Literacies, narratives, and adult learning in libraries

This chapter explores the multiple literacies adult learnersbring to the learning process within libraries, the changingnarratives of libraries, and the importance of helpinglearners develop skills in critical information literacy.

Literacies, Narratives, and AdultLearning in Libraries

Jim Elmborg

Librarians in the academy “increasingly see themselves as educators, an evo-lution in the profession that challenges established definitions of librarian-ship and of how we generate knowledge about professional values andpractices” (Elmborg, 2006a, p. 192). Academic libraries are places wherelearners come to construct new knowledge through selection of informa-tion sources and research literature in print and electronic forms. To helpstudents accomplish these important research tasks, academic librarians aseducators focus on the development of “information literacy” skills in thelibrary classroom, at the reference desk, and in research consultations withlearners.

The Association of College and Research Libraries defines informationliteracy as the ability to “determine the extent of information needed; accessthe needed information effectively and efficiently; evaluate information andits sources critically; incorporate selected information into one’s knowledgebase; use information effectively to accomplish a specific purpose; under-stand the economic, legal, and social issues surrounding the use of infor-mation, and access and use information ethically and legally” (Associationof College and Research Libraries, 2000, pp. 2–3). Learners within aca-demic library settings use information resources toward specific ends—learner-constructed research and writing projects that offer new perspectiveson particular topics. Such projects may take the form of individual researchpapers and/or class presentations, literature reviews, theses, e-portfolios,web pages, or collaboratively created mini-documentaries. Learners navi-gate an information and technology-rich environment and learn skills thatcontribute significantly to the research and writing process. In this chapter

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NEW DIRECTIONS FOR ADULT AND CONTINUING EDUCATION, no. 127, Fall 2010 © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.View this article online at Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) • DOI: 10.1002/ace.382

68 ADULT EDUCATION IN CULTURAL INSTITUTIONS

I will reflect on literacies developed within diverse communities of discourseand how these literacies inform the research and writing process as learnersconstruct new knowledge and write/create/present their findings. I will alsoexplore the changing narrative of adult learning in libraries, as well as crit-ical theory–informed approaches to information literacy skill development.

Literacy in Schools and Libraries

As an educator within the field of library science, I work with adult studentswho are preparing to become librarians and educators within the rapidlychanging world of libraries. My background in the field of English andComposition Studies informs my current work in the field of Library Sci-ence. As the writing process is directly related to the research process, itmakes sense that these two areas are closely connected in current academiclibrary practice.

Prior to coming to the field of Library Science, I taught English for tenyears in the public schools. Struggling writers were always a presence in myclassrooms. During that time, I increasingly saw teaching and learning Eng-lish in terms of social class, with students from middle-class homes slidingcomfortably into the student role, whereas other students from less-privilegedhomes struggled. Successful students seemed to intuitively understandimportant things about being in school, some of which are superficial andsome more significant. Together, they comprise a suite of practices that wemight call school literacies. These students understood how to play the“game” of being a student. Later in my career as an English graduate stu-dent teaching composition courses to freshmen, issues of school literacycame into sharper focus. I saw students with good minds and good workethics fail in their attempts to enter college because they could not sort outthese school literacies by themselves. Their work was deemed inappropri-ate because they didn’t understand how to play the college student “game.”In the mid-1970s, Composition Studies began to aggressively develop ped-agogies that helped students learn to play this game, and these pedagogiesinformed my earliest efforts to theorize student learning.

Moving to the field of Library Science, I clearly saw similar issues ofpedagogy and social class playing out in professional practices of librarian-ship, though we tended not to recognize this within the profession. As prag-matic and results-oriented fields of practice, both writing instruction andlibrarianship have a practical and perhaps instrumental tendency, and manyinstructors tend to define teaching as transmission of a set of discrete skills.The writing process (brainstorming, drafting, revising, and editing) wasoriginally considered revolutionary pedagogy in the field of CompositionStudies because it shifted the focus from product to process to support stu-dents who had to learn basic academic skills (i.e., how to play the game).Carol Kuhlthau’s (2004) research process within libraries (task initiation,

New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education • DOI: 10.1002/ace

69LITERACIES, NARRATIVES, AND ADULT LEARNING IN LIBRARIES

topic selection, prefocus exploration, focus formulation, information col-lection, search closure) was strongly related to the writing process and hadthe same pedagogical goals. These models were developed by researchers,who observed the work of successful students and created models todescribe what they saw. To successfully play the game as the theory goes,unsuccessful students need to learn to emulate successful students. As aconsequence, process was detached from inquiry, and writing and researchwere defined as a set of reified tasks, separate from any meaning the studenthoped to convey.

In theory, these pedagogies encouraged the use of process to engagestudents and to help them construct meaning; in practice, correct processwas easy to enforce through graded assignments that punished students fornot doing the process correctly. In other words, pedagogy originallydesigned to relinquish control in the direction of the student evolved intoan instrument of power used to discipline students into a visible process.Perhaps more problematic, by insisting that unsuccessful students emulatesuccessful ones, these process models obscured the central role that cultureplays in a student’s ability and willingness to play this game by these rules.Mary Louise Pratt’s concept of the “contact zone” as “social spaces wherecultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in contexts of highlyasymmetrical relations of power” (2002, p. 4) helps us to understand therole culture plays in the learning that takes place in libraries. Each learnerbrings multiple literacies (formed from a diversity of discourse communi-ties) to the library and encounters new cultural codes that must be masteredto successfully navigate the library and the larger academic world. Librari-ans as educators need to create critical approaches to pedagogy by employ-ing horizontal rather than vertical/authoritarian communication andteaching practices.

Toward Critical Information Literacy

As Gee (1999) suggests, we are all members of multiple discourse com-munities. To be a fully participating member of a discourse community, onemust know the codes that insiders of such communities use to communi-cate. The codes and discourses of academic communities (the college gameor the academic library game) can be learned if learners are assisted in join-ing the communities. The process of exploring how this joining occurs isessential to understanding a critical approach to information literacy. Crit-ical information literacy, or critical literacy, aims to bring as many new-comers into the game as possible by assisting learners in developingunderstanding of the codes or language of the academic discourse com-munity. Democratic in impulse, critical literacy seeks to empower ratherthan discipline, to raise up rather than rank, and to include rather thanexclude.



Theorists central to this perspective include Lev Vygotsky and PaoloFreire. Lev Vygotsky (1962) argues that the development of thought is notonly a measure of cognitive growth but also the development of languageshared appropriately with all members of a community. We learn language bytalking to other people, by sharing observations about what we see aroundus, and by mimicking the words, phrases, and patterns we hear from thosemore advanced. Eventually, as this discourse becomes more natural, thisshared communal language becomes integral to how we think. Indeed,Vygotsky argues that such language running in our heads is our thinking.We continue to learn throughout our lives by conversing with others, andespecially by seeking out others who have more understanding than we do.By talking to these people, we learn how they think by learning how theyuse language. Our thinking is then shaped by this language.

Academic environments, including libraries, provide context for thisthinking through language. According to Vygotsky, we learn best from thosewho are within our zone of understanding (he called it a “zone of proximaldevelopment”), slightly more advanced, but not so much so that they areincomprehensible to us. Having more advanced peers helps us learn moreeffectively than having very advanced professors or teachers. Through con-versation, we learn to “scaffold” our ideas as we build or construct theseideas. Learners in libraries collaborate with other learners to engage theinformation and research sources they encounter, scaffolding and learningtogether.

Paolo Freire (1993) equates literacy with the development of agency.Without literacy, one cannot conceive of being a self who takes meaningfulaction in the world. Freire’s banking system teaches students to bank knowl-edge and to hoard it as wealth. The way we are taught enacts a value sys-tem, which mirrors the capitalist system of Western culture and trainsstudents to work in it, and indeed, the power in Freire is in his compre-hensive critique of the “game” itself. Can we ethically focus attention onbringing students into the game if the game itself is corrupt? American edu-cators have imported Freire’s pedagogies, but the fit is somewhat awkward.American students are not generally oppressed in the same sense that Brazil-ian peasants might be. In school, American students have been bribed to begood students with the promise that material success will ensue from theconsumption of school knowledge, and it undoubtedly does. They are thustaught to consume both knowledge and products. Particularly in educa-tional settings, they are prepared for lives as consumers and good citizenswho work within rather than challenge the status quo.

Freire encourages praxis to move us past instrumental ways of teach-ing and reified forms of knowledge toward critically engaged positionsdesigned to empower learners and transform our institutions. Professionalpractice as praxis exists across educational and institutional spectrums. Indeveloping praxis, we are challenged to envision our institutions, including



libraries, as sites of knowledge construction. In the library setting, thatmeans avoiding any instinct to hand preproduced, packaged information topeople, even if they seem to want that package. If literacy is defined broadlyas the set of skills one needs to get in the game, then we need to work toboth teach these skills and also to fix the game itself, to separate ourselvesfrom the machine of cultural production that encourages us to consume andto produce consumers. We want people to own their questions, their minds,and their bodies.

To what extent is such praxis happening in libraries today? This is dif-ficult to measure. Scholars working in the area of critical information liter-acy explore concepts of power, control, and cultural hegemony to questionthe prevailing practice of librarianship (Accardi, Drabinski, and Kumbier,2010; Green and Macauley, 2007; Jacobs, 2008; Simmons, 2005; Swanson,2004). Though not widely adopted, the approach has clear relevance todaily library practice, and many individual librarians are drawn to seeingtheir practice in this way. A critical approach to information literacy devel-opment means changing the view of education as the transfer of informa-tion or “getting the right knowledge into students’ heads” to an awarenessof each person’s agency and ability to make meaning within the library set-ting (Elmborg, 2006a, p. 194). This process becomes a political act as learn-ers and educators challenge the structures that privilege the knowledge ofthose in power. Praxis may not look much different on the surface from tra-ditional library practice. The key to all practice/praxis is conversation: howwe talk to other people; whether we see people as learners struggling formeaning, respecting that struggle and helping them scaffold; encouragingthem to grow, develop, and challenge the assumptions they hold as well astheir given place in the world. These are all ways of working in a library thatare largely invisible to outsiders.

A revolutionary reference or research consultation in a library looks verymuch like a traditional reference interview on the surface (Elmborg, 2006b),but the fundamental nature of the conversation differs in many ways when thelibrarian assumes the role of critical educator. In 1999, I was working at the reference desk in a small college in South Carolina. The state legislature,under great pressure from all directions, was debating removing the Confed-erate flag from the top of the state house in Columbia. Passions were high onboth sides of the question. A young man came to the reference desk at thissmall, private college on a Sunday afternoon and posed a classic reference ques-tion. He needed five academic sources that would prove the flag was a symbolof pride, not racism. My training as a reference librarian was clear about howI should proceed. My job was to answer that question by doing my best to findthose sources. How he might use them was not my concern. However, as aneducator, I needed to engage the assumptions behind that question, to talkabout symbols and how they work. We needed to talk about proof and howone proves a thesis academically, about multiple perspectives on reality.



In essence, his position of privilege was invisible to him and so were the con-sequences of his argument. I would like to say I enlightened him that after-noon, but I do not know that to be true. I do know that we had a criticaldiscussion of race and cultural symbolism, and that to an onlooker, the dis-cussion looked the same as any other conversation at a reference desk.

The Traditional Library Narrative

Pre-Internet, we thought of libraries as information utilities and librariansas information authorities who utilized tools, such as indexes, bibliogra-phies, and catalogs. They were the best tools available, but by today’s stan-dards, they were pretty crude, difficult to use, and hard to actually makework through a process of inquiry. Of course, the tools were not availableoutside the walls of the library. Librarianship was a bibliographic profession,and we defined it through a bibliographic narrative. George Lakoff (1980)argues that we all live according to internalized narratives, and often thesenarratives remain unexamined below the level of consciousness. We don’treally think about the life stories we accept as models, but these stories gov-ern our values and how we see ourselves and our positions in the narrative.Also, we have metaphors that only make sense if we place them in the con-text of narrative, but we tend to employ the metaphors as if they reflect uni-versal truths.

Contemporary librarians inherited a bibliographic narrative, a narra-tive that defines librarians as professionals who collect, manage, study,describe, and provide access to books. Librarianship involved expertise withtools, which librarians made and used expertly. The librarian was posi-tioned, in this narrative, between the books and the people who wantedinformation. The reference desk was a symbolic place of in-between-ness—mostly between people and books—and it was a symbol of authority, ownedby the librarian surrounded by his or her tools. Many underlying assumptionsinformed this positioning. Librarians assumed that learners had questions andthat librarians had answers, or could at least find answers, and that the toolscreated to answer these questions were fairly infallible. Librarians saw them-selves as ethically, morally, and personally neutral, a conduit from questionto answer. Perhaps most importantly, librarians saw learners as having abasic void. They came to the library because they lacked information thatlibrarians could provide. Librarians gave them information if users couldask good questions, which was key to the game. In the classroom, librari-ans did something called bibliographic instruction, teaching the tools of bib-liography.

These definitions of librarianship are derived from broader culturalassumptions about what it means to be a professional. They reflect a beliefthat knowledge resides in experts, and that professionalism is related to thepossession of expert knowledge. Professionals have a fiduciary relationship



with clients in this model, which means clients must trust that the profes-sional is an honest agent working on their behalf. Professionals act forclients who lack skill and knowledge to act for themselves. They must doso by interviewing the client, understanding his or her need, and then act-ing for the client’s good. Many professions subscribe to this model: bankers,attorneys, physicians. Very little education of the client takes place in thismodel, and the client is not positioned as a learner. The client wants an out-come. The professional’s job is to achieve this outcome for the client. Thissituation, with the professional librarian at a desk or in a classroom medi-ating between knowledge/information and people, describes the traditional,bibliographic position of the librarian, a role that I deemed inadequate indiscussing the Confederate flag with my student. This view is based on anarrative that is no longer sustainable.

Critical Information Literacy as the New Library Narrative

Information literacy forms a new narrative for library practice, and this nar-rative of information literacy in libraries builds on a larger literacy narrative(Vygotsky, 1962; Freire, 1993; Foucault, 1995; Gee, 1999). In particular,Gee (1999) sees literacy as an entire repertoire of performances appropriateto social situations. Viewed this way, literacy is something mobile and flex-ible, not just a set of skills with written text. Literacy is the ability to readthe codes of our cultures and subcultures. Literacy is also the ability to pro-duce codes that are valued in these cultures (Elmborg, 2006b). Literacy isfundamentally connected to community, and community members are thejudges of literacy competency. According to this view, we are all literate, butwe are not all literate in the same communities.

For example, when I teach a course called Literacy and Learning,designed for librarians in training, I start by asking students to identify acommunity they belong to based on their interests. They describe interestslike knitting, ethnic dancing, computer programming, creative anachro-nism, hand-fishing, gourmet cooking, and video gaming. I ask them to thinkabout the ways community members become insiders in that culture, whatit means to perform the insider role, what codes you need to understand,and how one gains status by performing a role, especially a role using lan-guage. I ask them to think about that as a kind of literacy. I want them tosee how the literacy narrative treats the codes of communication as some-thing we learn as we come into new intellectual and physical spaces.

Librarians need to see information as situated in a community and tosee themselves as masters of informational codes. To operate in the literacymetaphor, librarians need to work on the boundaries of their discourse com-munities, bringing new learners into the community by helping them learnwhat information they need to function. To do this, librarians need to locate



themselves at the boundaries rather than in the centers. Contemporaryboundaries are porous. People migrate between communities. In the bibli-ographic narrative, librarians required newcomers to come to them, wherethey sat in the center of the traditional circle of power. Librarians didn’tcome to clients. This position made sense under the expert model becausethe expert’s time could best be used by accepting clients sequentially into thespace of the tools. In the new literacy narrative, a person constructing mean-ing does not lack anything. Rather, that person seeks initiation into a com-munity and its codes. People tend to want to do that on their own byworking on the edges. There isn’t a problem to solve. There is a communityto join.

Back in the bibliographic narrative, librarians performed a kind of sort-ing function, helping those who could ask good questions, particularlythose who made the effort to approach the library and librarian. There is anamazing scene in the film Sophie’s Choice where Meryl Streep’s characterapproaches the reference desk to ask about the writer “Emile Dickens.” Shehas a heavy European accent, and the reference librarian answers her ques-tion, but in the process, he ridicules her pronunciation, humiliating her andsending her away in tears. Some powerful stereotypes are conveyed here.The librarian, positioned between Streep’s character and knowledge or infor-mation, makes no effort to meet her in some supportive way, no attempt tosee her as someone with knowledge of many worlds and many codes, try-ing to grow in new directions. The future of libraries and librarianship can-not be between learners and information in this way, but must be alongsidelearners, especially those who didn’t inherit English school literacy. Prac-ticing librarianship this way does not necessarily mean abolishing the ref-erence desk as a physical place (though I find experiments in this directioninteresting). “Place” and “position” are more conceptual than literal. Librar-ians need to move away from the mediating position and develop strategiesto work with people collaboratively, to honor their experiences, and to buildbridges from where they are to new literacies. The vehicle for that changeis language.

In my experience, too many librarians still think their job is to providecorrect answers to questions. To be clear, I do not advocate that we abolishcorrectness as a standard, but rather that we need a human connection withsomeone, to understand the way they view the world, where their questionor problem is coming from. The librarian can answer questions withoutreally helping people, as I would have by finding five sources to prove theConfederate flag symbolizes pride. In contrast, critical information literacyinvolves a commitment to social justice within capitalist societies (Wysockiand Johnson-Eilola, 1999). Capitalism has created an amazingly unequaldistribution of wealth globally, resulting in economic migration on anunprecedented scale as people uproot themselves from their homes, takinghuge risks pursuing work and better lives. The casualties are enormous, and



capitalism is a very unforgiving system, cruel in many cases. If librarianstreat literacy as the birthright of a privileged few, then leave it to capitalismto sort it all out, we’ve adopted a Darwinian “survival of the fittest” per-spective. Librarians need to be positioned with those who struggle, offeringsupportive and respectful help. This positioning places the librarian as edu-cator alongside learners. For example, librarians can collaborate with otherfaculty in engaging students in service learning and civic engagement proj-ects in the community, creating the opportunity for critical reflection aboutcommunity challenges and fostering learning in and outside the classroom.

Implications for Adult Education

First of all, it’s important for librarians as adult educators to respect theknowledge of the people they work with. Western education is still largelyconceived as the process of putting the right content into people’s minds—Freire’s banking concept. In practice, most educators still focus most of theirattention on content, knowing it thoroughly and presenting it clearly. Ittakes confidence, both on a personal and intellectual level, to relinquish thepower that comes from the position of authority, the position of the know-ing teacher, and to attempt to connect teaching with learning. One can’t ulti-mately relinquish teaching power absolutely. Being aware of that power andusing it carefully is crucial. Taking care to engage learners with a construc-tivist approach to learning within the library shifts this power dynamic.

Second, it’s important to take the time to figure out where people areemotionally, intellectually, and cognitively, and to conduct conversationswithin their zone of proximal development. That means having real con-versations that engage people, acknowledging what they know, and attempt-ing to build understanding. I advise educators not to overestimate theusefulness of what we think we know about libraries or information. Every-thing we think we know is based on our own cultural assumptions, our nar-rative. If the people we work with don’t share those assumptions, we needto realize that what we describe might be alien or might even conflict withwhat others know or believe. Homi Bhabha (1990) describes the earlyefforts of Christian missionaries to convert Hindus in India. They talkedabout the importance of Jesus to salvation and his role as a deity. The Hindussaid they were interested in knowing more about Jesus, but not if he atemeat. Here we see the ways that cultural assumptions can’t be simply givento people. They lie deep inside us, shaping our understandings. What weknow about libraries is like that.

Finally, we need to take each day, each person, each situation as itcomes. We need to be open to experiencing cultural “otherness” in all itsforms. We should try to avoid imposing order or expectations. Librarians arenot the center of the library. The collection is not the center of the library.Each person who comes to the library to learn and grow is the center of the



library. The librarian’s role is to locate that center and to help build and solid-ify it, putting adults in charge of their own learning, letting them articulatewhat they want to know and how they want to learn it.

References

Accardi, M., Drabinski, E., and Kumbier, A. Critical Library Instruction Theories andMethods. Duluth, Minn.: Library Juice Press, 2010.

Association of College and Research Libraries. Information Literacy Competency Stan-dards. Chicago: American Library Association, 2000. Retrieved July, 19, 2010, fromhttp://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/acrl/standards/standards.pdf.

Bhabha, H. “The Third Space: Interview with Jonathan Rutherford.” In J. Rutherford(ed.), Identity: Community, Culture, Difference (pp. 207–221). London: Lawrence &Wishart, 1990.

Elmborg, J. “Critical Information Literacy: Implications for Instructional Practice.” TheJournal of Academic Librarianship, 2006a, 32(2), 192–199.

Elmborg, J. “Libraries in the Contact Zone: On the Creation of Educational Space.” Ref-erence and User Services Quarterly, 2006b, 46(1) 56–64.

Foucault, M. Discipline and Punish. New York: Vintage, 1995.Freire, P. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Continuum, 1993.Gee, J. P. An Introduction to Discourse Analysis: Theory and Method. London: Routledge,

1999.Green, R., and Macauley, P. “Doctoral Students’ Engagement with Information: An

American-Australian Perspective.” Portal: Libraries and the Academy, 2007, 7(3),317–332.

Jacobs, H. L. M. “Information Literacy and Reflective Pedagogical Praxis.” The Journalof Academic Librarianship, 2008, 34(3), 256–262.

Kuhlthau, C. C. Seeking Meaning: A Process Approach to Library and Information Services.2nd ed. Westport, Conn.: Libraries Unlimited, 2004.

Lakoff, G. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980.Pratt, M. L. “Arts of the Contact Zone.” In J. M. Wolff (ed.), Professing in the Contact

Zone (pp. 1–20). Urbana, Ill.: NCTE, 2002.Simmons, M. H. “Librarians as Disciplinary Discourse Mediators.” Portal: Libraries and

the Academy, 2005, 5(3), 297–311.Swanson, T. A. “A Radical Step: Implementing a Critical Information Literacy Model.”

Portal: Libraries and the Academy, 2004, 4(2), 259–274.Vygotsky, L. S. Thought and Language. Cambridge, Mass.: M. I. T. Press, 1962.Wysocki, A. F., and Johnson-Eilola, J. “Blinded by the Letter: Why Are We Using Liter-

acy as a Metaphor for Everything Else?” In G. E. Hawisher and C. L. Selfe (eds.), Pas-sions, Pedagogies, and 21st Century Technologies (pp. 349–368). Logan: Utah StateUniversity Press, 1999.

JIM ELMBORG is an associate professor of Library and Information Science anddirector of the School of Library and Information Science at the University ofIowa.


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Literacies, narratives, and adult learning in libraries