Though 83% of librarians agree that information literacy affects college graduation rates and 97% believe that this skill set contributes to success in the workforce, 44% think that their library does not support information literacy instruction as much as it should.
A recent ProQuest survey of over 200 librarians from university, community college, high school and public libraries collected this insight and delved deeper into what librarians are doing to drive development of information literacy. A report on the survey’s full results can be found here: www.proquest.com/documents/2016-Information-Literacy-Survey.html
“Overall, lack of budget and limited staffing were reported as some of the greatest obstacles for doing as much as they would like to drive development of this important skill set,” said Kevin Stehr, ProQuest Vice President of North American Sales. “But I think this response summed it up best — ‘We’re doing the best we can, but we always aspire to do more.’ At ProQuest, we want to empower librarians to be able to do more with what they have, and we’re committed to creating solutions that do just that.”
Because the ways that librarians support information literacy vary, from one-on-one search consultations to asynchronous video tutorials, ProQuest offers a range of services and products to help teach and reinforce this important topic.
To start, librarians can use ProQuest’s flexible acquisition models to offer authoritative print and digital content — from journals to videos and newspapers to working papers — on their budget. From reference content to provide a foundation to titles that offer vast breadth and depth of coverage on specific topics, ProQuest makes it easy and affordable to support researchers.
Librarians can also drive information literacy with ProQuest Research Companion, which helps students do more effective scholarly research and supports educators as they teach the core principles of finding, evaluating and using information. Research Companion features more than 80 short videos organized into nine Learning Modules that answer questions from all stages of the research process, from “How do I choose a topic?” to “How do I evaluate sources?” The platform integrates “pre” and “post” assessment questions to make the viewing experience more interactive, while allowing educators to measure students’ learning and identify gaps in their understanding.
For more information, visit www.proquest.com.
