Outside of the academic garden: Lifelong learning for engineers

Recent discourse in information literacy and scholarly communication has centered on questions of information access and privilege. In essence, when we teach students to use our highly-specialized, subscription-only resources, are we setting them off on a path up a false summit? At Northern Arizona University, we are partnering with our engineering program to tailor our information literacy curricula to students' long-term needs. We presented the results of our initial environmental scan, including focus groups and interviews with engineers, to better understand the information needs and access issues facing our graduates. We also discussed what these findings mean for curriculum design, including not only open access options for locating engineering information, but broader issues of information privilege and access so that our students can navigate and help shape a more open and equitable future for lifelong access and lifelong learning