Teaching Business Information Literacy

Business is currently one of the most popular degree programs among both graduate and undergraduate students, and non-business programs including engineering, design, and pure sciences--all interested in innovation, commercialization, and marketing--are increasingly integrating business training into their curriculum in the name of interdisciplinarity and improved job placement. There is a sustained and growing need for libraries to effectively support business information literacy. At the same time, the resources, research techniques, and assignments that business students need to master often have little in common with a traditional research paper. Teaching Business Information Literacy provides guidance to new business specialists, generalists, and subject librarians in other disciplines being asked to teach business research classes for the first time. Featuring more than 40 practical, classroom-proven lesson plans for one-shot, embedded, and credit-bearing library classes, it's divided into nine sections:

Basic Business ResearchFinance and AccountingEntrepreneurshipManagementMarketingSpecialty SubjectsData Literacy/Data VisualizationExperiential Learning/CareerUsing Technology in the Classroom

Chapters cover such crucial topics as competitive intelligence, market research, financial analysis, ethics, intellectual property, accounting and auditing, supply chain management, job searching, and more. Each one guides you through the background of the topic and activity being taught, pre-class planning and preparation, a step-by-step lesson plan, how to adapt the activity for other institutional contexts, and learning outcomes. Additional supporting materials such as slide decks, worksheets, and game boards are freely available in the ACRL Sandbox (sandbox.acrl.org) and findable with the tag "#bizinfolit."