Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Engelond: A Model for Faculty-Librarian Collaboration in the Information Age Scott, Walter Information Technology and Libraries; Mar 2000; 19, 1; ProQuest pg. 34 one-stop place for presenting scholar- ly research. Staff support includes consulta- tion in any aspect of the Bailiwick project, including design issues, inter- face development, and training in software. Staff members do not pro- vide programming nor do they do any work in researching or assembling sites. Each faculty member is assigned an Information Arcade consultant at the point of submitting a bailiwick application. The consultant serves as a primary contact person for technical support, troubleshooting, basic inter- face design guidance, and referrals to other staff both in the libraries and on campus. At present, the current level of staffing has been sufficient to accommodate this sort of assistance, which is not unlike the assistance pro- vided to any patron who walks in the door of the Information Arcade. As a computing facility, the Information Arcade provides public access to a host of multimedia devel- opment workstations for scanning images, slides, and text, and for digi- tizing video and audio. At these mul- timedia stations, a large suite of multimedia integration software and Web publishing software is made available for public use. Staff at the public services desk have a strong background in multimedia develop- ment and Web design and can pro- vide some one-on-one training on a walk-in basis beyond technical sup- port and troubleshooting. All of these hardware and software resources are available to Bailiwick content providers, who can choose to do their development work in the Information Arcade or at their home or office. Finally, since there is a close rela- tionship between the Information Arcade and the university libraries Web site, system administration and Web server support is all handled in- house as well. There are few artificial barriers imposed by the technology, thereby permitting content providers to focus on their creative expression and scholarly work. With only minimal reallocation of existing resources, the University of Iowa Libraries has been able to launch the Bailiwick project and con- tinue to develop it at a modest pace. One of the components most essen- tial for its continued success, howev- er, is the ability to scale up to meet the expected demand over the next sev- eral years. Technical infrastructure challenges are not overwhelming as yet. An analysis still needs to be made to determine how quickly creators are developing their sites, what the implications are for network delivery of these resources, what reasonable projections there are for disk space, and who is using the resources. Perhaps more importantly, though, adequate staffing will always remain a concern. Some faculty wish to work more closely with library staff consultants than time allows, and the consultants would certainly find it enriching to be more intimate- ly involved with the development of each bailiwick site. Marketing of the Bailiwick project has been discrete (to say the least) because of the limited staffing available. However, embed- ded in the collaboration inherent in bailiwicks is the potential for stronger involvement with faculty in obtaining grant funding to support the develop- ment of specific bailiwick sites. A Model for Research Libraries Bailiwick is a project that allows the University of Iowa Libraries, and specifically the Information Arcade, to focus on the integration of technol- ogy, multimedia, and hypertext in the context of scholarship and research. To date, most of the bailiwick sites represent disciplines in the arts, humanities, and social sciences. This matches the overall clientele of the Information Arcade (given its loca- tion in the University of Iowa's Main Library), but it also reflects the fact that these disciplines have been tradi- 34 INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND LIBRARIES I MARCH 2000 tionally undersupported with respect to technology. Nevertheless, individ- ual faculty in these disciplines have integrated some of the most creative applications of the technology in their everyday teaching and research, in part because of the existence of the Information Arcade and the ground- work laid by the libraries for the past several years. With the Information Arcade's vis- ibility on campus, and with similar resources and support in the Information Commons-a sister facili- ty in the Hardin Library for the Health Sciences-the University of Iowa Libraries are well regarded on campus as a leader in information technology, electronic publishing, and new media. Thus, faculty and students alike are accustomed to turning to the libraries for innovation in technology and the Bailiwick project is a natural fit. Bailiwick is now fully integrated as part of a palette of new technology services and scholarly resources included within the libraries' support of teaching, learning, and research at the University of Iowa. Engelond: A Model for Faculty-Librarian Collaboration in the Information Age Scott Walter The question of how best to incorporate information literacy instruction into the academic curriculum has long been a lead- ing concern of academic librarians. In Scott Walter (walter.123@osu.edu), formerly Humanities and Educaton Reference Librarian, University of Missouri-Kansas City, now is Information Services Librarian, Ohio State University. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. recent years, this issue has grown beyond the boundaries of professional librarianship and has become a general concern regular- ly addresssed by classroom faculty, educa- tional administrators, and even regional accrediting organizations and state legisla- tures. This essay reports on the success of a pilot program in course-integration infor- mation literacy instruction in the field of medieval studies. The author's experience with the "Enge/and" project provides a model for the ways in which information literacy instruction can be effectively inte- grated into the academic curriculum, and for the ways in which a successful pilot program can both lead the way for further development of the general instructional program in an academic library, and serve as a springboard for future collaborative projects between classroom faculty and aca- demic librarians. In 1989 the Chronicle of Higher Education reported on the proceed- ings of a conference on teaching and technology held near the Richmond, Indiana campus of Earlham College.1 Conference speakers identified a number of concerns for those involved in teaching and learning at the end of the twentieth century. Chief among these were recent advances in information technology that threatened "to leave students adrift in a sea of information." Earlham College librarian Evan I. Farber and his fellow speakers called upon conference attendees to devel- op new teaching strategies that would help students learn how to evaluate and make use of the "mass- es of information" now accessible to them through emergent information technologies, and to embrace a col- laborative teaching model that would allow academic librarians and classroom faculty members to work together in developing instructional objectives appropriate to the infor- mation age. The concerns expressed by these faculty and administrators for the information literacy skills of their students may have still seemed unusual to the general educational community in the late 1980s, but, as Behrens and Breivik have demon- strated, such concerns have been a leading issue for academic librarians for more than twenty years. According to its most popular defini- tion, information literacy may be understood as "[the ability] to recog- nize when information is needed and ... the ability to locate, evaluate, and use effectively the needed informa- tion."2 It has become increasingly clear over the past decade that edu- cators at every level consider infor- mation literacy a critical educational issue in contemporary society. Perhaps the most frequently cited example of concern among educa- tional policy-makers for the informa- tion literacy skills of the student body can be found in Ernest Boyer's report to the Carnegie Foundation, College: The Undergraduate Experience in America (1987), in which the author concludes that "all undergraduates should be introduced to the full range of resources for learning on campus," and that students should spend "at least as much time in the library ... as they spend in classes."3 But while Boyer's report may be the most famil- iar example of such concern, it is hardly unique. As Breivik and Gee have described, a small group of edu- cational leaders have regularly expressed similar concerns over the past several decades. Moreover, as Bodi et al. among others, have demonstrated, the rise in professional interest in information literacy issues among librarians in the past decade is closely related to more general con- cerns among the educational commu- nity, especially the desire to foster critical thinking skills among the stu- dent body. By the mid-1990s, profes- sional organizations such as the National Education Association, accrediting bodies such as the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools, and even state legislators began to incorporate information lit- eracy competencies into proposals for educational reform at both the sec- ondary and the post-secondary lev- els. The confluence over the past decade of new priorities in educa- tional reform with rapid develop- ments in information technology provided a perfect opportunity for academic librarians to develop and implement formal information litera- cy programs on their campuses, and to assume a higher profile in terms of classroom instruction. For the past two years, a pilot project has been underway at the Miller Nichols Library of the University of Missouri-Kansas City that not only fosters collaborative relations between classroom faculty members and librarians, but pro- motes the development of higher- order information literacy skills among participating members of the student body. Engelond: Resources for 14th-Century English Studies (www.umkc.edu/lib I engelond/) incorporates traditional library instruction in information access as well as instruction in how to apply critical thinking skills to the contem- porary information environment into the academic curriculum of partici- pating courses in the field of medieval studies. Our experience with the Engelond project provides a model for the ways in which informa- tion literacy instruction can be effec- tively integrated into the academic curriculum, and for the ways in which a successful pilot program can both lead the way for further devel- opment of the general instructional program in an academic library, and serve as a springboard for future col- laborative projects between class- room faculty members and librarians. The Impetus for Collaboration "Most medieval Web sites are dreck," or so wrote Linda E. Voigts, curators' professor of English at the University COMMUNICATIONS I WALTER 35 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. of Missouri-Kansas City, in a recent review of her participation in the Engelond project for the Medieval Academy News. Describing the impe- tus for the development of the proj- ect in terms of a complaint increasingly common among mem- bers of the classroom faculty, Voigts provides a number of examples from recent years in which students made extensive, but inappropriate, use of Web-based information resources in their academic research. In one example, Voigts describes a student who made the mistake of relying heavily on what appeared to be an authoritative essay for her report on medieval medical practices. The report was actually authored by a radiologist "with little apparent knowledge of either the Middle Ages or of premodern medicine." "How can those of us who teach the Middle Ages," Voigts asked, "help our stu- dents find in the morass of rubbish on the Internet the relatively few pearls? How can we foster skills for distinguishing between true pearls and those glittery paste jewels that dissolve upon close examination?"4 By the time Voigts approached the Miller Nichols Library during the fall 1997 semester for suggestions about the best ways to teach her stu- dents how to "sift the Web" in their search for resources suitable for aca- demic research in medieval studies, the issue of faculty-librarian collabo- ration in Internet instruction was a familiar one. In a representative review of the literature, Jayne and Vander Meer identified three "com- mon approaches" that libraries have taken to the problem of teaching stu- dents how to apply critical thinking skills to the use of Web-based infor- mation resources: (1) the develop- ment of generic evaluative criteria that may be applied to Web-based information resources; (2) the inclu- sion of Web-based information resources as simply one more materi- al type to be evaluated during the course of one's research (i.e., adding Lo.st updated : 27.April 1999 ! Enge/and supports the research of students in Dr . Linda Ehrsam Voigts' Chaucer (English 4121512 ) and Medieval Literature II (English 555A) courses at the University of Miss ouri-K ansas City. The site was created by the University Libraries' Public Services Staff with the collaboration of Dr . Voigts . We hope it will serve as a prototype for future collaborative efforts integrating library resources, course content. and multi-media technologies These pages contain syllabi for both courses, links to Internet resources (including web sites. news groups and online discussion groups relevant to medieval studies) . a guide to evaluating both online and print research tools. a list of materials held on reserve at Miller Nich ols Library for the use of these classes. and links to the MERLIN Library Catalog and a wide range of databases available through the University Libraries . AudioNisual resources include Rea!Audio streams of Dr. Voigts reading from Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and Troi/us and Criseyde . Also included is Joshua Merrill's 'From Gatehouse to Cathedral A Phot ograp hic Pilgrimage to Chaucerian Landmarks .' , ,~ • • I ~ I I Ju l . • I t• II I I I ' • "I h d1,t I lt.;l 1.,,ld~.;, ..,;,.,"' r'\UU,V I io 1.;:,U.Ji .;l ,t. '•·" ;,t.,:, ),J l..,l<;i~.;tl.., .... J -'-' ' • J ~ Figure 1. Engelond Home Page the Web to the litany of resources, popular and scholarly, print and elec- tronic, typically addressed in a gen- eral instructional session); and (3) working with faculty to integrate critical thinking skills into an aca- demic assignment that asks students to use or evaluate Web-based infor- mation resources relevant to their coursework. 5 While the Engelond project focused primarily on the last of these options, our work on the project also fostered the use of the first two approaches in our broader instructional program. Engelond's Landscape The Engelond Web site provides access to a number of resources for participat- ing students. These resources may be categorized as course-specific (e.g., course syllabi), information literacy- related (e.g., a set of evaluative criteria for use with Web-based information resources), or multimedia (e.g., sound recordings of Voigts reading excerpts from Chaucer's works in Middle English). All of these resources are accessible from the Engelond home page www.umkc.edu/lib/engelond/) (see figure 1). Several links are also provided throughout the site to resources housed on the library's Web site, including access to elec- tronic databases and subject-specif- ic guides to relevant resources in the print collection. Although stu- dents make use of all of these resources during the course of the semester, the emphasis in this essay will be on describing the nature and use of the information literacy-relat- ed resources. As Behrens and Euster have noted, recent interest in information literacy instruction has been guided to a degree by concern over student ability to make effective use of new forms of information technology. This concern is addressed in the Engelond project by its "Internet Resources" page, through which stu- dents are acquainted with the archi- tecture of the Internet and are provided with annotated references (and links) to a number of electronic resources (including Web portals) that will allow them to begin their research in medieval studies. Students making use of the page are 36 INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND LIBRARIES I MARCH 2000 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. introduced, for example, to a variety of the different types of information resourc e s available through the Internet, including Web sites, Telnet sites, news groups, and discussion lists. Users are also directed to relat- ed resources on the library Web site, including a guide to print resources for the study of Chaucer and an annotat ed guide to Web-based infor- mation resources generally useful for the study of literatur e . 6 Also provided on the Engelond site is a discussion of evaluative cri- teria that students might apply to their selection of Web-based informa- tion resources for academic research. Designed to address Voigts' initial concern about the issue of teaching students how to apply critical think- ing skills to their use of the Web, the "Criteria" page provides a general discussion of the nature of Web- based information resources, the ways in which such resources differ from traditional resources, and the kinds of questions that students must ask of any Web-based resource before making use of it in their aca- demic work . Reflecting the idea that information literacy skills are best taught in connection with a specific subject matter, the "Criteria" page includes references to a number of illustrative examples of Web-based resources in medieval studies. This page also reflects the evolutionary nature of the Engelond project, since new illustrations are added as each successive group of student users discovers different examples (both positive and negative). Also included on this page is a link to the library 's "Quick Reference Guide to Evaluating Resources on the World Wide Web," a generic version of the criteria developed for use with the broader instruction program at the Miller Nichols Library . 7 While the resources described above introduce students to the information landscape in the field of medieval studies and provide them with evaluative tools tailored to sub- ject-specific concerns in making use of Web-based information resources in their academic work, the final information literacy-related resource made available through the Engelond site is perhaps of the great- est interest. The "Class Picks" page presents the results of participating students' Web site evaluati on assign- ments. On this page , user s will find student evaluations of Web-based resources in medieval studies that draw not only on the information lit- eracy skills provided through tradi- tional library instruction, but also on the subject-specific knowledge that students gain as part of their aca- demic coursework. Jayne and Vander Meer wrote that faculty-librarian collaboration in Internet instruction is most effective when students are asked to draw both on generic informational litera- cy skills and on information and evaluative criteria specific to the sub- ject matter being addressed.8 As they concluded, " [to] benefit fully from the Web's potential, stud ents need training and guidance from librari- ans and faculty." Incorporating dis- cussions of site design, organization of information, and veracity of con- tent, the Web site evaluations found on the "Class Picks" page demon- strate that participating students have learned both from the librarian and the scholar, and hav e begun to consider the best ways to incorporate Web-based information resources into their day-to-day academic work. In a review of "The Harvard Chaucer Page " (http:/ / icg.fas. harvard .edu / -chaucer /) , for exam- ple, students note the general appeal of the site, but criticize it both for technical problems in its design and for editorial choices that limit its util- ity for academic research: The Harvard Chaucer is an insightful , colorful look at the author and his times, but is dappled conspicuously with misspellings, repeated phrases , sentence fragments, broken links, and unfinished pages . Translations of medieval texts provided on the site are often anonymou s, making it hard to tell if the translation is credible and an acceptable resourc e for serious research in Chauce r studies. If one is interested in pursuing a topic found on the Harvard Chaucer , s / he is well advised to explore the site for ideas and background infor- mation, but to go elsewhere for authoritative sources .. . 9 In another review , this one of "The Medieval Feminist Index" (www.haverford.edu / library/ reference/mschaus/mfi/mfi.html), students provide a discussion of the scholarly authority of the site as well as a description of the results retrieved in sample searches of the index for materials relevant to the study of Chaucer. 10 The review con- cludes with further examples of issues relevant to Chaucer studies that might be effectively investigated with information identified through this resource. In both reviews, stu- dents demonstrate the ability to criti- cally evaluate a Web site both for its design and for its content , and the ability to express the strengths and weaknesses of a site from the point of view of a student concerned with how to make use of a Web-based information resource in his or her academic work. As a result, the reviews found on the "Class Picks" page not only demonstrate the suc- cessful approach to course-integrated information literacy instruction pro- moted through the Engelond project, but also provide a useful student resource in their own right. The Collaborative Approach In her review of faculty-librarian partnerships in information literacy instruction, Smalley wrote that, in the best-case scenario, "the student gains COMMUNICATIONS I WALTER 37 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. mastery in using some portion of Internet resources, as well as expo- sure to resources intrinsically impor- tant to disciplinary pursuits. In doing the Web-based exercises, students see information seeking and evaluation as essential parts of problem solving within the field of study." 11 The three information literacy-related resources found on the Engelond site- "Internet Resources," "Criteria, " and "Class Picks" -demonstrate one approach to providing course-inte- grated information literacy instruc- tion in such a way that the classroom faculty member and the academic librarian can work collaboratively and productively to meet their mutu- al instructional goals . Both the classroom faculty mem- ber and the cooperating librarian are able to meet their instructional goals using the Engelond model because of the collaborative nature of the infor- mation literacy instruction provided to the participating students. Students enrolled in Voigts' Chaucer class during the winter 1999 semester received information literacy instruc- tion focused both on information access and critical thinking while completing successive iterations of the Web site evaluation assignment required for the course. A brief overview of the collaborative teach- ing process should suggest ways in which the participating faculty mem- ber and librarian were able to draw successfully both on generic infor- mation literac y skills and on subject- specific knowledge while conducting course-integrated library instruction using the Engelond site. Participating students during the winter 1999 semester began with a general introduction to the electronic resources available through the Miller Nichols Library at the University of Missouri-Kansas City (e.g., using the online catalog and databases such as the MLA Bibliog- raphy) . Students were then presented with an introduction to the problem of applying critical thinking skills to the use of Web-based information resources, as described on Engelond's "Criteria" page. Following this intro- ductory session conducted by the cooperating librarian, the cooperat- ing faculty member provided stu- dents with a number of illustrative examples of the inappropriate use of electronic resources for academic research in medieval studies. From the beginning, the librarian and the faculty member modeled an integrat- ed approach to the evaluation of information resources for their stu- dents; one that drew both on generic critical thinking skills and on specific examples of how such skills might be applied to resources in their field. Following this initial session (which took place during the first week of the semester) , students were asked to complete an evaluation of a Web site containing information they might consider using as part of their academic work. Individual sites were chosen from among those accessible through the subject-specific Web por- tals provided on the "Internet Resources" page. Students were pro- vided both with the library's "Quick Reference Guide to Evaluating Resources on the World Wide Web" and with the more extensive descrip- tion of Web site evaluation available on the "Criteria" page . Students completed these initial reviews over the following week and submitted copies to both the faculty member and the librarian . In preparation for the second instructional session (which took place during the third week of the semester), the faculty member and the librarian evaluated each review twice (individually, and then togeth- er). Reviews were evaluated for the clarity of their criticism of a site, both from the point of view of information organization and design and from the point of view of the significance of the information for student research in the field . Sites that seemed to merit further review by the entire class were selected from 38 INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND LIBRARIES I MARCH 2000 this pool of evaluations and were discussed in greater detail by the instructors. The second instructional session took the form of an extended review of the sites selected in the meeting described above . In each case, stu- dents were asked to describe their reaction to the site in question. In cases where more than one student had evaluated the same site, each student was asked to present one or two distinct points from his or her review. The instructors then present- ed their reactions to the site. Again, the librarian and the faculty member modeled for the students an approach to the critical evaluation of information resources that drew not only on the professional expertise of the librarian, but also on the scholar- ly expertise of the faculty member . By the end of this session, students had been exposed to three separate critiques of the selected Web sites: the student's opinion of how the information presented on the site might be used in academic research; the librarian 's opinion of how effec- tively the information was organized and presented, and how its authority, currency, etc ., might differ from that of comparable print resources; and, finally, the faculty member's opinion of the place and value of the infor- mation provided on the site in the broader scheme of the discipline. Following this session, the stu- dents were assigned to groups in order to develop more detailed eval- uations of the Web sites discussed in class. As before, these assignments were submitted both to the faculty member and to the librarian. After further review by both instructors, the assignments were returned to the students for a third (and final) itera- tion, and then mounted to the "Class Picks" page. By the conclusion of this assignment, participating students had learned not only how to apply critical thinking skills to Web-based information resources, but had begun to think about the nature of Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. electronic information and the many forms that such information can take. The Web site evaluations included on the "Class Picks" page demonstrate the students' ability to successfully evaluate a Web-based information resource both for its design and for its content, and to suggest the aca- demic situations in which its use might be warranted for a student of medieval literature. Evaluating Engelond During the winter 1999 semester, we attempted to evaluate the success of the information literacy instruction provided through the Engelond proj- ect. While the Web site evaluations produced by the students provided one obvious measure of our instruc- tional success, we attempted to learn more about the ways in which stu- dents used the materials provided through the Engelond site by polling users and by examining use patterns on the site. Both of these latter meas- ures confirmed what the instructors already suspected: students enrolled in participating courses were making heavy use of the information litera- cy-related resources housed on the Engelond site and saw the skills fos- tered by those resources as a valuable complement to the disciplinary knowledge being gained in the tradi- tional classroom. As part of a general evaluation of the instructional services provided by the library during the course of the semester, students participating in the Engelond project were asked open-ended questions such as: "What features of the Engelond Web site did you find most useful as a student in this course?"; "How did the existence of the Engelond site and the collaboration between your classroom instructor and the library enhance your learning experience in this course?"; and "What aspects of the library instruction that you received as part of this course do you believe will be useful to you in other courses or in regards to life- long learning?" Among the specific items cited most often by students as being useful to them in their aca- demic work were two of the infor- mation literacy-related resources: "Internet Resources" and "Class Picks." Likewise , information litera- cy skills such as familiarity with the structure of the Internet and the abil- ity to critically evaluate Web-based information resources were listed by almost every student as skills that would be useful both in other aca- demic courses and in their daily lives . Moreover, two graduate stu- dents who were participants report- ed that their experience with Engelond had led them to incorpo- rate information literacy instruction into the undergraduate courses that they taught themselves. Any conclusions about the appeal of the information literacy- related resources housed on the Engelond site based on these narra- tive responses were reinforced by a study of the use statistics for the same period. Through the first three months of the winter 1999 semester Ganuary-March), the Engelond site recorded approximately one thou- sand "hits" on its main page.12 In each month, the most frequently accessed pages were the three infor- mation literacy-related resources described above, with the "Criteria" page regularly recording the greatest number of hits . Among the other most-frequently visited pages on the site were the multimedia resource page (" Audio -Visual"), the "Syllabi" page, and the "Quick Reference Guide to Chaucer" (housed on the library Web site, but accessible through the "Internet Resources" page). Taken in conjunction with the narrative responses provided on the evaluation form , these use statistics suggest that the information literacy resources provided through the Engelond site have become a fully- integrated, and greatly appreciated, feature of the academic curriculum in medieval studies in the Depart- ment of English at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. A Model for Future Collaboration The Engelond project has not only been a success with students who have enrolled in participating cours- es, but has had a significant influence on the broader instructional program at the Miller Nichols Library. It has served as a template for future col- laborative efforts between the class- room faculty and the library in terms of integrating information technolo- gy and information literacy into the academic curriculum. In terms of the instructional pro- gram at the Miller Nichols Library, our experience with Engelond helped lay the groundwork for the development of new instructional materials and for new instructional programs . It was through Engelond, for example, that we first provided electronic access to our point-of-serv- ice guides to library materials in var- ious subjects (e.g., the "Library Guide to Chaucer"). As of the end of the winter 1999 semester, we have made almost all of our pathfinders available on the library Web site and are now considering ways in which these might be effectively incorporat- ed into the work being done by our faculty in developing Web-based coursework. Also, it was through Engelond that our subject specialists started col- lecting and annotating Web-based information resources of potential use to our students and faculty. Now, sub- ject specialists are developing "subject guides" to Web-based resources in a number of fields and promoting their use among faculty members who , like Voigts, are concerned about the quali- ty of the Web-based information being used by their students in their COMMUNICATIONS I WALTER 39 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. !' Miller Nichols Library About the TL TC Services Schedule Workshops Staff Technology for Learning and Teaching Center A UMKC FACULTY SERVICE Figure 2. TLTC Home Page academic work. Both our pathfinders and our subject guides to Web-based resources are available online (www. umkc.edu/lib /instruction/guides/ index.html). Finally, the instructional session on the critical evaluation of Web- based resources that has been the centerpiece of library instruction for the Engelond project has now been adapted for inclusion in our normal round of instructional workshops. While support for such innovations in our instructional program clearly existed within the library prior to the initiation of the Engelond project, the project's success has provided an important spur to the development of instructional services in the library. The commitment to collaborative instructional programming demon- strated by the Engelond project has also helped pave the way for the development of the University of Missouri-Kansas City's new Technology for Learning and Teaching (TLT) Center. Housed in the Miller Nichols Library, the TLT Center offers faculty workshops in the use of information technology and a place in which classroom facul- ty, subject specialists, and educational technologists may collaborate on the development of projects such as Engelond. Further information on the TLT Center is available online (www.umkc.edu/tltc/) (see figure 2). Initiating a culture of collabora- tion between members of the class- room faculty and academic librarians can be a difficult task (as so much of the literature has shown). In reviewing our experi- ence with Engelond, we have bene- fited from the suggestions that Hardesty made some years ago about the means of supporting the adoption across campus of an inno- vative instructional model: (1) the librarian must present information literacy instruction in such a way that it does not threaten the role of the classroom faculty member as an authority in the subject matter of the course; (2) the new approach to instructional collaboration must be adopted on a limited basis at first, rather than requiring that all instructional programs immediately adopt the new approach; and (3) the results of a successful pilot projects 40 INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND LIBRARIES I MARCH 2000 must be "readily visible to others" on campus. 13 Designed as a pilot project, Engelond has successfully demon- strated that classroom faculty and academic librarians can collaborate to meet their mutual instructional objectives, both in terms of informa- tion literacy instruction and in terms of academic course content. As infor- mation technology continues to gain a central place in the educational mission of the college and university, it is likely that the sphere of mutual instructional objectives between classroom faculty and academic librarians will only increase. Our careful approach to raising the instructional profile of librarians on campus has been rewarded, too, both by an increasing number of faculty members seeking course-related instruction in our electronic class- room as part of the regular instruc- tional program of the library, and by the institutional commitment of resources to the TLT Center, which will become the nexus of instruction- al collaboration between faculty and librarians on our campus. During the 1999-2000 academic year, no fewer than three academic courses in medieval studies will make use of the Engelond site. As more faculty become aware of the services provided by the TLT Center, such collaborative approaches to information literacy instruction will likely become more evident across a variety of disciplines. The lessons learned over the past two years of project development will be invalu- able as we move to provide course- integrated information literacy instruction to an increasing number of students in an increasingly broad variety of courses. Acknowledgments The Engelond project has benefited from the work of a number of indi- viduals over the past two years, Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. especially Ted P. Sheldon, director of libraries at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, and Marilyn Carbonell, assistant director for col- lection development, both of whom were instrumental in developing the plan for a pilot project in course- integrated information literacy instruction with Professor Voigts. The design for the Engelond site was developed by John LaRoe, former multimedia design technologist at the Miller Nichols Library. The orig- inal text for the site was written by Voigts, LaRoe, and T. Michael Kelly, former humanities reference librari- an at the Miller Nichols Library. Additional text and resources for the site have been developed over the past year by Voigts and myself. In addition, a number of librarians and staff members in the public services division of the Miller Nichols Library devoted time to critiquing the site and to assisting with the cre- ation of the embedded audio files. These contributions may not always be evident to the students who bene- fit from the project, but they were instrumental in our ability to suc- cessfully meet our instructional objectives during the 1998-99 aca- demic year. References and Notes 1. Thomas J. DeLoughry, "Pro- fessors Are Urged to Devise Strategies to Help Students Deal with 'Information Explosion' Spurred by Technology," Chronicle of Higher Education 35 (March 8, 1989), A13, Al5. 2. Shirley J. Behrens, "A Concep- tual Analysis and Historical Overview of Information Literacy," College & Research Libraries 55 Guly 1994): 309-22; Patricia Senn Breivik, Student Learning in the Information Age (Phoenix, Ariz.: Oryx Pr., 1998); "Final Report of the American Library Association Presidential Com- mittee on Information Literacy" (1989), as reproduced in Breivik, Student Learning in the Information Age, 121-37 (quotation is from pp. 121-22). For another recent overview of the development of the theo- ry and practice of information literacy at every level of American education over the past two decades, see Kathleen L. Spitzer and others, Information Literacy: Essential Skills for the Information Age (Syracuse, N.Y.: ERIC Clearinghouse on Information and Technology, 1998). 3. Ernest L. Boyer, College: The Undergraduate Experience in America (New York: Harper & Row, 1987), 165; Patricia Senn Breivik and E. Gordon Gee, Information Literacy: Revolution in the Library (New York: MacMillan, 1989); Sonia Bodi, "Critical Thinking and Bibliographic Instruction: The Relation- ship," Journal of Academic Librarianship 14 Guly 1988): 150-53; Barbara B. Moran, "Library /Classroom Partnerships for the 1990s," C&RL News 51 (June 1990): 511-14; Sonia Bodi, "Collaborating with Faculty in Teaching Critical Thinking: The Role of Librarians," Research Strategies 10 (Spring 1992): 69-76; Hannelore B. Rader, "Information Literacy and the Undergraduate Curriculum," Library Trends 44 (Fall 1995): 270-78; Spitzer and others, Information Literacy; and Breivik, Student Learning in the Information Age, 7-8. On the relation- ship between trends in educational reform favoring the development of criti- cal thinking skills and their relationship to the place of information literacy instruction in higher education, see also Joanne R. Euster, "The Academic Library: Its Place and Role in the Institution," in Academic Libraries: Their Rationale and Role in American Higher Education, Gerard B. McCabe and Ruth J. Person eds. (Westport: Greenwood Pr., 1995), 7; Craig Gibson, "Critical Thinking: Implications for Instruction," RQ 35 (Fall 1995): 27-35. 4. Linda Ersham Voigts, "Teach- ing Students to Sift the Web," Medieval Academy News (Nov. 1998): 5. 5. Elaine Jayne and Patricia Vander Meer, "The Library's Role in Academic Instructional Use of the World Wide Web," Research Strategies 15 (1997): 125. See also Topsy N. Smalley, "Partnering with Faculty to Interweave Internet Instruction into College Coursework," Reference Services Review 26 (Summer 1998): 19-27. 6. Behrens, "A Conceptual Analysis and Historical Overview of Information Literacy," 312; Euster, "The Academic Library," 6; Scott Walter, "UMKC University Libraries: Quick Reference Guide to Chaucer." Accessed Sept. 24, 1999, ww.umkc.edu/lib/ instruction/ guides/ chaucer .html; Scott Walter, "UMKC University Libraries: Subject Guide to Literature." Accessed Sept. 24, 1999, www.umkc.edu/lib/ instruction/ guides/literature.html. All references to specific pages on the Engelond site will be made to the page title, e.g., "Internet Resources." Because Engelond has been designed in a frame- set, it will be easier for interested readers to access the main page at the URL pro- vided in the text and then make use of the navigational buttons provided there. 7. Scott Walter, "UMKC Univ- ersity Libraries: Quick Reference Guide to Evaluating Resources on the World Wide Web." Accessed Sept. 24, 1999, www.umkc.edu/ lib/ instruction/ guides/ webeval.html. 8. Jayne and Vander Meer, "The Library's Role in Academic Instructional Use of the World Wide Web," 125. 9. Laura Arruda and others, review of "The Harvard Chaucer Page." Accessed Accessed Sept. 24, 1999, www.umkc.edu/lib/engelond. 10. Sherrida D. Harris and Jennifer Kearney, review of "The Medieval Feminist Index: Scholarship on Women, Sexuality, and Gender." Accessed Sept. 24, 1999, www.umkc.edu/lib/engelond. 11. Smalley, "Partnering with Faculty to Interweave Internet Instruction into College Coursework," 20. 12. In January 1999 Engelond received 368 hits, with the three most fre- quently accessed items being "Criteria" (157), "Internet Resources" (130), and "Class Picks" (128). In February the total number of hits dropped to 216, with the most frequently accessed items being "Criteria" (130), "Audio-Visual" (59), and "Internet Resources" and "Class Picks" (both with 46). In March the total number of hits was 323, with the favorite resources again being "Criteria" (113), "Internet Resources" (74), and "Class Picks" (65). Statistics are based on a study of the daily use logs. Accessed Sept. 24, 1999,www.umkc.edu/ _reports/. 13. Larry Hardesty, "The Role of the Classroom Faculty in Bibliographic Instruction," in Teaching Librarians to Teach: On-the-Job Training for Bibliographic Instruction Librarians, Alice F. Clark and Kay F. Jones eds. (Metuchen: Scarecrow Pr., 1986), 171-72. COMMUNICATIONS I WALTER 41