Instruction in special collections and archives spaces has evolved from the once ubiquitous show-and-tell sessions, but it remains reliant on the one-shot model where classes visit the reading room to work with primary source material in a standalone session. As Nicole Pagowsky points out, "One-shots are transactional; content is requested…

Drawing from Wendy Holliday's use of metaphor to generate exploration around information literacy discourse, we pose some preliminary ideas about mapping a vaccination metaphor onto one-shots. We do so to offer another lens through which to explore the mechanisms and implications of one-shots being viewed as common-sensical and unassailable. Thus,…

BEAM is a schema for categorizing the rhetorical positions of authors according to the author's intention or purpose of the information. This Innovative Practices piece critiques common methods of teaching source evaluation and proposes that instruction librarians teach BEAM to students who may struggle using a source once they have located it. A…

If there's one thing you learn today, let it be this: keywords. Not specific keywords but the idea of them. If you whisper the correct keywords into the algorithm, you will achieve relevance. If you don't achieve relevance on the first try (which is super common), imagine you're an academic with a specialization in a super-niche disciplinary area…

This piece examines the parallels between one-shot library instruction and one-off equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) workshops. Library and Information Science/Studies (LIS) as a field problematically frames both information literacy and EDI as add-ons or afterthoughts to the work of library and information workers. This framing tells on…

Considering all that we know about learning science, design principles, and reflective practice, is the one-shot instruction session an effective mode of knowledge transfer? If we could build information literacy initiatives from the ground up, based on students' prior experience and how they learn, our teaching would not be limited by past…

What perceived role do one-shot information literacy sessions play in the professional status of librarianship? In what way is this perception resulting from and contributing to the feminization of instructional labor? How will criticizing and/or changing one-shots disrupt or perpetuate gender and other forms of inequity? All these questions…

An academic librarian providing one-shot instruction sessions to first-year students is uniquely positioned to enact a feminist ethic of care in the classroom. First-year university students are particularly in need of caring. The library instruction session is often their introduction to and first impression of the library and an opportunity to…

Librarians and educators have a unique opportunity to develop and incorporate gray literature instruction into nursing curricula, with specific focus on its definition, value, discoverability, and evaluation. This article presents a structured and hands-on approach to the collection of gray literature and its use in evidence-based nursing.…

With increasing demand for archival instruction and growing class sizes, archivists and special collections librarians are struggling to accommodate larger classes, both logistically and pedagogically. This paper reviews the literature on approaches from both higher education and archival instruction to identify trends for teaching big classes.…

This article establishes a theoretical framework for critical library instruction (and thereby critical information literacy) that is built upon critical feminist theory, critical race theory, and engaged pedagogy, among others. Using the ideas and work of theorists to create a path linking the ideas of critical analyses together, the author…

While remaining cognizant of several aspects of current information literacy (IL) instruction methods, including threshold concepts, the author re-created experiences shared by students as she searched for, analyzed, and compiled resources pertaining to the Renaissance. Good IL instruction supports education of the whole person, develops new modes…

One of the main responsibilities of school librarians is to teach students to evaluate the credibility of information. There is little evidence to suggest that students are being explicitly taught how to evaluate news obtained through social media. As avenues for giving and getting information evolve, so must ways of teaching students so that they…

As students are asked to complete multimodal assignments in their higher education courses, librarians can guide students to the use of open educational resources (OER), as many librarians are already teaching students about copyright and how to respect intellectual property rights. Two instructional librarians designed a one-shot lesson for…

Creating information literate students and future employees is an expected outcome of a tertiary education. This paper shares insights from a successful collaboration between an academic and three university librarians to create an online learning module designed to develop students' professional information literacy capability: identifying…