Information Literacy, Psychology, and the Library: A Partnership

The University of Montevallo (UM), a public liberal arts school, implemented a Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP) focused on Information Literacy (IL) in 2009. The QEPs three-tiered class structure (foundational, advancing, and mastery classes) presented collaborative opportunities for professors and library faculty to infuse IL into the curriculum. A partnership between the QEP Director (also a psychology professor) and an embedded librarian grew from a one-shot library instruction in a capstone course for Psychology majors at UM, the History of Psychology; the IL mastery assignment is a research paper. To enhance the information literacy abilities of the students and have this reflected in their papers, students were encouraged to schedule individual research consultations for which they earned extra credit on their papers. The students that took advantage of this offer displayed marked improvements in a number of areas when compared with the others. Fall 2015 marked the third year of this collaboration. Due to the success of this collaboration, the embedded model has been introduced and expanded semester-long in another psychology class, Sensation and Perception. Each week, a group of two students is responsible for creating an activity for one whole class period that is related to a topic in the class. Instead of extra credit, a portion of the student\u27s grade is contingent upon a meeting with the embedded librarian. This partnership helps the students with brainstorming and research, including narrowing down topics, finding quality sources, and proper use of sources. Spring 2016 marks the second year of this successful partnership