I have been reading a few books about library instruction and information literacy over the winter break. I have a few initial reactions to them, and I would like to share them over the coming weeks.

Title: Framing Library Instruction
Author: John Budd

This book is intended to offer a framework in which library instructional programs can be built. Budd is an advocate of an approach that he describes as “phenomenological cognitive action.” Drawing on phenomenological philosophy (e.g., Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty) Budd describes this as an examination of how students search for meaning and understanding “in statements, images, or voices of others, and the teachers’ engagement of students in those searches.” He criticizes the tendency of the library profession to treat information as a thing and to give information a meaning beyond its “function as (a) tool…” He also advises library instructors to consider constructivist learning theory, which acknowledges the intersubjective role that socially constructed categories and language play and how these things are used to frame our understanding of material things. Therefore, Budd concludes that librarians should compel students to be “active in their learning, as well as in the historical evaluation of what is presented to them.”

Budd’s work raises some interesting questions, but for those librarians tasked with developing an instruction or information literacy program this book will probably not be that helpful. Budd surveys several important philosophical and educational theories that are very relevant to developing a framework for instruction. However, Budd’s work will probably not persuade colleagues that are not already predisposed to wade through dense explanations of these theories of theory’s importance to the day-to-day realities of providing instruction in a library setting.