WAAL Information Literacy Committee

Information Literacy Award Winners

2010/2011

Rita Mitchell and Beth Bretl

The WAAL Information Literacy Committee is very pleased to announce the team of Rita Mitchell and Beth Bretl of Cardinal Stritch University as the 2011 winners of the WAAL Information Literacy Award.  Rita is the Information Literacy Librarian and Beth is an adjunct faculty member in the Department of English.  Their program "Librarian and Faculty Partnerships: Embedding Librarians in English Courses to Improve Information Literacy Skills and Writing Skills" was chosen as the eighth annual award winner due to its strong levels of collaboration, well-defined outcomes, and high adaptability to other institutions and contexts.

Their pilot program paired a librarian with a faculty member to assist students in English 102, a core writing and research course.  Rita and Beth collaborated in a fully online English 102 course.  Rita was embedded in the course via the learning management system. Library instruction was delivered using video conferencing software, live chat, handouts and discussion forums. The intended outcome of the partnership was to develop student-librarian relationships outside of the library and improve students' writing and information literacy skills.  Assessment of the partnership was conducted through both student and faculty surveys.

Please look for their presentation at the 2011 WAAL Conference in Stevens Point.

2009/2010

Paloma Celis Carbajal, Steven Baumgart, Nola Walker, and Tony Krier of Memorial Library were awarded the 2010 Information Literacy Award.  They were honored for integrating information literacy instruction in the Spanish curriculum through plug-in assignments, with online and in-person components.  In Fall 2009, the UW-Madison Spanish Department redesigned its curriculum for Spanish 226, “Intermediate Language Practice with Emphasis on Writing and Grammar,” and invited the library to participate in the process.  The program involved the library developing a series of plug-in assignments designed to expose students to the Spanish language collection in ways that would integrate with students’ composition assignments and require minimal work for teaching assistants.  The library provided online content through a Library Course Page as well as a 15-minute face-to-face instruction session to all 29 sections of the course. 

2008/2009

Susan Heffron and Amelia Osterud received the award in 2009.  Susan Heffron has been the Instructional Services Librarian at Carroll University since 2004, when she completed her MLIS from UW-Milwaukee. She attended the ACRL Information Literacy Immersion Program in 2005 and is responsible for designing and implementing the information literacy portion of the First Year Seminar program at Carroll. Amelia Osterud has been the Access Services Librarian at Carroll University since 2006. She finished the joint MLIS/MA program at UW-Milwaukee in 2004. She is a member of the WILIUG steering committee, and oversees the web site and ILS for Carroll Library. Both Susan and Amelia presented, "Avoiding the “Librarian Nerd Loop--Engaging Students and Creating a User-Friendly Library Environment" at WAAL in 2008.  They are being honored for their work incorporating information literacy into Carroll University's First Year Seminar program.

2007/2008

2006/2007

No award given.

2005/2006

The 2005/06 third annual Information Literacy Award was presented to members of the Marquette University Raynor Memorial Libraries Instruction team: Valerie Beech, Rosemary Del Toro, Julie O’Keeffe and Rose Trupiano! The focus of this year’s award was on a project that promotes information literacy, and the Marquette University team hit the mark with their innovative "Assessment Rubric Project: Partnering with Faculty and University Administrators in Support of Student Learning." The project involved the development of assessment rubrics to be used by faculty across campus in evaluating student research. Embedded into the rubric are information literacy criteria. What impressed the award committee about this project was its innovative approach to incorporating the ideals of information literacy into the curriculum throughout the campus. The library responded to a demonstrated need on its campus, and exhibited creativity, practicality and ingenuity in addressing a campus mandate in this manner. The project involved collaboration across campus, including the endorsement of administration.

2004/2005

Abigail Loomis was the 2005 winner of the second annual WAAL Information Literacy Award. Abbie has a long tenure of service in library instruction and a deep commitment to the advancement of information literacy, not only on the UW-Madison campus, but also on a state and national level. Through her work on the WAAL Information Literacy committee from 1997-2001, Abbie helped plan and sponsor many programs covering different aspects of instruction. She also participated in developing the committee’s Best Practices which promote an exchange of instructional practices and ideas with librarians throughout the state. Abbie Loomis was also actively involved in writing the proposal to bring ACRL’s Immersion Program to Wisconsin and helped organize the 2001 Wisconsin Immersion Program that was held at Edgewood College that year. Abbie played a key role in helping to make information literacy a required component of the UW-Madison undergraduate curriculum via the CLUE online tutorial. CLUE and the library instruction classes are campus-wide endeavors that reach more than 4,000 students annually.

2003/2004

Cristine Prucha, UW-La Crosse Information Literacy Librarian was the recipient of the first annual WAAL Information Literacy Award.Prucha's skills in collaborating with faculty to create problem-based learning assignments for sections of a freshman year seminar at UW-La Crosse and her work on developing "Recommendations Regarding the Integration of Information Literacy into the General Education Curriculum" for the La Crosse campus have garnered praise from the campus community. The problem-based learning instruction led students to look at complex issues from a variety of perspectives and sometimes challenged them to support viewpoints that were not necessarily their own.

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