Notes from the Georgia Conference on Information Literacy

Okay, I’ve been told that I need to update my blog. I mean, sheesh, isn’t once a year enough??

Well, maybe not. So….

Anyway, there’s an old Chinese curse (or so someone somewhere once told me) that goes “May you live in interesting times.” And the times have definitely been interesting for me (no, I’m not trying to make excuses for only blogging once a year—well, yeah, maybe I am, but ANYWAY….).

This year’s Georgia Conference on Information Literacy is history, and we’re gearing up to get ready for next year’s. Once again, the Conference was deemed a success according to the surveys of attendees, and those kind of markers, but, more importantly, I truly enjoyed all of the wonderful presentations I attended.

A few I want to mention especially:

Anthony Atkins and Robert Searcy of the University of North Carolina,Wilmington, presented “Writing the Image in Composition: Student/ Teacher Collaboration,” in which they discussed having students analyze and produce visual texts. I have to say I was blown away by the multimedia projects the students at both the graduate and undergraduate levels completed! In the same session, Jonette La Gamba of the University of South Florida presented “Teaching Elements of Rhetoric: Employing Visuals,” outlining a plan to teach first-year composition students elements of classical rhetoric and writing by having them create advertisements, “borrowing” and repurposing visual elements--or creating their own. Some fascinating examples!

Karen Lunsford from the University of California at Santa Barbara presented on “Using Orientation Materials with Writing Assignments,” showing what UCSB is doing with Sakai and Moodle, making “library orientation materials more directly relevant to students by making them part of research writing assignments.”

The keynote presentation on Saturday was by Keith Curry Lance, former director of library research service (Colorado State Library) Department of Education (Denver) and entitled “Powering Achievement: The Importance of School Libraries on Information Literacy and Academic Achievement.” He showed us information he had collected on the demonstrated links between “high-quality school library programs and high-stakes test scores.” None of us were surprised by these links, of course! But seeing these statistics was still extremely interesting, especially in light of the ongoing studies Lance is still involved with hoping to learn more about these important relationships.

Joan E. Broome, of the Zach S. Henderson Library at Georgia Southern University, and Christine Whitlock of the GSU chemistry department are working to teach information literacy to students in organic chemistry, and Barbara Hightower and Michelle Schutt, both of Auburn University, Montgomery, are teaching library research skills to nursing students in WebCT. Their presentations continued this important strand on using technology to help make information available to students and customizing information literacy instruction to better fulfill disciplinary needs.

Finally, I attended the presentation given by Julie Housknecht, Betsy Whitley, and Adrienne Button, all of North Georgia College and State University, entitled “Beyond the Skills Survey: Activities as Assessment.” A testament to the success of this presentation (and, I think, of the conference as a whole) was the amount of audience involvement in this timely and thought-provoking presentation, even at the end of a full slate of conferencing, when so many participants at most conferences are looking for toothpicks to hold their eyes open. Not here! Obviously, assessment, especially in this era of evidence-based decision making, is a “hot button” topic! The activities they outlined look to prove useful for many participants at any level!

Hopefully before the year is out (!), I’ll blog a bit about my own conference panel on my other blog (no, I don’t update it any more than I do this one!). But check it out anyway (link to LILAC blog).

So, okay, this Conference was definitely NOT squirrel splat! J

Keep an eye out on my home page at http://personal.georgiasouthern.edu/~jwalker for a link to the call for proposals for NEXT year’s Georgia Conference on Information Literacy, October 3-4, 2008, at the Coastal Georgia Center in Savannah. The deadline for proposals will be April 15, 2008, so get your thinking caps in gear.