Why Should I Use This Resource?

The following resource is made for academic librarians, particularly librarians who spend time teaching one-shot information literacy library sessions for undergraduate students.

In my attempt to find the real reasons why students feel frustration while doing research, I looked to other fields for answers. During my search, I ran into a theory originating from the rhetoric and composition scholarship and my questions soon found possible answers within a cultural theory of genre. Rhetorical genre theory (RGT) emphasizes the rhetorical nature of communicative genres and the ways these typified communications help to inform our actions.  RGT is a useful lens through which to consider students’ research frustrations because it offers a framework to discover how newcomers to a discipline approach the communicative sources they attempt to access and use.

Composition instructors have already migrated these theoretical underpinnings into a pedagogical framework. This resource is my attempt to transfer these fully formed pedagogies into the one-shot library classroom.

If you’re looking for the class activities I’ve designed, you can head straight to the Example Class Activities section near the end of this resource. The remainder of this resource is a more thorough examination of how RGT and genre pedaogies can be used in the library classroom.