Pam McKinney, catching up with the live blogging from day 2 of the ECIL conference. Adrienne Warner from the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque spoke about the library as a physical space for students. Libraries and information literacy are related, but their relationship is relatively ill-defined. In the USA, "information literacy" is usually taken to mean the ACRL framework, which mentions librarians but not libraries. Adrienne referenced the work of Annemaree Lloyd, who established the role of embodied or corporeal information as one of the modalities in the information landscape in her theoretical work. The corporeal modality refers to physical information drawn from the body or the bodies of others. Adrienne also referenced the work of Andrew Cox, who has researched the experience of students in academic libraries, which students experience "intersensorially".
The tour of the physical library was once an important aspect of student inductions, but Adrienne thinks they still have a lot of value. She created a self-guided online tour. She asked students: "Looking back on the tour, what sticks out to you?". Student responses revealed that they understood the epistemic norms for the space shared in the tour, i.e. that some spaces are quiet. The social information from the tour was experienced as challenging the assumptions they had made about the library space based on unwritten social norms. In terms of the physical modality, each student could develop an understanding of the library by moving through the space. They could observe others; there are sights, sounds and smells. The tour helped students develop information literacy about the physical library, different from engaging with the library website or catalogue.
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