The One-Shot Library Instruction Survival Guide

by Heidi E. Buchanan

The ACRL Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education is good news for one-shot instructors. With its six frames and conceptual approach you're freed from a long list of outcomes and can instead focus on big ideas. The new edition of this concise guide will help you stay organized and use your limited time wisely. With guidance that will help students sharpen their critical thinking skills, use better sources, improve their understanding, and avoid plagiarism, this book covers Filled with strategies to guide students towards meeting instructors' expectations for critical thinking, this resource will also empower librarians to become better, more confident teachers.

Genres: Nonfiction, Librarianship, Professional Development, Library Science, Education, Teaching, Adult

138 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2014

Reviews

[Amy Layton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Alas, if only I was an instruction librarian!  This book is a hugely helpful resource on the topic of ensuring successful and evaluative instruction sessions.  When is a good time to say no to professors?  How do you manage your schedule?  Is it possible to evaluate and assess your instruction session and improve after only one lesson?  Believe it or not, but Buchanan and McDonough answer these questions, and more!

Filled with insights, directive chapters, and a great bibliography and personal anecdotes, this text is an enriching and educational read.  This book offers many great strategies on how to deal with unresponsive professors, unengaged students, and even trying to fit an entire topic in 20 minutes or less!  It helps offer ways of managing boundaries, evaluating, and planning one's lessons.

This is definitely worth the read, and well worth the invaluable pieces of advice they give you.

Review cross-listed here!

[Andy Horton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read as part of literature review for coursework essay I'm doing. Practical, down-to-earth, yet still based on existing scholarship.

[Monica St. Dennis · Rating 3 out of 5]

I can see why this would be useful, but a lot of it just wasn't applicable to my situation.

[Nicole · Rating 4 out of 5]

As someone who is now suddenly doing library instruction, this has saved my life lmao. It's really helpful with getting a basis on how to make those one-shot sessions effective for students & their instructors. My students are unique enough where they don't quite fit neatly in the typical academic realm (military-specific classes), but there was enough info to help adapt & even useful info to make sure that these sessions are useful for the target audience.

[Michelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a completely awesome resource for teaching librarians! Highly recommend it. If it didn't cost so much, I'd buy my own copy. But thankfully my workplace recently added it to the collection, so I'll probably be checking it out a LOT in my first year as teaching librarian. Additionally, there are tons of helpful charts, ideas, sample rubrics, and a robust bibliography.

[Tyler Graham · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great resource for teaching and instruction librarians! A quick read, sharing effective strategies, assessments, and activities ready for classroom use. Because it was our library's copy, I refrained from highlighting and bookmarking the pages, but it was so useful that I just might buy a copy for myself!

[Amber · Rating 5 out of 5]

Extremely helpful and full of ideas that I want to start trying to implement.

[Liz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Perfect for my college-level library instruction sessions. I've already used a lot of these ideas in my classes.

[rad librarian · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have recently started my first academic librarian position and this book was lifesaving for me. Coming from public libraries, I was never introduced to the ACRL Framework or never heard of "one-shots". I highly recommend this book to any librarian who is new to the world of Academia. I love that the book is easy to read and not full of jargon and theories. It is literally a practical survival guide.

[Joanna]

This is a helpful and well organized primer for getting the most out of limited time for library instruction. New and more experienced instruction librarians can all probably get something out of it. The examples from teaching librarians showing what worked and didn’t work for them were especially helpful.

[Cassie Rebugio · Rating 3 out of 5]

Perhaps it’s because I’ve been instructing for years, but there wasn’t anything new to learn in this book for me. It all felt sort of like common sense. However, I do see the value this book would have for someone just starting out.

[Mary Havens · Rating 3 out of 5]

Easy to read, nice suggestions, some real-world examples. A nice refresher/suggestor for IL :)

[Laura Turowski · Rating 3 out of 5]

Definitely more real life examples in this book than most ALA books that talk about theory more than how to apply the theory to your job.

[Nan · Rating 4 out of 5]

2nd edition. Quick read. Useful tips and questions to ask yourself. Useful for when planning a public library program on how to use x technology too.

[Paschalia · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a n almost perfect book for the one-shot sessions instructional librarians are asked to do mist often in academic libraries. It starts from approaching the professor to doing summative assessments. It includes everything that will come up in your way, according to my experience at least.

[Catie Carlson · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the best books I've read that has incorporated the Framework into its writings. It provides practical advice that is easily transferable into any school, setting, or classroom. Rather than giving you a cookbook type format that makes it hard to fit into your environment, Buchanan and McDonough have taken looked broadly at the framework and classroom engagement so that you can find your own ways to fit it into your reality. A great read and highly recommended for any instruction librarian.

[Melissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was chock-full of great ideas that I can't wait to try out myself. But at times, I found it very repetitive: Chapters 4 and 5 utilized many of the same classroom activities as examples, and Chapters 6 and 7 both spent much time on reflection exercises for the librarian. However, I suppose that isn't all bad, if repetition reinforces their main points. I also got a thrill seeing two of the librarians I knew from my undergrad days provide one of the vignettes!

[Carol · Rating 4 out of 5]

This may be the most helpful book on library instruction I have read this year. It's quite short, which is a big plus, as it gets right to the point in every chapter. It's also very encouraging - there's a constant theme of "you can do it!", that I was just what I needed. The advice in this book is perhaps not terribly revolutionary, but it does pull concepts and ideas together nicely and puts them into an easy to read package.

[Brittnee · Rating 3 out of 5]

There was a lot of really great information presented in this book that will help me improve my one-shot sessions. There were also a few ideas presented that I take issue with, and would consider bad advice. Overall, this is a great resource for academic librarians.

[Shelley Byron]

-Classes work best when they reach the student at a point of need (11)

[Denise · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gotta buy this and use a highlighter.

[Katrina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great ideas and strategies for making the most of a one-shot info lit. session.

[Janet · Rating 5 out of 5]

Useful examples, clear outline, quick read, but will be one I would want to refer back to.