Presented at LILAC 2009

1. Gathering skills for life, not skills
for school
LILAC Conference
March 31, 2009
Anu Miettinen, Krista Auvinen
Vantaa City Library, Finland

2. Actors
 Vaskivuori Upper Secondary School
 An Upper Secondary School providing students
with a possibility to specialize in music, dance or
media.
 Myyrmäki Branch of Vantaa City Library
 The second largest branch of Vantaa City Library
with around 1 500 – 2 000 daily visits.

3. How it all began
 Vaskivuori Upper Secondary school got rid of
their own school library collection during a
renovation
 They contacted the nearby public library to
discuss possible modes of co-operation.
 The following areas were identified: IL
education to 1st year students, book
acquisitions, teacher meeting once a year at
the library.

4. Information Literacy Education
 All 1st year students attend two separate IL
session
 The first session is a 75 minute lecture about
the process of information retrieval with a
heavy emphasis on intellectual property
rights.
 The second session is a 75 minute workshop
where the topics revolve around real-life
presentation topics.

5. Our mission
 To provide students with a better
understanding of information sources.
 To provide students with a strong sense of
ethical behaviour and copyright issues.
 To help students develop their critical
information literacy.

7. What we do not teach
 Basic library usage
 Classification system
 The library OPAC in detail
 IL merely as a library or a school thing – all
of these skills are life skills!

8. Have we had an impact
 According to the teachers, students with an
exposure to IL education have shown a
wider variety of sources used.
 Students have appreciated being exposed to
copyright issues and to having to think about
what is ethical information behaviour.

9. Changes implemented
 Stemming from feedback gained from
students and teachers, the focus of the
lecture was changed.
 Instead of trying to go through the entire
process of information retrieval, we will
provide a 60 minute lecture on copyright
issues and plagiarism.

10. Challenges
 The Google generation has a strong belief of
their information seeking skills.
 Thus some feel that they have nothing to
learn from us.
 Eventhough the workshops are closely knit
to subjects taught at school, the lecture has
yet to find a place in the school’s curriculum.