Creating Museum Exhibits Faculty-Librarian Collaboration within a First-Year Research Course

Abstract

Integrating information literacy (IL) into credit-bearing courses is not a new topic for librarians, but few are able to go beyond the traditional one-shot session. Some are able to become embedded in a class, with varying levels of input on the assignments described in the literature. This chapter reports on what could be considered a highly collaborative embedded model of instruction, where the librarians were co-instructors of record and successfully scaffolded IL throughout a semester- or year-long credit-bearing First Year Research Experience (FYRE) course. Recognition of a role for this sustained collaboration between the authors—a museum director and subject librarians—in a research- and writing-intensive service-learning course led to development and delivery of a museum studies course. It was built on a series of student writing assignments and projects that developed specific skill sets in writing practice and critical evaluation and digesting of information. Operating in the context of an undergraduate research experience program, the course provided an opportunity for first-year students from a variety of majors and backgrounds to develop greater facility as competent consumers of scientific and other professional and academic writing and as producers of original writing to be installed as components of museum exhibits.