It’s not just us: Sharing the ACRL Framework with writing tutors

Abstract

The research process and the writing process are intertwined, but academic libraries and writing centers can too often be siloed campus resources working alongside but apart from one another. The Towson University (TU) Library was beginning a renovation to build a one-stop academic support center on our main floor that would include a dedicated TU Writing Center satellite location. The Writing Center employs a peer tutoring model that supports both undergraduate and graduate students. This opened the doors for some more intentional collaboration between our two units. After some cross-departmental visits, we identified a need for research-related training sessions for peer writing tutors in the upcoming fall semester. During hybrid asynchronous and live sessions, we introduced the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education and invited writing tutors to consider how each frame relates to the writing process. By sharing the Framework directly with tutors through self-paced activities and group discussion, we uncovered that there were more similarities in our work than we assumed.