It’s been over 10 years since the ACRL adopted the Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education. If at some point during the last decade you have been enrolled in an MLIS program, it is likely that you’ve spent at least one class period discussing the merits of The Standards and debating whether or not they are necessary, complete, relevant, etc. This week, I had that class period. As expected, most students were in favor of The Standards, some with reservations.

The Standards were approved by the ACRL Board of Directors in January 2000 at the ALA Midwinter conference. They were developed to help individuals deal with the increasingly data-rich information environment of the 21st century and to provide guidelines for developing the skills necessary for lifelong learning. One might even suggest that they were developed in reaction to the digital age. The document itself contains a definition of Information Literacy (IL), a description of its contexts (technological, institutional, pedagogical), a standard of use, assessment methods, performance indicators, and expected learning outcomes. It is a thorough examination of the skills necessary for IL and the ways in which those skills may be assessed.

So what are the benefits of having The Standards and how do they continue to be relevant a decade after their introduction?

They provide a common language. What do we mean when we say students should be able to “effectively use” information? How does one have an understanding of the “economic, legal, and social issues” surrounding information? Having The Standards puts librarians and instructors on the same page so that when we discuss the IL needs of our users, we understand each others’ prior knowledge and expectations.

They provide a framework for assessment. The Standards provide a series of performance indicators for each standard that are broad enough to apply to any academic setting. For example, in order to evaluate a student’s ability to determine the nature of her information need (Standard 1), we can develop measures to assess her ability to identify types and formats of potential information sources (1.2). This could be as simple as asking first-years to decide between journal articles or newspapers as an information source or as complex as asking graduate students to compare the different ways in which research is disseminated in different disciplines (e.g. sciences vs. humanities).

They provide an artifact of our understanding. If we recognize the need to develop information literacy skills in our users, we also recognize the need to work with university faculty and administrators in order to develop IL-rich curricula. Having The Standards provides us with documentation for our methods. Additionally, if it is adapted for local use, it provides an important artifact for accreditation purposes.

They provide a source for individual reflection. Personally, The Standards have helped me to assess my own skills and shortcomings. They provide a rubric that can be used by instructors and students alike in order to reflect on personal and professional information needs or the research process.

They provide ready-made expected learning outcomes (ELO). For each standard and performance indicator, The Standards provide a list of ELOs. For example, in order to determine if a student possesses the ability to synthesize main ideas and construct new concepts (3.3), the instructor would develop activities that could show the student’s ability to “recognize interrelationships among concepts” and “extend an initial synthesis into a higher level of abstraction” (3.3a-b).

They provide a sounding-board for other organizations interested in IL. Academic librarians are not the only people interested in developing information literate citizens. School librarians, teachers, even the U.S. Government are concerned with people’s ability to locate, evaluate and use information. The Standards provides a useful set of benchmarks for developing additional standards for specific groups or contexts.

There are some shortcomings.

They lack affective learning outcomes. As Schroeder & Cahoy (2010) point out, IL instructors should consider a student’s attitudes, emotions, interests, motivation, self-efficacy, and values in relationship to the information search process. They argue for adding affective learning outcomes that would “humanize the ACRL standards, reminding academic librarians and educators of the positive feelings that they must continually strive to develop in their students.”

They are platform agnostic. While The Standards require that students be able to move information between formats (4.1.d) and be able to use various technologies in order to create or use information (4.3.b), they do not require that students understand the technology behind platforms  through which they access or use information. However, this may simply be a matter of degree: we teach the basic concepts without getting bogged down in the technical details. We could teach the technical details if we had the time.

The Standards are a vital source of inspiration for librarians and they provide a glimpse into our professional values. They continue to be useful for developing IL policies and integrating IL into the curriculum. Perhaps at some point in the next decade, they will require revision. But for the time being, they continue to be useful blueprints for instructors.

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