Publisher's Synopsis
Library instruction, also called bibliographic instruction (BI), user education and library orientation, consists of instructional programs designed to teach library users how to locate the information they need quickly and effectively. It usually covers the library's system of organizing materials, the structure of the literature of the field, research methodologies appropriate to the academic discipline, and specific resources and finding tools. It prepares individuals to make immediate and lifelong use of information effectively by teaching the concepts and logic of information access and evaluation, and by fostering information independence and critical thinking. Critical theory acknowledges its presuppositions: it holds that the public needs remedies to social ills and injustice manifested by subjectively experienced or objectively attributable discontent. But without a realistic concept of "emancipatory interests" that puts at the center the idea of a core of rational responsiveness on the part of subjects, perhaps neither critical theory nor librarianship will have a future. In the same way, any LIS praxis that blocks rational responsiveness on the part of the public using its services, its own practitioners, and its interaction with outside groups, either by what is given or dialectically unequal rhetoric, LIS's own justification slips into technical instrumentation and as a work practice remains to outsiders either a mystery without warrant or subscribed in its intellectual and professional work without value. Self-critique requires a framework for self-reflection on many fronts and a framework for content: what facts are in play, what beliefs and values are, how belief is warranted and communicated without and within a field. It is not easy to give up the familiar, but by loosening the hold of the given, the core values of LIS of an informed individual, self-advocating and communicative. Critical Library Instruction Theories and Methods is a compilation of articles about various ways of applying critical pedagogy and related educational theories to library instruction. This text provides an overview of major critical theories discusses the importance of critical perspectives for the advancement of LIS research. Library instruction, also called bibliographic instruction (BI), user education and library orientation, consists of instructional programs designed to teach library users how to locate the information they need quickly and effectively. It usually covers the library's system of organizing materials, the structure of the literature of the field, research methodologies appropriate to the academic discipline, and specific resources and finding tools. It prepares individuals to make immediate and lifelong use of information effectively by teaching the concepts and logic of information access and evaluation, and by fostering information independence and critical thinking. Critical theory acknowledges its presuppositions: it holds that the public needs remedies to social ills and injustice manifested by subjectively experienced or objectively attributable discontent. But without a realistic concept of "emancipatory interests" that puts at the center the idea of a core of rational responsiveness on the part of subjects, perhaps neither critical theory nor librarianship will have a future. In the same way, any LIS praxis that blocks rational responsiveness on the part of the public using its services, its own practitioners, and its interaction with outside groups, either by what is given or dialectically unequal rhetoric, LIS's own justification slips into technical instrumentation and as a work practice remains to outsiders either a mystery without warrant or subscribed in its intellectual and professional work without value. Self-critique requires a framework for self-reflection on many fronts and a framework for content: what facts are in play, what beliefs and values are, how belief is warranted and communicated without and within a field. It is not easy to give up the familiar, but by loosening the hold of the given, the core values of LIS of an informed individual, self-advocating and communicative. Critical Library Instruction Theories and Methods is a compilation of articles about various ways of applying critical pedagogy and related educational theories to library instruction. This text provides an overview of major critical theories discusses the importance of critical perspectives for the advancement of LIS research. Library instruction, also called bibliographic instruction (BI), user education and library orientation, consists of instructional programs designed to teach library users how to locate the information they need quickly and effectively. It usually covers the library's system of organizing materials, the structure of the literature of the field, research methodologies appropriate to the academic discipline, and specific resources and finding tools. It prepares individuals to make immediate and lifelong use of information effectively by teaching the concepts and logic of information access and evaluation, and by fostering information independence and critical thinking. Critical theory acknowledges its presuppositions: it holds that the public needs remedies to social ills and injustice manifested by subjectively experienced or objectively attributable discontent. But without a realistic concept of "emancipatory interests" that puts at the center the idea of a core of rational responsiveness on the part of subjects, perhaps neither critical theory nor librarianship will have a future. In the same way, any LIS praxis that blocks rational responsiveness on the part of the public using its services, its own practitioners, and its interaction with outside groups, either by what is given or dialectically unequal rhetoric, LIS's own justification slips into technical instrumentation and as a work practice remains to outsiders either a mystery without warrant or subscribed in its intellectual and professional work without value. Self-critique requires a framework for self-reflection on many fronts and a framework for content: what facts are in play, what beliefs and values are, how belief is warranted and communicated without and within a field. It is not easy to give up the familiar, but by loosening the hold of the given, the core values of LIS of an informed individual, self-advocating and communicative. Critical Library Instruction Theories and Methods is a compilation of articles about various ways of applying critical pedagogy and related educational theories to library instruction. This text provides an overview of major critical theories discusses the importance of critical perspectives for the advancement of LIS research.
