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The authors teach a three‐credit, upper‐division, information literacy (IL) course to students in various majors. The purpose of this paper is to share the various philosophies and activities the authors use to engage their students and create a cohesive interdisciplinary course and to describe the various assessment tools utilized.

In this case study, the authors give specific examples of engaging assignments and methods for evaluating student work in a credit‐bearing IL course.

It is found that if students are engaged, and effective assessment tools are employed, library credit instruction in a face‐to‐face setting with upper‐classmen from diverse majors is an impactful way to teach IL.

This article provides ideas on how to use a topical theme in teaching an interdisciplinary IL credit course; concrete approaches on engaging students in an IL course; and new strategies for assessing an IL credit‐bearing course. Many of the engagement and assessment methods the authors share may also be applied to one‐shot instruction sessions.

The paper provides a practical case study of the authors' experiences engaging students and assessing their work in an upper level, three‐credit, face‐to‐face class, a type of course not well represented in the information literacy literature at this point in time.

There is a lack of data about information literacy (IL) credit courses in US academic libraries. This paper aims to provide a detailed snapshot of IL credit courses, including percentages of libraries that offer credit courses, the number of credits offered, the audience and how public institutions differ from private nonprofits and for-profits.

The authors surveyed a stratified random sample of libraries at higher education institutions across all categories from the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education. Qualtrics software was used to create and distribute the email survey. The response rate was 39 per cent (n = 691).

In all, 19 per cent of the institutions in the survey have IL credit courses taught by librarians. Large institutions, public institutions and those granting doctoral degrees are the most likely to offer IL credit courses. The majority of these courses are undergraduate electives of 1-2 credit hours offered under the library aegis, although a significant minority are required, worth 3-4 credit hours, and taught within another academic department or campus-wide program.

The findings update previous surveys and provide a more granular picture of the characteristics of librarian-taught credit-bearing courses, the types of academic institutions that offer them and compensation teaching librarians receive. This survey is the first study of credit-bearing IL instruction to include for-profit colleges and universities.

This paper aims to present recently published resources on library instruction and information literacy providing an introductory overview and a selected annotated bibliography of publications covering all library types.

This paper introduces and annotates English-language periodical articles, monographs, dissertations, reports and other materials on library instruction and information literacy published in 2018.

The paper provides a brief description of all 422 sources, and highlights sources that contain unique or significant scholarly contributions.

The information may be used by librarians and anyone interested as a quick reference to literature on library instruction and information literacy.

With Complete College America and renewed interest in performance‐based funding models for higher education, colleges are focused on improving retention, progression and graduation rates. Many schools bring lower‐achieving students to campus for a pre‐first‐year program called Summer Bridge to give them an introduction to college. These summer programs have varying levels of library involvement. The authors aim to compare the level of library involvement at their institution with that of libraries where similar programs exist.

The authors searched for schools with summer bridge programs, read through their program descriptions to find ones that were similar to their own situation (e.g. not STEM‐focused or Upward Bound), and sent a survey to 103 libraries. In total, 42 responded.

Of the responding libraries 88 percent have face‐to‐face instruction with the summer bridge participants, however only 33 percent of the libraries did any assessment of this contact. Ten of the respondents teach credit‐bearing information literacy courses, but none offers this to the summer bridge students.

Many states require institutions to demonstrate student success in order to compete for limited state funds. Libraries have an important role to student success and librarians should strategically place themselves within that conversation. This article provides some possible means to help with summer bridge students.

A search through library and education literature reveals that little has been written about library involvement with programs that are not Upward Bound affiliated. This case study and its survey respond to a gap in the literature of both fields.

This paper aims to explore both instruction librarians' attitudes on teaching and how they identify themselves as teachers. Particular attention is to be paid to teaching librarians' views on the effectiveness of two types of instruction models: for‐credit courses and course‐integrated library instruction.

To investigate librarians' attitudes towards these two models, a survey was constructed targeting librarians who teach information literacy (IL).

The results indicate that there is an important relationship between the IL instruction model employed and feelings towards campus politics, perceived effectiveness of IL models, and librarians' self‐identification as teachers.

The survey was sent to list‐servs whose readership includes high percentages of teaching librarians and received 276 responses. This is by no means an exhaustive study. The research is intended to be exploratory and to delve more deeply than the past editorials and blog posts on the issue of comparing for‐credit and course‐integrated instruction.

This study can help librarians gain a better understanding of how information literacy models impact librarian perceptions of themselves and their role on campus.

The authors seek to transform a discussion that has occurred mostly informally (in blog posts, on list‐servs, and in conversations) into a formal investigation of librarians' attitudes towards the two models.

This paper presents recently published resources on library instruction and information literacy, providing an introductory overview and a selected annotated bibliography of publications covering various library types, study populations and research contexts.

This paper introduces and annotates English-language periodical articles, monographs, dissertations, reports and other materials on library instruction and information literacy published in 2020.

The paper provides a brief description of all 440 sources and highlights sources that contain unique or significant scholarly contributions.

The information may be used by librarians, researchers and anyone interested in a quick and comprehensive reference to literature on library instruction and information literacy.

After an overview of the literature on challenges facing library instructors and their coordinators, the chapter describes how the communities of practice model relates to professional development in librarianship, specifically in the area of instructional development. A case study of a community of practice fostered by an instruction coordinator at an academic library is detailed. Academic librarians may encounter several challenges when entering the classroom as library instructors, and instruction coordinators seek to address these and other challenges as they build library instruction programs. By developing a community of practice, instruction coordinators can enable library instructors to learn together. The case study describes how the Instruction Coordinator cultivates library instructor development for members of the Teaching and Learning Team at Loyola University New Orleans’ Monroe Library through a community of practice model. The practical implications for this chapter are that instruction coordinators can establish instructional development opportunities that allow library instructors to enhance their teaching abilities and ultimately further library instruction programs. Communities of practice are well known in several fields and have been discussed in the library literature. This chapter provides additional value to researchers and practitioners through the discussion and application of the concept in the context of library instruction at academic institutions. The case study provides specific examples of how instruction coordinators at other academic libraries can apply the community of practice model and instructional development opportunities to a library instruction program in order to build and sustain a learning culture that supports library instructor development.

The purpose of this paper is to ask how the academic library may better position itself to assist with the demonstrated need for improved research ability in doctoral students. The paper examines the literature on doctoral student retention, which demonstrates problems with research self‐efficacy in students, and connects this issue to the library literature demonstrating the impact of library instruction.

The main approach is the review of the literatures in library science on the impact of instruction, and in the wider education literature on student retention and doctoral student attrition.

It was found that library instruction does demonstrably improve student research skills, and that doctoral students are generally underprepared to conduct dissertation level research. There is a case for partnering doctoral students with academic librarians to improve dissertation completion rates and lower attrition due to lack of research skill.

The paper demonstrates an obvious need for focus of library instruction on graduate students, and doctoral students in particular. The paper poses a number of research agendas that can be taken up by practitioners in the field, including various models for implementing instruction for doctoral students.

Attrition from doctoral programs has a burdensome impact on academic institutions, and has been demonstrated to have adverse social, psychological and financial impacts on the doctoral students themselves. The ability of library intervention to alleviate the problem has wide‐ranging implications.

The paper brings a wider literature base to bear on the practice of library instruction, and raises important questions relevant to librarians and graduate faculty about the value of the library to more advanced research students and the current focus of most library instruction programs at the undergraduate levels.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how a credit‐bearing information literacy course was enhanced through the use of video lectures to deliver course content. Students have a choice of how to access course materials: video lectures or reading material.

A literature review shows that, previously, videos have been used largely to supplement face‐to‐face classes or one‐shot library instruction sessions. A description details the production of video lectures for one of the courses that satisfies the information literacy graduation requirement at Weber State University. For this course, a student survey was then used to measure the actual use and effectiveness of the video lectures.

Survey results indicate that a majority of students use the video lectures, at least partly, and find them helpful.

Results also show that many students are comfortable reading course materials rather than viewing the lectures. As more courses incorporate video lectures, holdouts should become more comfortable with the format.

Video lectures are relatively easy to create, and can be used to enhance online information literacy classes. Students can view the video lectures at their convenience.

Video production tools such as Camtasia Studio are used for library instruction and other face‐to‐face classes, but are not widely used in online courses. Adding video lectures to an online course gives students options on how to access the course content.

While the important role of information literacy instruction as a central service in academic libraries is well observed in scholarly literature, there has been little examination of the impact of the rapid increase of instructional duties on practicing librarians, whose traditional instruction duties have expanded or whose positions have not traditionally required leading a classroom. The study in this chapter explores librarians’ perceptions of the impact that increased instruction tasks have had on their day-to-day and long-term goals, perceptions of the support they receive in performing their instructional duties, and what types of instruction training they have received throughout their career. The ways in which the addition of instruction duties for librarians have been perceived by the librarians themselves as they strive to increase support for instructional services without impacting the library’s ability to continue to perform traditional public and technical services functions is discussed as a marker of the future needs of the field and the necessity of recognizing professional strain.