The ultimate goal of the Barber Library’s Instructional Mission, Vision, and IL Plan is to provide a comprehensive, sustainable program that will assist students in progressing through the skill levels to achieve IL competencies. The current environment does present certain challenges in implementing this plan and the Barber Library recognizes the need to be flexible and adaptive in further integrating IL into the curriculum.

Embedded IL Outcomes

IL is embedded as a course outcome in the Writing curriculum.  However, such skills may be taught differently by individual Writing instructors, including adjunct and part-time instructors, who may or may not request library assistance in the teaching of IL. Additionally, there needs to be institutional assessment to measure how IL outcomes are addressed through this two-course sequence.

Faculty Awareness and Buy-In

Faculty often are not aware of the library resources available to them and their students, including the library’s support for the design of effective research assignments.

Including IL at the specific degree/certificate level requires faculty buy-in as well as verification that such skills can be included in professional standards, degree requirements, or state mandates of credit limits.

Credit Courses

The library’s credit course offerings, LIB100, LIB127, and LIB227, are mainly elective courses and as such may not draw high enrollment despite the popularity among students that sign up for them.

RPM Campuses

Branch campuses are still evolving. Their fluctuating enrollment and varying needs make it difficulty to identify a steady and clear target for the library’s instructional program.

Assessment

There have been few systematic efforts for assessing IL skill development across the campuses.

Staffing

It is difficult to meet instructional demands with limited MLIS-trained professional staff.