Embedded librarianship and digital literacy instruction in academic libraries

A case-based study of the Copenhagen University Library

Abstract

Academic libraries have undertaken an important role in facilitating students’ acquisition of digital literacy knowledge and skills, preparing students to navigate an increasingly complex information society. One approach to this is through embedded librarianship, which focuses on placing librarians in user contexts. This article presents the results of a case study on digital literacy instruction at the Copenhagen University Library. It examines library instructors’ practice when teaching digital literacy courses, and to what degree this instruction takes the variety of students’ different disciplinary backgrounds into account. This case study is comprised of four library courses, using both observational studies of these courses and interviews with the library instructors responsible.

In the article we adopt a sociocultural approach to digital literacy, seeing it as highly context-dependent, and we argue that library instructors should situate the acquisition of digital literacy knowledge and skills in students’ specific disciplinary context. We find that digital literacy instruction at Copenhagen University library is mostly situated in a general academic library context and seldom focuses on students’ actual disciplinary context. We term this approach to embedded librarianship, where students have increased access to library expertise and resources, but their disciplinary perspective is not prioritized, “practical embeddedness”. Our findings suggest that academic libraries would benefit from pursuing an alternative approach, here termed “epistemological embeddedness”, which prioritizes discipline-specific knowledge and approaches. This greater emphasis on epistemological embeddedness could ensure that students learn digital literacy approaches that can help them navigate the information-rich contexts they meet beyond their academic tenure