I had the opportunity to meet Lisa Hinchliffe in the Welcome Dinner at Barbara’s home, but later she gave a session regarding Information Literacy in Academic Libraries. In that particular session I felt inspired by Lisa’s work, so I felt the need to know more about her, her philosophy and her work.
Lisa is a great person with tons of energy and passion. She is Professor/Coordinator for Information Literacy Services and Instruction in the University Library at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and by the way she expresses you can tell she really enjoys working with LIS students and various visiting scholars. Also, she has been involved working in several university libraries, so as serving in the committees of ALA and received many awards. If you would like to know more about her, you can check her biography.
And the most inspiring thing that I learned from Lisa is her definition of information literacy “as a capacity that individual human beings have that enables them to thrive in the information society”. I love how information has the power to change a person’s life.
Regarding to the interview, the questions I ask were:
- Is there any difference being a librarian and an educator?
I think of librarians as a subcategory of educator. Some librarians educate by creating the learning environment that is an organized collection. Others by providing direct instruction. But, fundamentally, I think the role of librarian is an educator role.
- What challenges are you facing right now and how will you approach them?
The biggest challenges are the change from information scarcity when we taught students how to find information that was hard to get to this time of information abundance when the needed skills are much more information management and avoiding being overwhelmed by having so many information resources.
- What do you look forward as a librarian?
I always look forward to working with students. It is a blessing to help people learn and pursue their dreams.
As a conclusion, through the session we had with Lisa and the interview I’ll always recall that:
- We need to convince people why the library is important.
- We need to think about people’s success.
- You must love them.
- Teaching is an activity.