[Sigiii-l] Plaza (2)

[Nadia Caidi]

Position Statement:  How an academic reference librarian is affected by 
globalization

One effect of the globalization of the information society is the 
increase in students who travel abroad for their education.  Presently, 
over 130 000 foreign students come to Canadian academic institutions 
every year (Citizenship and Immigration Canada, 2003).  Like all 
students, developing information literacy is vital to an international 
student's success, and the task of assisting students to achieve this 
will naturally fall to academic librarians. 

Despite this pressing need for information literacy, studies have shown 
that international students get little out of library orientation tours 
(Downing & Klein, 2001) and often do not attend bibliographic 
instruction classes at all (Conteh-Morgan, 2002).  As well, it has been 
my observation that in reference transactions many librarians have 
difficulty communicating with foreign library users.  Often the 
librarians cannot understand the students' accents well, and in turn the 
students have trouble comprehending the answers to their queries.  

Consequently, those of us wishing to pursue a career in academic 
librarianship would do well to equip ourselves with a number of skills. 
For example, second language teaching techniques and an awareness of 
different learning styles may help improve comprehension in 
bibliographic sessions or tours.  By providing a list of relevant 
vocabulary and a variety of auditory and visual cues, a student's 
comprehension will increase dramatically.  Furthermore, students tend to 
learn new information more easily if it is taught in relation to prior 
knowledge, so if we gain some understanding of libraries in other 
nations, we can relate the lesson objectives to what the students 
already know.  Finally, a familiarity with the cultures, languages 
and/or the accents of the populations we are serving would greatly 
improve communication between our users and ourselves.      

The information science community must therefore offer opportunities for 
academic librarians to acquire cultural literacy and second-language 
teaching techniques as well as strategies to better communicate with 
international users. In that way, we may provide these students with 
sufficient information literacy to achieve success at university. 

Reference List

 
Citizenship and Immigration Canada. (2003, April 7). Studying in Canada.
Retrieved September 25, 2003, from http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/study/

Conteh-Morgan, M. (2002). Empowering ESL students: A new model for 
information
literacy instruction. Research Strategies, 18, p. 29-38.

Downing, A., & Klein, L.R. (2001). A multilingual virtual tour for 
international students:
The web-based library at Baruch College opens doors. College and 
Research Libraries, 62(5), p. 500-502.

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