Standards and Frames: Can They Get Along?

A group of academic librarians in New Jersey have put out this Open Letter Regarding the Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education. The letter essentially states that, while the Framework is good, we should not completely discard the ACRL Information Literacy Competency Standards. (The letter also points out some problems with the parallel structure of the "Frames," which is a separate thing.)

I'll admit, even though I'm an Instructional Services Librarian, and I am passionate about information literacy, and I have read through at least two iterations of the Framework for Information Literacy, and I think the Framework is a great effort that gets at the more conceptual, overarching meaning of information literacy, I haven't felt overly compelled to express strong opinions about the Framework either way. Partly this is because I am extremely busy as a community college librarian who wears many hats; but I also tend to be a "let-the-cards-fall-as-they-may" kind of person. Sometimes. When the stakes aren't extremely high.

And I guess I feel like I've got a firm enough grasp of info lit and learning outcomes and assessment and all that jazz that I don't believe that any particular document or iteration of that document is going to truly change what we are about as librarians, or what information literacy is. Because information literacy is something that exists in and of itself, and that evolves along with society and culture -- we librarians are just attempting to lasso this set of skills and concepts, give them neat categories and labels, and figure out how to teach and assess those skills and concepts. The Framework gives librarians an opportunity to think more broadly about these concepts and how they extend across a student's lifetime, and to use those ideas to help our practices to evolve -- just as all things, including information literacy itself, evolve. But perhaps I am getting too existential...

Bottom line: we needed this Framework, this heady and theoretical but imperfect document that takes information literacy to a new level of intellectualism and, I think, elevates it as an academic field. At the same time, I think these New Jersey librarians make some valid points; I signed their open letter in agreement. There are good reasons to keep, but update, the Standards -- not least of which is, they are still true (with perhaps some updating needed). Just because we now have the Framework doesn't mean that students don't still need to learn to recognize their information needs and access, evaluate, and use information ethically and legally. They very much do! And, as mentioned in the Open Letter, these Standards have now been infused in many colleges' and universities' general education goals, and other assessment guidelines.

So, "getting rid" of the Standards not only doesn't really make much sense -- it's kind of impossible. Sure, you could physically take down those pages on ACRL's website, and consider any old evidence of the preexisting Standards to be null and void -- but that doesn't mean they won't rise again, like the Phoenix from the ashes, as we attempt to develop concrete student learning outcomes for each "Frame"... At the same time, when writing SLOs, it's important to think about the broader, overarching understandings that we are trying to get at in our instruction, for those are the things that students will take with them when they leave us. The Framework gives us "labels" for those understandings, while also keeping us from falling into our old, compartmentalized, overly-detailed librarian ways when it comes to instruction.

The Framework and Standards: they can go hand-in-hand. Let's figure out how to make them talk together.