Multimodal Information Literacy: The Back-to-School Case for Pairing Credo and Films On Demand

Every August, library instruction teams sit down and plan the same thing: what will first-year research sessions look like this fall? Most teams already have a strong answer for part of that question, because they’ve already invested in either Credo Reference or Films On Demand. Fewer have both. That gap is worth a second look this back-to-school season, because multimodal information literacy — the practice of building research skills through more than one kind of source at once — depends on exactly that combination.

Why One Mode Isn’t Enough

A student who only reads text about a topic and a student who only watches video about it end up with two different, incomplete pictures. Library and information science research backs this up. Annemaree Lloyd’s study of how firefighters build expertise found that people become information literate through social and physical experience with information, not through text alone. She describes this as an information landscape, built from multiple connected sources rather than one channel (Lloyd, 2007).

Researchers Colleen Addison and Eric Meyers make a related point from a different angle. They describe information literacy as something that develops through engagement with the tools and media people actually use, not through a single prescribed skill set (Addison & Meyers, 2013). Under that view, a research collection built entirely around full-text reference material — or entirely around video — only tells half the story. Students need both a place to build context and a place to see ideas in motion.

You Probably Already Have Half the Toolkit

Here’s where fall planning gets practical.

If your library already subscribes to Credo Reference, your students have a strong starting point: full-text, multidisciplinary content from academic publishers like Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, and Sage, plus the Mind Map tool that helps students turn a vague topic into a real research question. What Credo doesn’t do on its own is show students a concept in motion. A student researching climate policy can read background and explore related terms in Credo, but they can’t watch a coastal community adapt to rising water levels or hear a scientist explain a data model in her own words. That’s a video job, and it’s one Films On Demand is built for, with more than 40,000 educational videos from producers like PBS, BBC, and National Geographic.

If your library already subscribes to Films On Demand, your students have the reverse advantage: rich documentary and demonstration footage, searchable transcripts, and the ability to build custom clips for a specific lesson. What video alone doesn’t provide is the vocabulary and conceptual footing students need before they can search for the right video in the first place. That’s the gap Credo Reference fills, giving students a reference starting point before they know enough to ask a focused question.

Neither product is incomplete on its own. But paired together, they cover both ends of how students actually build understanding: reading and reflecting, then watching and connecting. That pairing is the practical definition of multimodal information literacy in a library setting.

What a Fall Research Session Looks Like With Both

Picture a first-year composition class assigned to write about a social issue. With only one tool in hand, the session has to skip a step. With both, the session can follow how research actually happens:

• Students start in Credo Reference, using the Mind Map to move from a vague interest to a focused question.
• Students then move to Films On Demand to watch a short documentary segment or expert interview related to that question, using the searchable transcript to jump to the exact moment that matters.
• Students return to Credo to check the vocabulary and context they picked up against reference sources they can cite with confidence.

Because both products live on the Infobase platform, students move between them without switching logins or losing momentum mid-session. For instruction librarians, that means one lesson plan instead of two disconnected demos.

Rounding Out Your Collection Before the Semester Starts

Fall instruction planning is exactly the right moment to close this gap. If Credo Reference is already part of your collection, adding Films On Demand gives your students the visual and auditory half of the research process they’re currently missing. If Films On Demand is already in place, adding Credo Reference gives students the reference foundation that makes their video research sharper and more purposeful.

Either way, the goal is the same: students who can move fluidly between reading, reflecting, and watching build stronger research habits than students working in a single mode. That’s what multimodal information literacy looks like in practice, and it’s easier to deliver than most libraries realize once both pieces are in place.

Want to see how Credo Reference and Films On Demand work together before the semester starts? Connect with an Infobase specialist to talk through adding the piece you’re missing.