Description is an essential library service of which reads may be unaware. The catalouge reveals where the desired item is; the item is retrieved. That seems easy. But the description of materials in special collections is often more complex, and sometimes even the fundamental nomenclature indicating what an item is can be difficult to identify.
Four colleagues–a faculty member, a digital services librarian, a research librarian, and a curator of Special Collections–take turns describing their role in creating an undergraduate student project around an eighteenth-century almanac that belonged to Marie-Antoinette. In recounting the steps taken, the collaborative process, the student research, and the analysis of the contents of the Trésor des Grâces almanac, we share the lessons learned for completing a digital exhibit over the course of one semester.
Regardless of institutional type or resources, one question facing archives and special collections is how archival collections can be efficiently enhanced with minimal or no original metadata. This issue becomes a focal point when collections are digitized, as metadata is what makes digital collections more accessible and usable. This case study explores the development of a digital collection using card sorting activities and gamification techniques and analyzes the direct and indirect effects of each strategy, including student employee connections to library learning goals and visual literacy standards.
This article presents the authors’ efforts to collaborate with faculty in a curriculum-mapping program that enables shared understanding of curricular objectives and goals. By collaborating and coordinating with faculty for embedded library sessions or modules, this program can be used to strengthen information and research competencies at the appropriate academic levels throughout the degree program. Curriculum mapping helps communicate opportunities to bring together teaching and learning from the lecture hall and studio to the library where students can be introduced to pertinent resources and information that will support their course work and build their understanding of research.
In an effort to advance visual literacy (VL) education, the purpose of this paper is to develop and test a VL instruction program for 2.5-4-year-old children in a public library setting. The study was designed as a series of VL workshops for young public library visitors. Each workshop collected information about children’s existing VL knowledge, introduced them to new visual concepts, and measured their engagement and comprehension of the newly acquired material. The study data were collected via questionnaires and observations.
The proliferation of images and their increased use in academic and everyday information practices has sparked an interest in visual literacy as an area of research and library instruction. Teaching approaches and student learning are examined using theoretical frameworks and a variety of methodological strategies. This paper provides a review of research methodology adopted in empirical studies of visual literacy that were published in academic journals between 2011 and 2017.
Archival instruction pedagogy is shifting from traditional lecture-based show-and-tell approaches to more active hands-on strategies that fall within the realm of active or inquiry-based instruction. Archivists are beginning to assess their instruction sessions using reaction assessments, learning assessments, performance assessments, and blended approaches; gathering data to illustrate the efficacy of the instruction pedagogy employed and thereby shedding light on how archives contribute in meaningful ways to student learning.
New image citation standards need to be developed for college and graduate students to meet visual literacy standards. The MLA Handbook, 8th edition, and Chicago Manual of Style, 16th edition, do not adequately clarify how to caption, attribute, and cite images. Other image captioning and citing resources are available, but they refer to the MLA and Chicago manuals. Image captions from scholarly journals vary widely and cannot be used as examples for students to follow. Recommendations are also provided for future editions of the MLA Handbook and Chicago Manual of Style.
The London College of Communication (LCC) Zine Collection was founded in July 2009 and now contains more than 4,000 zines. It is the most heavily used special collection at LCC Library. This article outlines the history and development of the collection, its uses in teaching, learning and research, and its value for widening access to, and representing diversity in an academic library environment.
Tertiary students from non-English speaking backgrounds are often required to undertake preparatory language courses. Whilst these programs help them achieve an operational level of academic English, their curricula do not explicitly promote the development of essential 21st century visual literacy skills. Understandings of visual literacy in adult English language teaching seem to overly simplify it as using images to complement written texts, generally through the use of technologies. This article examines intersections between classroom practices, visual literacy and the use of digital technologies in English language courses for higher education.
Visual literacy skills have become an inevitable part of life in today’s world. Technological innovations leading to new literacy skills have changed traditional ways of communication and made it necessary to learn and understand symbols, pictures, photos, illustrations, diagrams, infographics, pictograms, simulations, graphical interfaces, digitized images, and other visual tools. Therefore, it is very significant to teach individuals about visual literacy skills: the ability to understand, interpret, evaluate, organize, and construct visual information. Infographics are essential tools for learners. One of the most prominent institution to teach visual literacy skills is libraries. Visual tools, strategies, and methods should be applied in library instructions for users to realize these skills. The aim of the chapter is to show the importance of visualization, visual literacy, and infographics and present suggestions regarding how to develop the visual literacy skills of learners by libraries.
Infographics have been frequently used in recent years with the purpose of the visual presentation of information. It is a visualisation method which aims at presenting any content with a visual composition, combining such elements as shapes, symbols, graphics, photographs, illustrations, and texts for the target audience. The purpose of this research is to develop an instructional design based on the ADDIE (Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation, Evaluation) model of infographic design as well as the determination of student and teacher opinions on the usage of infographics in teaching.
Design students can pose multiple challenges for librarians. Their information-seeking behaviours are often less linear than those of their university colleagues. Developing library initiations and instruction becomes even more challenging when working with international students who bring different cultural backgrounds and language competencies to their college programme. They also have varying degrees of experience with and knowledge about libraries.
Academic librarians have a demonstrated interest in digital tools for teaching and learning and often provide support for these tools to their wider campus communities. Additionally, many librarians incorporate these tools into their own teaching in the information literacy classroom. However, little has been written about how digital tools can support critical information literacy and critical pedagogy specifically in library instruction.
In a four-session Summer Bridge programme, we experimented with new curricular and pedagogical ideas with a group of incoming freshmen. We developed the Comics-Questions Curriculum (CQC), which melds students’ question asking with a focus on comics. The purpose of this paper is to describe the rationale for and ongoing development of the CQC as well as the ways the CQC fosters engagement of students and librarians, builds upon students’ existing skills but propels them forward toward college-level work, and positions librarians as partners in students’ college work. Although it was designed for a specific purpose initially, the CQC in its current state is widely adaptable to other contexts beyond the original scope.
In this article, we use an interdisciplinary, short-term study abroad program in Berlin, Germany, “Memorializing the Holocaust,” as a case study to demonstrate the importance of incorporating visual literacy competencies into study abroad course curriculum. By focusing on visual literacy, the program helps students navigate beyond their initial touristic relationship to the iconic images and sites in Berlin, allowing them to re-envision and reflect upon their significance.
Due to the progressive visualization of everyday communication, it has become increasingly
important to understand images and think and learn in terms of images. Tere should not
be any surprise, therefore, that educators express a need to introduce visual literacy into the
curriculum. However, the concrete tools to address this need are still missing. Te variety
of visual methods and approaches provided by visual studies’ literature does not seem to be
particularly useful when applied to education. Terefore, I suggest that a focus on teaching the
interpretation of journalistic photographs is a crucial component of contemporary education,
because it develops students’ visual literacy skills while addressing current requirements
in Higher Education, which expect students to be able to interpret, use and create images.
In academic libraries, information literacy traditionally focuses on instruction sessions and classes, activities in library learning spaces, and interactions with librarians. Often overlooked but equally as important to augmenting the student experience is employment in academic libraries and its relationship to the development of information and other literacies. This is particularly true concerning the contribution of special collections and archives, as most scholarship associated with primary source literacy focuses on instruction. This article begins to fill this gap by reporting the results of a series of qualitative interviews with student employees who worked directly with special collections and archives.