Promoting information literacy as a cooperative project between five Nordic countries

Abstract

The project is a good example of cooperation between five countries. Its aim is to reach common benefits and synergy by sharing experiences and best practices between six libraries in veterinary medicine and adjacent subject areas in finding new ways to increase integration of information literacy (1) in education and in the cooperation between teachers and librarians.

The directors of the Viikki Science Library in Finland, the Library of the Norwegian School of Veterinary Science, the Library of the Agricultural University in Norway, the Library of the Swedish Agricultural University, the Library of the Royal Veterinary and Agricultural University in Denmark and the Library of the Hvanneyri Agricultural University in Iceland are the generators and the guardians of the project. They form the Information Management Group of the NOVA University.

The NOVA University is a cooperative network of the six universities of veterinary medicine, agriculture and forestry in the five Nordic countries mentioned above. These universities are in a process of renewing and restructuring their exams in accordance with requirements of the internationalisation and interoperability of higher education in Europe. This offers an opportunity for the libraries to cooperate with university departments in a more systematic way in linking information literacy more closely and coherently to the subjects taught in their curriculum.

The strategic objectives of the project are:

*To promote the quality of university education by finding and describing means to increase the integration of information literacy in the curriculum *To find ways to strengthen the cooperation between teachers and librarians in the teaching information literacy *To report the current status of information literacy as part of higher education in the NOVA countries and possibly in the Baltic countries *To find and promote examples of best practice in integrating and teaching information literacy in the NOVA universities and how the awareness of information literacy issues is addressed *To produce common information material on this topic for open distribution in each NOVA University * To plan and arrange a half-day seminar on information literacy for teachers of the NOVA University in connection with another NOVA meeting, preferably on pedagogic and networking issues.

The NOVA University is financing this project. The planning process, the contents of the common information material and the programme of the seminar with examples from veterinary medicine will be described in the poster. This could be a model for similar cooperation between countries.