Publications and Research
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
7-2026
Abstract
The instructional aspect of reference work has long been acknowledged, especially in academic libraries. The current RUSA guidelines include helping users develop information literacy as a goal of reference. In this context, investigating the presence and nature of information literacy instruction can be used to assess the quality of reference services. This study applied Amy VanScoy’s conceptual/procedural framework for point-of-need instruction to a sample of chat reference transcripts at Lehman College, City University of New York. One of the assessment’s goals was to determine the prevalence of instruction and type of knowledge addressed in reference interactions. Another goal was to identify instructional requests from users and, when present, if librarians met them with the correct type of knowledge. The study found that more than half of chat interactions included instruction, while only a third of them had instructional requests from users. Procedural knowledge was more prevalent in both librarian instruction and user instructional requests.
Comments
Arce, V. (2026). Assessment of Information Literacy Instruction in Reference: Applying VanScoy’s Conceptual and Procedural Framework in Practice. Communications in Information Literacy, 20 (1), 28–46. https://doi.org/10.15760/comminfolit.2026.20.1.3
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