Miller

Nov 2016 · American Library Association

About this ebook

The sheer amount of resources on the subject of information literacy is staggering. Yet a comprehensive but concise roadmap specifically for librarians who are new to instruction, or who are charged with training someone who is, has remained elusive. Until now. This book cuts through the jargon and rhetoric to ease the transition into library instruction, offering support to all those involved, including library supervisors, colleagues, and trainees. Grounded in research on teaching and learning from numerous disciplines, not just library literature, this book

shows how to set up new instruction librarians for success, with advice on completing an environmental scan, strategies for recruiting efficiently, and a training checklist;

walks readers step by step through training a new hire or someone new to instruction, complete with hands-on activities and examples;

explores the different roles an instruction librarian is usually expected to play, such as educator, project manager, instructional designer, and teaching partner;

demonstrates the importance of performance evaluation and management, including assessment and continuing education, both formal and informal; and

provides guided reading lists for further in-depth study of a topic.

A starter kit for librarians new to instruction, this resource will be useful for training coordinators as well as for self-training.

About the author

Candice Benjes-Small began her career at the University of Southern California and since 2001 has worked at Radford University in Radford, Virginia. She is the head of information literacy and outreach and university coordinator of information literacy for the general education curriculum. Under her leadership, the library instruction program has been recognized as an Exemplary Information Literacy program in numerous categories by the ACRL. She has served as president of the Virginia chapter of ACRL (VLACRL) and is active on numerous VLACRL committees. She and Rebecca K. Miller founded The Innovative Library Classroom, a very popular regional information literacy conference that won the 2016 Beta Phi Mu Conference Support Award. She has written numerous publications on information literacy and was lead author on an article about cognitive development and web evaluation which was selected as a Top 20 article by the Library Instruction Round Table. She is also an instructor for the Library Juice Academy on library instruction assessment.

Rebecca K. Miller is the head of library learning services at Penn State University Libraries in State College, Pennsylvania. A 2012 ALA Emerging Leader, she is active in regional, state, and national library organizations and has authored and coauthored a number of books, technical reports, and articles on teaching, learning, and instructional technologies in libraries, including Rethinking Reference and Instruction with Tablets (2012), Tablet Computers in the Academic Library (2014), Mobile Devices: Service with Intention (2015), and ARL Spec Kit 349: “Evolution of Library Liaisons” (2015).