As announced in the Winter 2007 issue (ESD), the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) and the ACRL Instruction Section (IS) has endorsed the S.O.S. for Information Literacy project. ESD will highlight ACRL information literacy initiatives and resources in this new section, “ACRL Focus.” This issue’s ACRL Focus explores the online collection of instruction materials maintained by a committee of the ACRL Instruction Section.
http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/acrl/about/sections/is/iscommittees/webpages/emergingtech/index.cfm
PRIMO (Peer-Reviewed Instructional Materials Online) indexes web sites, tutorials, and other resources created by academic librarians for use in teaching information literacy skills.
The PRIMO database, consisting of over 170 records, can be browsed, or the records can be searched by title, creator, category, description, or keyword.
PRIMO also highlights a site of the month and conducts an in-depth interview with the project creators. The interviews provide background and insight into the challenges and successes of the project. November’s site of the month highlighted “TIP: Tutorial for Info Power” created at the University of Wyoming. An interview with the creators includes information on the creation of the tutorial and its use in the university.
Materials in the PRIMO database are peer-reviewed. Selections are nominated and then reviewed by the committee twice a year. If you know of a great online instruction tool, you can nominate it for possible inclusion in the database.
The PRIMO database began as the Internet Education Project. In 1994 the Emerging Technolgies in Instruction Committtee of the ACRL Instrcution Section submitted the User Education for the Internet: Report and Recommendations . This report identified the need to share high quality instruction materials among academic librarians. Librarians everywhere appeared to be teaching similar topics relating to either the internet or other information literacy skills. PRIMO was created to reduce duplicate efforts and provide a source where instructors have ready access to materials.
This collection publicizes these instruction materials to a broad audience and provides models for quality instruction.
Reported by Abby Kasowitz-Scheer
Note: S.O.S. for Information Literacy compliments PRIMO by providing peer-reviewed instructional materials that include lesson plans, teaching ideas, videos, and other multimedia resources for K-12 and higher education.
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