Situating the Library in the First Year Experience Course

Abstract

John Gardner, of the National Resource Center for The First Year Experience and Students in Transition, addressed academic librarians at the ACRL meeting in Charlotte, North Carolina, in April 2003, urging librarians to become more actively involved in First Year Experience courses. Susan J. C. Bissett responds in this article, citing the difficulties librarians have in gaining faculty attention and acceptance of ideas derived from the Information Literacy movement. She connects librarians' problems with integrating a “library” or information component into the curriculum of First Year Experience courses to the more general difficulties that librarians face in persuading faculty to incorporate into their courses such Information Literacy goals as information finding, information evaluation, and synthesis of information. She discusses the role that administration plays in guiding faculty to adopt Information Literacy goals and the need for college administrations to provide greater resources to faculty and librarians attempting to create meaningful First Year Experience courses.

Key Words:

• First Year Experience
• freshman seminar
• library instruction
• information literacy
• faculty culture
• librarianship
• college administration