Library Services: Library Instruction Request Form

Sarah Hood and Laura Smith are the primary instruction librarians, but there are three members of SFCC library staff who teach:

• Sarah Hood, Reference and Instruction Librarian
• Laura Smith, Collections and Instruction Librarian
• Val Nye, Library Director

Librarians are dedicated to promoting information literacy. Make sure your students benefit from your knowledge and ours. We feel that it is very important for students to meet a librarian and know that we are specifically here to help them. Sometimes we represent the first librarian students have ever met in person.

Librarians know how library systems are structured, and why. Librarians can provide a different point of view, and reinforce concepts covered in class. We have in-depth background knowledge about information literacy concepts (also visual/trans/meta-literacy), copyright, library classification schemes and subject headings, digital/linguistic/cultural divides, and other issues. This all informs our teaching.

We can make sure students have accurate, up-to-date information about everything that’s available to them in the library, and help them start to consider the way they find and use information, not just in college but throughout their lives.

Here at SFCC, we love finding ways to connect knowledge across disciplines. The library has resources for all disciplines!

Information Literacy is defined as the ability of a student to:

"recognize when information is needed and have the ability to locate, evaluate, and use effectively the needed information."

These are skills that are acquired and honed over many years, and they don't always come naturally to students.

The Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) has established a set of Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education. Following their guidelines, librarians consider it our responsibilty to teach students how to:

• "Determine the extent of information needed
• Access the needed information effectively and efficiently
• Evaluate information and its sources critically
• Incorporate selected information into one’s knowledge base
• Use information effectively to accomplish a specific purpose
• Understand the economic, legal, and social issues surrounding the use of information, and access and use information ethically and legally"

For students at SFCC, information illiteracy represents another potential strike against their success. Librarians are here to make sure students take advantage of all the information formats and services available to them in the library, clear up any misconceptions about the role of the library in their own studies, and simply (and most important) make sure students know we are here to help them.