"School librarians have become an endangered species [in Michigan]," writes Koby Levin in The Bridge, Michigan's non-partisan, nonprofit news source (Aug. 14, 2019)

Some stats that Levin includes in his article:

• 92 percent of schools statewide don’t employ a full-time, certified librarian. 
• The number of school librarians in Michigan declined 73 percent between 2000 and 2016, one of the sharpest declines in the country.
• Michigan ranks 47th in the country in the number of librarians it has per student.

At Hekman Library we're bound to notice this trend, as we teach information and research literacy to all students, particularly in their first year. Our instruction librarians have noticed that students are coming less prepared to do college-level research today than they did ten or even five years ago. They are simply not as familiar with libraries and how they work (their purpose, organization, research tools, staff roles; e.g., "What's a research librarian for?")

A couple of our research and instruction librarians have created a new framework for IL, "The Wise Scholar." This semester, we will be running a pilot with a few instructors in Written Rhetoric to integrate the concepts and skills from the new framework into their courses. "The Wise Scholar" is aligned with the university's own Educational Framework.