At the close of the spring semester 2001 CUNY's Council of Chief Librarians developed a white paper on information literacy. While the paper calls for each campus to implement an information literacy task force, at Brooklyn we have decided to defer a decision on such a group until spring 2002. A variety of information literacy initiatives already in place may make such a task force unnecessary.
There are many ways in which we are presently creating a more robust instruction program and paving the way for information literacy:
In the fall 2001 semester staff developed the first draft of a common English I and II Library curriculum: a basic Library orientation (English I) and a beginner's guide to Library research (English II). The Library's instruction committee (chaired by Professor Mariana Regalado) is working to create a more streamlined version with clear, easy-to-use student handouts. These curricula would then serve as templates for other subject-specific sessions that Library faculty teach. The CUNY information literacy tutorial http://ols.cuny.edu/tutorial/ , based on the California State University Libraries' product http://www.lib.calpoly.edu/infocomp/ which CUNY has licensed, will be an important avenue for teaching basic Library skills. The adaptation of the Cal State tutorial to CUNY's needs was done by Brooklyn's Mariana Regalado. Outreach to faculty continues to be primarily an informal procedure. Professor Mariana Regalado is interested in including information literacy or library skills in faculty development workshops related to initiatives such as the Freshman Year College, the Virtual Core, Quantitative Reasoning Across the Core, and Writing Across the Curriculum. In the fall 2001 delivered two workshops for the Center for Teaching that focused on faculty experiences with information and information technology. She has also joined the Writing Across the Curriculum group. Planning for outcomes assessment will also be a fine opportunity for librarians to talk with departments about teasing out information literacy objectives in their courses and programs. The recent commitment of both CUNY and Brooklyn College to the Blackboard e-learning platform provides us with a new point for information literacy instruction. In conjunction with Dr. Sylvie Richards, Library subject specialists are encouraging the addition of a Library component to each online course. In the spring 2002, a new faculty section will be added to the Library's Web site, providing ideas for assignments that promote information literacy, as well as information about copyright.