Developing Interview Skills and Visual Literacy: A New Model of Engagement for Academic Libraries

Developing Interview Skills and Visual Literacy: A New Model of Engagement for Academic Libraries by Kayo Denda

This case study presents a cocurricular initiative at the Margery Somers Foster Center at Rutgers University Libraries in New Brunswick, NJ. The initiative resulted in an interview workshop for the course Knowledge and Power, a “mission course” of the Douglass Residential College. This discussion-based workshop uses visual and multimedia resources to teach useful skills for conducting meaningful interviews, develops deeper understanding of an interview as a two-way social interaction composed of listening and talking, cultivates ethnographic and cultural sensitivity, and empowers students to critically engage with visual forms of communication and the meanings of media. The workshop familiarizes students with concepts of visual literacy and prepares them for their main assignment—an interview of a woman leader. It is one example of the active role librarians and libraries can play in student learning and knowledge production.