With an explosion of accessible information online and students feeling more and more independent in their searching skills and information needs, libraries are shifting to user-centered models. With this shift comes a need for librarians to transform the focus of the library from a great repository of material into a service-centric, one-stop research and learning shop for patrons. These changes are requiring librarians to define the library by the services it can provide, especially innovative ones, such as publishing services, scholarly communications, and project management. Instructional design can help librarians craft and assess these new and innovative services, including teaching information literacy, developing online content, and designing programs and outreach initiatives in a targeted and mindful way.

Creative Instructional Design: Practical Applications for Librarians explores the major overarching themes that show why instructional design is so impactful for academic librarians—intentionality, collaboration, and engagement—and provides you with extensive examples of how librarians are applying the theoretical perspectives of instructional design in practical ways. The book examines ways in which librarians are using instructional design principles to inform, construct, or evaluate information literacy initiatives; online library instruction and services; and programming and outreach efforts. Instructional design provides a way for instructors, trainers, and educators to both approach instruction creation systematically, and evaluate how it has been effective and how it can be improved.

Regardless of the instructional format, from classes to workshops to videos to worksheets, instructional design strives to ensure that potential learning gains by students are maximized and that the instruction is evaluated for improvement in future iterations.