Information Literacy and Instruction: Information Literacy Instruction with Primo

Abstract

Discovery services are changing the way library users find and access library materials, especially electronic resources. These search tools are also impacting information literacy instruction for users at all skill levels. The University of Southern Mississippi Libraries in Hattiesburg adopted Ex Libris’s Primo discovery service during the summer of 2014. Primo has now been a prominent feature on our website’s homepage for almost a full semester and has impacted the way we teach information literacy to our students. As the reference librarian for Health Sciences, I will describe my experience incorporating Primo into our library instruction for both first-year experience and lowerclassmen as well as higher-level courses and how the two approaches differ. I will also describe the biggest challenges our reference services department has encountered when showing our students how to use Primo and how these issues have impacted instruction and our promotion of interlibrary loan. Finally, whenever possible, I will tie in our experiences to the ACRL Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education in an effort to demonstrate how learning and literacy standards can be helpful scaffolds during technological transitions.