Librarian and faculty member differences in using information technologies: A Prerequisite for Developing Effective Bibliographic Instruction Programs

Over the past twenty years, bibliographic instruction has evolved from teaching students the mechanics of locating research materials to a process‐oriented approach that emphasizes analyzing research needs, framing a research question, and evaluating the search results. In the last decade alone, academic librarians have extended bibliographic instruction to cover online catalogs, CD‐ROMs, and database searching, in addition to teaching print resources and the card catalog. We are still defining a paradigm for teaching end‐users. Some of the assumptions associated with the teaching of print resources, for example, can be applied to the teaching of information technologies, while others cannot. Our efforts are further complicated by the rapid development of new types of technologies, by vendor refusals to adopt a standard command language or user interface, and by our patrons' varying responses to both computers in general and electronic research sources in particular.