Freshmen, Information Literacy and Archival Practice

Freshman students enrolled in English 1120 at Auburn are expected to gain information literacy skills through instruction sessions held at the Libraries. For the vast majority of these classes, students are led by Librarians in a dedicated library instruction classroom. This poster will discuss a handful of English Composition courses at Auburn University that chose a novel “laboratory” setting for their library-led information literacy sessions: Special Collections and Archives. It will highlight the information literacy expectations of teaching and library faculty, the use of archival and rare book collections by freshman students, and the avenues by which the archivist and rare books librarian attempted to incorporate both information literacy outcomes and archival literacy outcomes in their lesson plans. Over the past two years, several English instructors have chosen to approach Special Collections and Archives faculty for information literacy sessions. These requests have come from both regular and honors English Composition instructors, the common theme being the value they place on archival materials in their own research program. The instructors placed a high value on imparting archival skills along with the required information literacy skills. At times exhilarating and at other times very frustrating, these sessions garnered mixed results. This poster will guide librarians and information literacy professionals toward effective and rewarding engagement with Special Collections and Archives