Primary Learning Outcome 1 works to shape students learning to prepare them for their desired future within their chosen field. With my personal goal of pursuing information literacy instruction, PLO1 and its subparts have structured my personal pedagogy into one centered around equity and justice. Through assignments focused on critical thinking, community analysis, and the intensive planning lessons and programs, I am equipped with the skills needed to advance information equity and justice through my future positions instructing users on information literacy.

1.1 Identify situations where systemic information inequality exists. 

Information inequality disproportionately alters individual experiences through their access or lack of access to educational and recreational information. According to the American Library Association’s first outlined Core Value: 

Access provides opportunities for everyone in the community to obtain library resources and services with minimal disruption. Library workers create systems that ensure members of their community can freely access the information they need for learning, growth, and empowerment regardless of technology, format, or delivery methods. (ALA, Core Values of Librarianship) 

In the Syracuse MLIS program, students (me included) have been asked throughout their courses to identify systemic inequality, in order to advance information equity and justice. To advance information equity and justice, first a student must understand information equity and justice. This understanding has been discussed within most, if not all MLIS courses. After spending 18 months as a student, and with information justice and equity remaining as a topic for conversation, my understanding of this learning outcome has evolved. Libraries and their librarians have routes to equity and justice, librarians often strive to provide information equity and information justice. Despite these goals, inequity still exists. The landscape for information is ever evolving, and it often shifts directions. Information is political. Both information absorption and the creation of information are biased. As a librarian, my goal is to remain informed on the changes, critically analyze my own role within my own positioning, seek opinions of peers, and to constantly move towards the visions of information equity and justice. 

In IST672 Public Librarianship, I analyzed a specific community, their public library, a community issue, and then created a strategic plan to highlight how the library could best respond to the community issue. The public library, located in upstate New York, has a community currently dealing with a housing crisis. Knowledge and information surrounding home ownership, tenant rights, and resources for the unhoused is not equitably dispersed. Leaving some to think they are without resources, and without support. To understand this issue, prepares a library to best provide for the needs of their community, and to provide information in an attempt to work towards a more equitable and just community. This was a great assignment to prepare future library professionals for the work that should be done as a librarian in any geographic location.  

Example: 

IST672 Community Issues Analysis

1.2 Interrogate and internalize professional ethics, values, standards, and principles.  

This program often required for the students to understand and internalize the professional values, ethics, standards and principles of librarianship or their chosen specialty. For me, this meant developing my own definitions information literacy, information access, and information equity & inclusion. I needed to outline my own professional ethics, values standards and principles to guide myself throughout my professional career. 

I am an instructor. Currently, within my role on an information literacy and research team at an academic library, but also within my own personal nature. I have goals to continue instructing and I want to continue teaching information literacy. To apply this learning outcome and its subparts to my personal and professional goals, the course IST668 Literacy Through School Libraries, and the projects throughout that course are a perfect example. As an instructor striving for equity and access, all of my literacy lesson plans will be structured with the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) frameworks present. A step toward information equity and justice is to inform patrons of routes they can take to access information, understanding what information they are consuming, and providing them with agency in their decisions regarding information. To inform all patrons, I must be equipped to present my lesson in a multitude of ways. 

Example: 

IST668 Personalized Literacy Approach

1.3 Create and support policies that reflect principles of a just and equitable information society.  

MLIS students are asked to form their own and to support/value preexisting policies that uplift and support equitable information sharing practices through PLO1.3. This is a valuable learning outcome for many reasons. Libraries always have and always will be community hubs that support and work to enhance knowledge within societies.  

As previously discussed in the PLO1.1 breakdown, IST672 asked students to analyze a community issue to then present a strategic plan for the community’s public library. The community issue I realized what that of the housing crisis. I then drafted a strategic plan from a public library lens, asking for edits to be made to pre-existing policies, programs to be developed for the library user base, and for training to be offered for the library staff. The strategic plan included a SWOT analysis to identify the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of a change like the one I recommended. It included timeline for priorities. As well as benchmarking research, highlighting other public libraries that worked to respond to housing and homelessness issues within their communities. The project aided me in understanding the importance of strong policies, thoughtful strategic plans and community engagement.  

Example: 

IST672 Public Library Strategic Plan 

1.4 Demonstrate a commitment to lifelong learning via engagement with users, communities, colleagues, and professional networks. 

A large theme within librarianship, and PLO 1.4’s purpose is demonstrating one’s commitment to lifelong learning. These four subsections work to fulfill the first primary learning outcome outlined for Library and Information Science (MLIS) students, which is to ‘advance information equity and justice.’ Lifelong learning asks individuals to accept that there is always more to know. Remaining apart of the librarianship field effectively requires lifelong learning. Libraries are meant to change alongside their users. Continuing efficiency and keeping up with others asks librarians to attend and/or present at conferences, read research published by other librarians, to attend community events, and to publish and/or present research. 

Within IST668, I was tasked with writing an information literacy lesson plan, for a prechosen school, grade, and class subject. After the lesson plan was created, I then had to create a larger program, built from the one-shot lesson plan through a critical lens. Within these projects, I utilized multiple literacy techniques- visual and media, in a variety of formats- audio or text, with text size adjustments.  When I designed the plan and the program, I used the closest public school to me, and the collection present at the museum I was working for at the time. Because of this, the museum was able to develop some of their school programs in accordance with the NYS learning standards and they used my research to expand school field trip tours. 

This project is a great example of the program’s ability to prepare students for community engagement. By understanding the school and town culture, population, and current events, the program designed was beneficial for a local non-profit museum, the local public school, and the county archive. The project forced me to be in contact with those institutions, and expanding my professional network.  

Example: 

IST668 Applying Critical Thinking: type of literacy program 

Professional associations I am a member of: 

SUNY LA (State University of New York Library Association) 

SENYLRC (Southeastern New York Library Resources Council) 

NYLA (New York Library Association)