Collaborations between Faculty and Special Collections Librarians in Inquiry-Driven Classes

Though information literacy (IL) instruction is often assumed by faculty to be electronic, introductory, and teachable in a single visit, our collaboration on an inquiry-driven, research-intensive capstone course for English majors focused instead on bringing their information gathering and critical thinking skills up to a disciplinary level. Students, therefore, completed a series of increasingly complex special collections assignments to practice working among archival items, electronic databases, and conventional print works. Collaboration and some degree of role flexibility became essential to our goal of imparting a more advanced, comprehensive, and disciplinary version of IL to students.