Swiss Standards for Information Literacy

Swiss Standards for Information Literacy

  The Swiss standards and the associated competency grid enable consistent placement and
promotion of IL at the various universities. They provide guidance in the design of courses and course
offerings and enable the development of compatible university cross-training concepts. These
standards support the collaboration between library staff and faculty of various disciplines and
facilitate agreements between libraries and university administration. This shows that information
literacy can be understood as an interaction of different sub-competencies and various models of
information literacy emphasize this aspect by presenting a procedural sequence of sub-competencies.
Despite some wide-spread definitions there is however no generally accepted understanding of information literacy. Reasons for this are the interdisciplinary nature of the mediated skills as well as
strong connections to neighboring interdisciplinary skills such as media literacy.
With the UNESCO definition as a base, the Swiss standards were developed using the
“Australian and New Zealand Information Literacy Framework” of the Australian and New Zealand
Institute for Information Literacy ANZIIL (Bundy 2004) and the internationally established
“Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education” of the American Association of
College and Research Libraries (ACRL 2000). Studies of recent years have shown that information
literacy must be fully understood and must not be restricted to the use of library tools (Leibniz-
Informations-zentrum Wirtschaft 2011, Madray 2007). Specifically the aspects of “Use of
Information” and “Responsibility to Information” have moved to the foreground and win academic
importance. The inclusion of these aspects in existing concepts of IL was timely and included the
development of six standards accordingly. Through the formulation of the new standards content could
be simultaneously adjusted to the culture of the Swiss audience. Taking into account the three
linguistic cultures (German, French, Italian) the developed concepts were limited to the essentials.
Thus, the content for all three cultures remain understandable and experience a wider acceptance and
implementation Standards can be regarded as generally recognized objectives, which are formulated on
an abstract level and describe an area of competence in few words. For teaching purposes, standards
need to be supplemented by a more detailed description of skills required by specific target groups.
With a modular grid including skills on three levels (beginner, advanced, expert) the necessary
specifications for different environments were realized. The level “Beginners” describes the skills
needed for a first year student, while the level “Advanced” focuses on the skills needed for students at
the transition from bachelor to masters. The “Expert” level is aimed at students who pursue further
scientific work in research or industry. The competency grid is to be used in accordance with its
modular design; the corresponding requirements may be, depending on the context, configured
differently and may require different prioritization.
The IL requirements for a student of jurisprudence are different to those of a student of
electrical engineering. The present Swiss standards for IL at Swiss universities are to be understood as
a common basis for the recommendation and implementation of IL into the programs at universities.
Subject-specific integration into study programmes and courses is essential for the successful
placement and promotion of IL. The competency grid is a horizontally and vertically coordinated
approach of broad objectives of the information literacy and can be directly used for the development
of individual lessons or teaching modules and performance checks. Each of the six standards includes
three to four learning objectives that can be prepared and detailed in accordance with the technical
requirements of the competency grid. The Competency Grid Guide explains what knowledge is
expected at the three levels. Since no subject-specific features are included in the competency grid, a technical adjusment is recommended.