Abstract
D. Litt. et Phil.
The South African academic information services are starting to pay attention to the
role played by instruction librarians. There is an acknowledgement that librarians as
‘educators’ need to learn how to teach information literacy skills. Instruction
librarians are either not trained educators or do not have a pedagogical background.
Many instruction librarians were placed in, or found themselves, assuming a
teaching role with regard to information literacy instruction, and subsequently refined
their craft while on the job.
The motivation for this study was that librarians as ‘educators’ are faced with
challenges that impact on their teaching role. They have to understand the teaching
methodologies and the application of adult learning principles to the facilitation of
information literacy skills programmes. The success of facilitation and development
of information literacy skills programmes depends on the instruction librarians’ ability
to work in collaboration with academic departments, curriculum designers and other
librarians.
The study was carried out in two parts: a literature survey and an empirical
investigation. The investigation was confined to academic libraries and information
services that have an instruction librarian or subject librarian who facilitates
information literacy skills instruction. The GAELIC (Gauteng and Environs Library
Consortium) members were surveyed in order to limit the study to the nine
participating libraries within the consortium.
The findings of the study were supportive of the objective that there is a desperate
need to have understanding, knowledge and skills regarding the dynamics involved
in the teaching of information literacy skills, in order to make the programme a
success. The study proposes a competency framework for implementation as a
management tool for designing key performance areas (KPA’s) of instruction
librarians.