ANCIL: a new curriculum for information literacy: case study

Abstract

You have learned something. That always feels at first as if you had lost something. (H. G. Wells) Introduction Recent research suggests that the information-seeking behaviour and needs of students are changing (CIBER/UCL, 2008; SCONUL, 2011 among others), driven largely by the changing experiences and expectations of ‘the Google generation’, who have grown up with access to the internet being the norm. While the Google generation and ‘digital native’ terms have been debated and widely criticized (Jones et al., 2010), it is clear that information literacy programmes over the next five years will need to adapt and respond to the needs of current students. This case study describes a short project based at Cambridge University Library and funded by the Arcadia Programme (http://arcadiaproject. lib.cam.ac.uk), a three-year initiative designed to explore the role of academic libraries in the digital age. The project ran from May until July 2011 and sought to develop a practical curriculum for information literacy that meets the needs of the undergraduate student entering higher education over the next five years. A new curriculum for information literacy: project overview Aims and objectives The project sought to develop a practical curriculum for information literacy that meets the needs of the undergraduate student entering higher education over the next five years. Specifically, the project aimed: • to understand the information needs of future undergraduate students on enteri…