Journal Article: “Technical Practices Used by Information Literacy and Media Information Literacy Services to Enable Academic Libraries to Handle the COVID-19 Pandemic”

The article linked below was recently published by the Journal of Information Literacy.

Title

Technical Practices Used by Information Literacy and Media Information Literacy Services to Enable Academic Libraries to Handle the COVID-19 Pandemic

Authors

Eugenia de los Angeles Ortega-Martínez
Universidad San Ignacio de Loyola; University of Minnesota Duluth

César Saavedra-Alamillas
Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México; Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana

Matthew Rosendahl
Kathryn A. Martin Library; University of Minnesota

Apolinar Sánchez-Hernández
Central Library; National Autonomous University of Mexico

Source

Journal of Information Literacy
v. 16, n. 1, p. 181-193, June 2022

DOI: 10.11645/16.1.3057

Abstract

This study analyses the techniques and procedures that were developed and the changes that took place in the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and the Autonomous University of Puebla (BUAP), both in Mexico, and the University of Minnesota Duluth (UMD), in the United States of America. To face the crisis of the COVID-19 pandemic, librarians in these institutions improved their Information Literacy (IL) and Media Information Literacy (MIL) programmes.

Design / methodology / approach

This study has a mixed methodology with a comparative analysis. For this purpose, data shows the universities’ contexts: the communities of students, teachers, researchers, and librarians, and the e-learning strategies of IL and MIL programmes.

Findings

As part of the results of the crowdsourcing collaboration between the UMD, UNAM and BUAP, the study shows the different online learning communities and their innovations.

Originality

Although there is theoretical knowledge about IL and MIL in Mexican universities and University of Minnesota Duluth, the e-learning strategies used by their librarians in this document sought to provide technical solutions and other options for a virtual work scheme that responded to the specific problems presented by COVID-19. In this case, the framework for creating online library services was designed by their librarians for their communities in the context of the current crisis, even when online services had already been established for more than ten years.

 

Research limitations / implications

The technological infrastructure, the professionalisation of the library staff and a lack of knowledge of the new virtual teaching-learning needs.

Practical implications

Analysis of tools for virtual teaching-learning services, description of strategies used by library staff, results and feedback.

Social implications

IL and MIL strategies created in a variety of contexts can be enhanced by library collaboration in a fully virtual setting. Libraries with better technological infrastructure play a decisive role.

Direct to Full Text Article
14 pages; PDF.

Filed under: Academic Libraries, Data Files, Libraries, News