Situating Library Instruction: A Case Study of Upper-Division Social Work Seminar/Practicum Courses

Abstract

This article details how librarians can create discipline-specific, one-shot sessions that go beyond general bibliographic instruction when teaching outside their own academic backgrounds. This approach asks librarians to center their knowledge seeking and instructional planning within the situated information literacy (IL) process by investigating a liaison area's epistemology, metanarrative, and methodology, in essence, its essential components. This article demonstrates how the situated IL process was applied to learn about social work as a discipline and create more effective and discipline-specific library instruction sessions. Observations during the sessions and instructor feedback afterward demonstrated that an application of this process resulted in sessions that met instructor objectives and better reflected the research processes used in social work. To provide context and transferability, this article discusses the challenges in applying this process and includes practical examples of learning outcomes, instructional materials, and assessment options.