There’s a baby in the bath water: In defense of one-shots

Library literature is full of articles critical one-shot instruction, including a recent College & Research Libraries volume edited by Nicole Pagowsky. Her call for proposals makes excellent points about the ephemeral definition phrase “one-shot,” implications power imbalances between librarians and professors, role systemic racism sexism in academy. I would argue that many these same issues arise any type library instruction. Embedded librarianship, train-the-trainer, credit-bearing courses, asynchronous tutorials—I’ve done them all, they all have their place, but cannot replace one-shots.