The Business Reference in Academic Libraries committee is collaborating with SLA’s CUBL (College and University Business Libraries) to form the Core Competencies Task Force. We are working to create the first set of business research competencies. Our goal is to create clearly written guidelines that can be used by undergraduates, graduate students, faculty, and business librarians in the private sector. Research competencies structure the academic experience and give students and others a benchmark for knowing their own information competency in the field and what their goals should be.
The committee is busy reviewing existing research competencies in other fields, existing information literacy standards in business disciplines, and conducting interviews with non-academic organizations about their experiences in business research. The committee expects to present rough drafts of these processes at ALA Midwinter.
Co-chair Carissa Phillips is identifying private businesses and other organizations to get feedback about how they use information and their experiences with recent business majors’ ability in information literacy.
Members of the committee are collaborating on Google Docs, group sourcing the literature review, providing links to research competencies and brainstorming on the content of the competencies.
Charles Allan, 2012-2013 Chair