Beyond Metaliteracy

This page highlights select accomplishments from my career as an academic librarian specializing in information literacy.  I tried to add some personal commentary, to go beyond the simple extraction of information from my CV. 

Books

Kelsey L. O'Brien and I have edited a book, Teaching with Digital Badges: Best Practices for Libraries, which was published by Rowman & Littlefield in September 2018. For several years, we were immersed in digital badge-related issues, find them fascinating, but quite challenging to implement. My chapter in the book is "Forces of Change for Higher Education: Opening Gates for Digital Badging."

With current and former colleagues in the Information Literacy department, I wrote an open textbook on information literacy: The Information Literacy User’s Guide: An Open, Online Textbook. It was published in the SUNY Open Textbook Program, in 2014.

Together with Tom Mackey of Empire State College, I edited four books that highlighted faculty/librarian collaborations focused on information literacy:

Teaching Information Literacy Online (2011), Collaborative Information Literacy Assessments: Strategies for Evaluating Teaching and Learning (2009), Using Technology to Teach Information Literacy (2008), and Information Literacy Collaborations that Work (2007). All four were published by Neal-Schuman.

Motivating Students in Information Literacy Classes, written with Lijuan Xu  (Neal-Schuman, 2004) is a book I am extremely proud of. It was selected as the ACRL Instruction Section 2005 Publication of the Year.

Selected Book Chapters

Linda M. Krzykowski and Trudi E. Jacobson.. (2021). Transfer Student Success: New Initiatives, New Collaborations: “Breaking Into the Box" to Support Transfer Student Transition. In Transfer Student Success: Academic Library Outreach and Engagement, ed. by Nancy Fawley, Ann Marshall, and Mark Robison (pp. 99-110). Chicago, IL: ALA Editions.

Selected Articles

I have written or co-authored numerous peer-reviewed articles. These have been cited the most often. 

Trudi E. Jacobson. (2020). "Analyzing Information Sources Through the Lens of the ACRL Framework: A Case Study of Wikipedia." Communications in Information Literacy, v. 14 no. 2.

Thomas P. Mackey and Trudi E. Jacobson. (2011). “Reframing Information Literacy as a Metaliteracy.” College & Research Libraries, v. 72 no. 1, 2011, pp. 62-78. (Selected to be included in “LIRT’s Top Twenty” library instruction articles of 2011).

Thomas P. Mackey and Trudi E. Jacobson, “Information Literacy: A Collaborative Endeavor.” College Teaching, v. 53 no. 4, 2005, pp. 140-144.

Trudi E. Jacobson and Beth L. Mark, “Separating Wheat from Chaff: Helping First Year Students Become Information Savvy.” The Journal of General Education, v. 49 no. 4, 2000, pp. 256-278. (This article was selected to be included, in abstract form, in a special issue, Best of JGE: Featuring Articles From 1984-2000, v.50 no.4, p.323. It was one of two articles selected to represent the category “Changes Technology Brings to General Education.”)

Carol Anne Germain, Trudi E. Jacobson and Sue A. Kaczor, “A Comparison of the Effectiveness of Presentation Formats for Instruction: Teaching First Year Students.” College & Research Libraries, v.61 no.1, January 2000, pp.65-72.

Professional Contributions

Just two association-related projects that I take great pride in:

I co-chaired ACRL's Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education Task Force from 2012-2015 with Craig Gibson. This task force developed the Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education. The conversation within the field surrounding the Framework while it was being developed was engaged and multi-faceted. I'd like to acknowledge the very hard-working members of the task force who stayed the course:  Elizabeth Berman, Carl DiNardo, Lesley Farmer, Ellie Fogarty, Diane Fulkerson, Merinda Hensley, Joan Lippincott, Michelle Millet, Troy Swanson, and Lori Townsend.

Much earlier, around 1991-92, Esther Grassian and I (and perhaps a third person) created a model syllabus for a graduate library course. This was under the aegis of ACRL's Instruction Section's Education for Bibliographic Instruction committee.  I availed myself of this syllabus when I started teaching such a course at the University at Albany in 2005.

And several other ongoing or recent activities:

Intercultural Perspectives on Information Literacy and Metaliteracy Course

I participated as an instructor through spring 2023 in this amazing initiative that has included students and instructors from Germany, India, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Poland. For more information about the course, read the recent article in Communications in Information Literacy.

Innovative Information Literacy Book Series, Rowman & Littlefield

I serve as a series editor, soliciting ideas for groundbreaking works in the field of information literacy, and work with authors to craft proposals. If you have an idea, please contact me!

SAGE Skills Student Success, SAGE Publishing

This is an online resource for first- and second-year college students, containing Communication, Research, and Data literacy modules. I am editor-in-chief for the information literacy module, which consists of 10 skills. I created one of those skills, Information Has Value. I worked with a number of contributors for the module, most of whom I asked to participate. Observing their creation processes as they developed amazing content gave me great pleasure. The contributors are: Lijuan Xu (Lafayette College), Craig Gibson (The Ohio State University), Allison Hosier (University at Albany), Kelsey O'Brien (University at Albany), Chelsea Heinbach (University of Nevada, Las Vegas), and Sarah Morris (Emory University).

Milestones and Honors

Appointed Extraordinary Professor,  Research Unit Self Directed Learning, Faculty of Education, North-West University, Potchefstroom, South Africa, 2021-2024.

Promotion to Distinguished Librarian, State University of New York, 2011.

Association of College & Research Libraries Instruction Section 2009 Miriam Dudley Instruction Librarian of the Year Award.

Self-Directed Learning

Self-directed learning is a new area of interest for me.  I started to learn about it when I co-authored a book chapter that touches upon it, there is much I would like to explore.  Attending this conference was a starting step in my own SDL about SDL!

I was privileged to co-author a chapter with Jako Olivier and Tom Mackey in this open access book published in November 2021. Our chapter is Aligning Metaliteracy with Self-Directed Learning to Expand Assessment Opportunities. The book, Learning Through Assessment: An Approach Towards Self Directed Learning, was edited by  Elsa Mentz and Anitia Lubbe.