Hollister, Christopher V., ed. Best Practices for Credit-Bearing Information Literacy Courses. Chicago: Association of College and Research Libraries, 2010. 278p. ISBN 9780838985588. Softcover $48.00.

Paul L. Hrycaj, Louisiana State University Libraries

Best Practices for Credit-Bearing Information Literacy Courses is a collection of twenty essays on the topic of credit-bearing information literacy courses in the higher education setting.  While chapters are not categorized by theme, which would have been helpful for the reader, some categories do emerge in the essays: The first of these categories can be called general/administrative issues, which includes an essays on the history of credit information literacy (IL) courses in higher education, creating credit IL courses in a university setting and a community college setting, and fostering administrative support for librarians teaching credit IL courses. Some contributions deal with the category of subject-specific instruction, including essays on courses especially geared toward composition, science students, engineering, and criminal justice and speech pathology. Others address the concept of technology, including essays on courses that use emerging technologies (such as e-readers and blogging), internet communication tools (such as CiteULike, Delicious, and Google Tools), and an audience response system, and courses that use video gaming and videoconferencing. Finally, some of the pieces are concerned with specific pedagogical techniques. This includes essays on creating learning communities, using current media sources, employing group (or collaborative) learning, employing motivation theories, and using constructivism in an online course.
Generally, the essays are case studies, based on actual programs and courses. For this reason, they can be helpful for librarians who are teaching IL credit courses and are looking for new ideas, or those who would simply like to see how their program compares with others (The one purely theoretical essay, on motivation, which endorses problem-based learning for IL courses based solely on an abstract argument, is not very useful). A number of interesting and useful points are made throughout the entire collection, such as the benefits of working with instructional designers for credit IL courses (in Chapters #4 and #9), creating guidelines for online IL courses, learning best practices based on “experience gained over several years” (119), basing the assignments of an IL course for engineering students on a historical engineering-related event (Chapter #9), and interesting uses in IL courses of current media sources (such as the Daily Show, the Colbert Report, and Wikipedia (Chapter #13). The editors even include a discussion of an audience response system (Chapter #15).  Also, a number of appendices at the end of chapters provide the details of class assignments and grading rubrics. 
One important theoretical issue that is not discussed is whether IL instruction integrated into a discipline course is preferable to IL instruction in a standalone IL credit course. This issue is mentioned in a discussion of objections to credit-bearing IL courses in the opening historical essay: “…the majority of contrary opinions come from those who support the course-integrated model” (6).  The surprising number of essays in this collection on subject-specific IL instruction seem to argue implicitly for the view that IL instruction should be closely connected with discipline-related content, and this takes us in the direction of integrating IL instruction with discipline courses.  Indeed, in one essay, the authors see an evolution of their IL credit course toward course-integrated IL: “Ultimately, the authors envision having information literacy integrated more seamlessly into the engineering curriculum, as opposed to a stand-alone course” (120).  While this issue is not faced head-on in the collection, it deserves to be kept in mind while reading these essays. It would have helped to bolster the attractiveness of standalone credit IL courses against the course-integrated model if the editors had included more case studies of general, non-subject-specific IL courses, perhaps some that used particularly interesting pedagogical approaches. 
Besides the editors’ not placing the essays into explicit categories, another annoyance is that sometimes the chapters lack important details, since they are all quite brief.  In Chapter #16, for example, the authors state that “more educators and librarians are beginning to recognize the information literacy skills inherent in video game design” (201). But the connection between video game design and information literacy skills is never made clear. And Chapter #11 is almost completely devoid of the specifics of the course being discussed. The editors’ having expanded some of the chapters in this collection would have improved it. Nevertheless, there are many good lessons to be drawn from the essays in this collection for any librarian interested in information literacy, and particularly for those who are currently teaching a credit-bearing IL credit course.