Selinda A. Berg

Selinda Berg is the Research and Instructional Librarian for Nursing at the University of Western Ontario. She received her MLIS from the University of Alberta in 2004. Her current research interests include maintaining and fostering information literate academic faculty, and promoting a broad and holistic definition of information literacy which is congruent with emerging information trends.

Susan E. Anthony RN MScN

Sue Anthony has been on faculty in the School of Nursing for 9 years, the last 6 as Chair of the undergraduate programs. Throughout this time she has been involved in clinical and classroom teaching. During her 26 year career in nursing she has been a staff nurse in Kingston and London hospitals and was a clinical preceptor in the cardiac surgical ICU at Duke University Medical Centre, Durham, North Carolina. She received a BSc from Queen's University, a nursing diploma from St. Lawrence College, and a BScN and MScN from UWO. She is currently a PhD student at McMaster University. Her research interests include exploration of the learning environment and students' learning needs.

Beyond Collaboration: The Importance of IL Education for Teaching Faculty

Selinda A. Berg and Susan E. Anthony, University of Western Ontario

session 1a / Thursday, May 11 / 10:30 - noon

This presentation will detail how an innovative focus on faculty IL skills and competence can serve to enrich the information literacy of students. Often, references to IL instruction are inferred as librarian-to-student contact, while contact with faculty is limited to librarians collaborating with faculty members to build IL into student programs. Too often, we overlook the important potential benefits of a truly information literate faculty. To this end, the concept of IL instruction in the nursing program at Western has expanded to include multiple manifestations of librarian- faculty- student contact, including IL education for faculty members. Teaching faculty are responsible for modeling IL competency and assessing evidence of students' IL progress in their academic and practice work; therefore, as IL experts, academic librarians must ensure that these faculty members have the necessary skills and understanding of IL.

This talk will explore both the process and the assessment of faculty development, emphasizing the co-learning relationships and opportunities that are a result of such faculty education. The presentation will likewise profile the positive outcomes of this innovative program. In addition to increasing the IL skills and understanding of faculty members and enhancing the IL education for students, a much greater value has been placed on information literacy in the nursing programs at Western.

By co-presenting this research, as the Undergraduate Chair of the Nursing programs (Anthony) and the Nursing librarian (Berg) at Western, our aim is to illustrate the reciprocal learning and teaching opportunities that have developed as a result of this innovative program. This interdependence and co-learning strategy seeks to correct a past limitation resulting from the overlooked need to keep faculty current in the ever changing information environment, and is therefore applicable in many post secondary education programs.