Part of the mission of Library Services is to provide "instruction to promote information literacy and life-long learning."  We define information literacy as the "set of skills needed to find, retrieve, analyze, and use information.” (American Library Association, 1989). Students graduating from Austin Community College should be prepared to apply the information skills they learn as students to all aspects of their lives as citizens, family members, employees, and professionals. Information literate students have transferable skills from their formal education they can use throughout life and as a means toward continued learning.

Library Services is committed to a program of course-integrated library instruction. This approach--having  library instruction embedded within the curriculum and developed in collaboration with classroom faculty, rather than as a separate library-controlled program--was pioneered by Earlham College.  Earlham sponsored national conferences promoting this approach in the 1980s.  Five ACC librarians and as many classroom faculty attended one of these workshops.  We have never wavered from favoring this approach. The ACC Library program introduces students to information resources, strengthens their research skills, and facilitates critical thinking skills. Course-integrated programs, which introduce basic library skills as part of required coursework, are available in several disciplines.

Librarians serving as Facilitators of Information Literacy lead in the development, maintenance and distribution of college-wide programs, although all reference librarians may be involved in instructional design and teaching.   An Information Literacy Committee exists to ensure the success of information literacy efforts college-wide.

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red wassenich and teresa ashley, 05 May 2003; last updated 12 March 2004