Information Literacy and Faculty

Information literacy (IL) professionals have long felt the disconnect between their mission and the goals of the average subject faculty member. IL people know from their experience in the trenches that most students don't know how to do research. We see it every day-countless times every day. And

those same students who don't know how to do research go out into the working world where they waste their companies' time trying to discover information that shouldn't be that hard to find. Or even worse, they do research that's already been done by others or miss crucial research findings, hurting their companies dearly.

The complaint of the average subject faculty member goes something like this: "I wish with all my heart that I could read a well-thought-out, unplagiarized, and properly formatted student research paper. I wish, as well, that I'd never again have to see a web address in a bibliography."

Thus, it appears that the goals of the information literacy professional and the subject faculty member are at least somewhat in sync. Both believe that students do inadequate research, and both want to do something about it. But the distinctions between these two groups of educators, though subtle, make a world of difference.