My first library staff role allowed me to focus on technology. I was interested in how search, “web 2.0,” and ecommerce changed people’s expectations of engaging with the library through web browsers. Then I moved into my first librarian position and focused on instruction. I taught classes, I offered instructional design support for faculty across campus, and I eventually managed our credit-bearing instruction program. Because of this I spent a lot of time with the ACRL Information Literacy Standards and then the Information Literacy Framework.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And as with any foundational introduction that shapes your mental models and worldview, I come back to these lenses that shaped me as a librarian pretty routinely. In the AI conversations I keep finding myself in, I return to these two questions: how does this tool change people’s expectations of the library? How does the ACRL Information Literacy Framework support our communities in navigating this evolving world? <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The ACRL Information Literacy Standards<\/a> were a set of skills that a student could demonstrate. This was extremely useful when building a program and assessing the impact of library instruction. But the standards also felt like they didn’t capture the entirety of what was happening in teaching students to navigate the information environment. In 2016 ACRL adopted the Framework for Information Literacy<\/a>. This was a new way of explaining what we were teaching our students to do: a framework based on the idea of Meyer and Land’s “threshold concepts<\/a>.” These are central ideas in a field that permanently change how a learner understands the subject and views the world. Meyer and Land described them<\/a> as transformative, irreversible, integrative, bounded, and troublesome. The information literacy concepts are: authority is constructed and contextual, information creation as a process, information has value, research as inquiry, scholarship as conversation, and searching as strategic exploration. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In 2023 ACRL launched a Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education Review and Revision Task Force<\/a> to “review the current Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education to determine if it still reflects current thinking, theory, and practice on information literacy. Review lenses could include equity, diversity, and inclusion, and the emergence of generative AI.” In 2026 a draft <\/a>was shared for comment, in which the concepts remain (though “scholarship as conversation” moves to “knowledge systems as conversation”) and much of the explanatory text is updated<\/a>. The revised draft went to the ACRL Board for consideration this summer, and a final version hasn’t been announced yet. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The details of the process matter less than what it signals: librarianship treats its own understanding of information literacy as unfinished, and it is revisiting that understanding because the information environment has changed again. That seems right to me, and is a part of the ethos of the field. In an interview, Sara Miller, one of the leads for the project, shared “[a]t this juncture, the concepts expressed in the Framework still seem to provide enough context for framing and informing an IL-based exploration of technologies like AI.”1<\/a><\/sup> I’d agree and go a bit further. AI makes these concepts more urgent, because it smooths over the places where students used to struggle in their search and use of information.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Troublesome” is the quality I keep coming back to. Meyer and Land meant that these concepts resist easy understanding, and that the resistance is part of how the learning happens. A student who wrestles with why one source carries more weight than another comes out the other side seeing information differently. Generative AI is remarkably good at removing that resistance. It answers fluently, attributes selectively or not at all, and hands over a finished synthesis where a student once had to build one. Each frame names an understanding that grows out of the friction an AI answer smooths away. <\/p>\n\n\n\n So how does a student come to understand:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Of course there are cases when AI can also support threshold crossing. It’s been clear to me in my own use that having a knowledge base when working with AI can be generative and useful. But when I’m thinking about working with a student who is just forming their foundational knowledge of their discipline and is making sense of new information, the encounter should produce enough friction for the learning to stick. AI is most useful to people who have already crossed these thresholds and is riskiest for those who haven’t (a theme I find myself ruminating on a lot these days).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Libraries have spent decades teaching toward these exact understandings, and we have long known that struggle is part of the lesson. I remember debates in my graduate program about whether to teach with a live search or a carefully planned one, and they resolved quickly: students learned more from watching someone conduct a search and evolve their thinking in the process than from a smooth, canned demonstration. That lesson feels newly relevant. People increasingly expect information to arrive polished and finished, and part of our work is to help them notice what that polish disguises. The emphasis in our teaching should be shifting from finding the right sources toward thinking well about whatever information arrives, and the Framework holds up for both. <\/p>\n\n\n My first library staff role allowed me to focus on technology. I was interested in how search, “web 2.0,” and ecommerce changed people’s expectations of engaging with the library through web browsers. Then I moved into my first librarian position and focused on instruction. I taught classes, I offered instructional design support for faculty across […]<\/p>\n<\/a>","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"[{\"content\":\"Miller, Sara, Ross, Leslie, & Maye, Kay. \\\"The Framework\u2019s Next Chapter: An Interview with ACRL\u2019s Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education Review and Revision Task Force Leaders Sara Miller and Leslie Ross\\\" College & Research Libraries News<\/em> [Online], Volume 87 Number 4 (31 March 2026). https:\/\/crln.acrl.org\/index.php\/crlnews\/article\/view\/27281\/35079<\/a>\",\"id\":\"0ec49dcb-85ac-4812-939e-96d2531087ea\"}]"},"categories":[5],"tags":[40,6,65,63,67,64,66],"class_list":["post-108","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-libraries-ai","tag-acrl","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-framework","tag-information-literacy","tag-meyers-and-land","tag-standards","tag-threshold-concepts","h-entry","hentry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/laurenpressley.com\/library\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/laurenpressley.com\/library\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/laurenpressley.com\/library\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/laurenpressley.com\/library\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/laurenpressley.com\/library\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=108"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/laurenpressley.com\/library\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":110,"href":"https:\/\/laurenpressley.com\/library\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108\/revisions\/110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/laurenpressley.com\/library\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/laurenpressley.com\/library\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/laurenpressley.com\/library\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n