The Information Literacy Resource Bank

re-purposing the wheel

Abstract

This paper outlines the aims and methodology of the Information Literacy Resource Bank (http://ilrb.cardiff.ac.uk) project. The Resource Bank has been developed to help meet the challenge of embedding information literacy into the taught curriculum at Cardiff University. It contains “bite-size” interactive tasks, images, diagrams, cartoons and short tutorials which each focus on a particular information literacy topic. Hosted on the University’s web pages, they can either be used in situ or downloaded and inserted into the tutors’ own resources in BlackBoard, PowerPoint or even printed handouts. The intention is that the learning objects are suitably granular for integration, as required, within different teaching environments and are adaptable to the many different approaches to embedding information literacy. After describing the background and development of the Resource Bank, the authors evaluate, through case study examples of their use, whether the resources are truly re-purposable and whether the resources can be regarded as a successful source of support for embedding information literacy into teaching programmes.