Teaching at the intersections is difficult work because information literacy and scholarly communications are both large concepts with so many stakeholders. But therein lies the opportunity! Once your campus colleagues understand how the intersections relate to their work, they will likely want to be partners in your teaching mission.
Your institution's guiding documents are a good starting point for conversations with your future allies. These include strategic plans, institutional values, departmental learning learning objectives, or even course learning objectives. Think how teaching at the intersections furthers institutional goals. For example, the following are some talking points that could be used with your college or university faculty, librarians, or administrators:
• Intersection curricula further missions and strategic plans related to critical thinking, student success, and public dissemination of scholarship.
• Intersections curricula help students to be well-informed actors in the research process, regardless of whether they are consumers or creators of information.
• An intersections curriculum increases the capacity of teaching librarians.
• Teaching about the intersections supports new forms of scholarship, especially complex digital works.
• Working at the intersections fosters collaboration and can reduce institutional silos between information literacy departments and scholarly communication departments.
• The intersections are adaptable across disciplines.
• Intersections curricula can highlight equity, diversity, inclusion in the production of scholarship.
Potential partners and collaborators include administrators, schools, departments, faculty members, other librarians, centers for teaching and learning, offices such as the graduate school, centers for digital scholarship/humanities,and offices of research. As you approach these people, remember how to articulate how the intersections help to advance your institution's goals.
These worksheets can help you to organize your ideas on paper and formulate an action plan:
Your time at the intersections road show will be spent, in part, designing collaboration and advocacy activities around the intersections using documents similar to those above.
