Library Instruction Sessions

Library Instruction Sessions

The Pacific University Libraries provide information literacy instruction with the goal of empowering all learners to become proficient, ethical information consumers and creators who are able to find, evaluate, integrate, and communicate information critical to their academic, personal, and professional lives.

Library Instruction Learning Outcomes

The University Libraries have defined the following core learning outcomes for our instruction program. These learning outcomes are necessarily broad in order to address the attributes and needs of the University’s diverse academic programs. Instructional offerings and activities within specific academic programs address and evaluate more specific forms of knowledge and skills (e.g. evidence-based practice within health professions) that map to these broader outcomes; these are developed in collaboration with academic faculty to ensure learning activities and outcomes are directly relevant to their curriculum and students, needs.

1. Attributes of Information Sources – Explain the nature, context, and authority of different information sources, including the factors that influence what information is made available and granted authority
2. Specify Information Need – Articulate an information need, including the specific types of information source best suited to meet that need
3. Plan/Execute Search – Plan and execute a search strategy that is appropriately comprehensive, flexible, and iterative in order to identify and access needed information
4. Evaluate Information Sources – Evaluate the relevance, contextual authority, and potential application of information sources relative to an information need
5. Ethical Use of Information – Identify strategies for integrating information ethically and legally into scholarship or practice, including appropriate forms of attribution and relevant disciplinary or cultural community norms
6. Information Creation – Identify ways to participate in creating, disseminating, evaluating, and granting authority to new information and knowledge within a discipline or community

It is important to acknowledge that the Libraries’ instruction activities are not the sole factor in students attaining these learning outcomes; the focus of the Libraries’ instruction program is on facilitating student progress towards these outcomes as part of students’ comprehensive education at Pacific. The goal is for students to achieve these outcomes by the end of their academic programs, and for the Libraries’ instruction program to have contributed to demonstrated progress towards these outcomes at the points at which the Libraries have the opportunity to interact with, and teach, each student. To that end, instructional activities are designed around specific, often narrower, student learning outcomes that allow for progress (and assessment of that progress) towards these broader instruction program learning outcomes.

Library Instruction Requests

Librarians are available to provide instruction within any classes at the university. Faculty can invite librarians to class sessions to share lessons customized for your course. Possible topics include (but are not limited to!) searching techniques and strategies, finding and identifying sources (including peer-reviewed), or searching specific databases. Instruction can be provided either in-person or via Zoom; the Libraries can also provide asynchronous https://pacificu.libguides.com/guides or other instructional materials to augment synchronous sessions.

Note: You must have a PUNetID to request instruction.

You can find an Alternate Information Literacy Session Form here