(One Easy Lesson - Continued from Page 6) twin explosions in the availability of information and in the ubiquity and diversity of electronic formats, including the Internet, make it necessary for educators to design programs, curricula, courses, and assignments that explicitly accelerate the development of the students' abilities in this area. The Library is at the forefront of these efforts through its instruction program which includes one-on-one instruction at the Reference Desk, one-hour classes giving course-related and course-integrated instruction, a three-credit course in "Information Strategies" (LRC 102), targeted workshops on electronic databases, group tours, and library faculty consultation on the development of course proposals. This essay will try to analyze how the instruction program contributes to the development of information literacy in LaGuardia students, through an analysis of the learning objectives of the one-hour course-related, course-integrated instruction sessions. These classes are mandatory for all English 101 students and available by request to any instructor in other courses. The contents of the sessions vary widely with the objectives of the course instructor, the level of the students, the course content, and the assignment on which the students are working. How, then, to define the learning objectives of one-hour library instruction sessions? Is there a core content for these sessions? What can be expected of all students who have attended such a class? One way to answer these questions is to list examples of material or concepts covered in these classes as they relate to information literacy skills and try to draw conclusions from actual practice. In a Spring 1998 call for integrating information literacy skills or "information competencies" across the curriculum, the Academic Senate for California Community Colleges provided a definition of information competency which parses more concretely the skills required of the information literate person: Information competency is the ability to find, evaluate, use, and communicate information in all its various formats. It combines aspects of library literacy, research methods and technological literacy. Information competency includes consideration of the ethical and legal implications of information and requires the application of both critical thinking and communication skills. Academic Senate for California Community Colleges, Counseling and Library Faculty Issues Committee, Richard Rose, chair. Information Competency in the California Community Colleges. Spring 1998. 24 Feb. 1999. http://www.academicsenate.cc.ca.us/Senate/Papers/InfoComp.htm The table on pages 9 & 10 matches the information competencies identified by the Academic Senate for California Community Colleges (and underlined above) with material taught in one-hour library instruction sessions at LaGuardia. A quick look shows that only a very small proportion of the material that could (Continued on next page)