Library FYS Modules

This library session introduces the concept of academic disciplines as structured communities of knowledge, each with its own norms for inquiry, methods of investigation, and forms of evidence. It explores the different ways that information is valued across disciplinary, academic, and non-academic contexts, and situates the library and the library’s discipline, information literacy, as a connective hub in the information ecosystem, while prompting students to consider their own place in it.

The session supports FYS Learning Outcome 1, “Students will be able to differentiate the ways in which knowledge is constructed across multiple disciplines,” by helping students compare disciplinary assumptions, epistemologies, and research practices. In alignment with Gonzaga’s mission, the session seeks to cultivate critical thinking, ethical discernment, and intellectual curiosity by encouraging students to reflect on how knowledge is shaped not only by disciplinary conventions but also by broader social, cultural, and moral values. 

At the end of the session, students will be able to:

1. Define what an academic discipline is, explain its key characteristics, and identify how it shapes the types of questions asked, methods used, and forms of evidence valued within a field of study
2. Recognize that information possesses various forms of value (e.g., as a commodity, as a means of education, as a means to influence) which impacts how it is produced, disseminated, and consumed across academic and non-academic contexts
3. Identify information literacy as an interdisciplinary discipline, and the library as a connection point for every discipline

Relevant ACRL Frames: Information Has Value, Scholarship is a Conversation, Authority is Constructed and Contextual

1. What is a discipline?
   1. A field of study
   2. A community of scholars
2. Exercise: group disciplinary database exploration
   1. Students are broken into groups, each of which is assigned a disciplinary database
   2. Students look up peer-reviewed articles on a common topic in their database
   3. Students examine the articles to consider:
      1. What types of questions are being asked in the articles?
      2. How are the questions explored; what methods are used?
      3. What kinds of information do the articles cite?
      4. What’s the raw data, the primary sources?
      5. What’s taken for granted?
      6. What assumptions seem to exist in this discipline about this topic?
      7. What is valued about the topic?
      8. For all of the above: why?
3. Class discussion of exercise
4. The information landscape
   1. Why is a librarian talking about this?
   2. Information literacy
   3. ACRL Framework frame “Information Has Value”
      1. Academic publishing
         1. Publisher value vs academic value
   4. Communities of information
      1. Where are you?
         1. Major
         2. Other communities