Information Literacy Commons^™

A Comparative Analysis Of The Religious Non-Fiction Collections Of A Public Library And A Christian Church Library, Tanya C. Bolton

SLIS Connecting

The purpose of this study is to compare the religious non-fiction collection of a public library (Natchitoches Parish Library) with the religious non-fiction collection of a Christian church library (First Baptist Church, Natchitoches) focusing on those books classified in the 200s of the Dewey Decimal Classification system. The two libraries that are the focus of this study are located directly across the street from each other. By uncovering strengths and weaknesses of each collection and pinpointing areas of overlap, the staff of the two libraries may be able to use the findings to identify ways in which they may be …

Map And Geographical Imagery In Editorial Cartoons By Eldon Pletcher: Archival Research Paper, Linda Ginn

SLIS Connecting

The purpose of this study was to identify how often map and geographical imagery was part of Eldon Pletcher’s cartoon, the type of map imagery, geographic locations represented, the scale of the imagery, types of geographical landforms, manmade structures indicating place, and whether the imagery was merely locational or important to an understanding of the cartoon’s message.

A Sleuth Of Our Own: A Historical View Of Nancy Drew, Girl Detective, Jeannie A. Ferriss

SLIS Connecting

Nancy Drew was and is the ideal young woman; smart, independent, fearless, thin, wealthy, athletic and invincible. She would be a new kind of female character-independent, exciting, and in charge of her own destiny. Nancy Drew acted on her own and survived to tell about it. She changed forever the way girls looked at themselves and their abilities. No longer would female characters have to sit on the sidelines and wait for the man to rescue them, Nancy rescued herself. This study looks at the evolution of Nancy Drew and the people who created her from 1930 to the present. …

Getting Young Adults To Stop & Participate @ Your Library, Antoinette Giamalva

SLIS Connecting

Young adults can be one of the hardest demographics to get to participate in library programs in substantial numbers. Young adults, or teenagers in the 7-12 grades, tend to have busy schedules and may not have time to come to long, drawn out programs. However, just because young adults do not seem to have time to attend extensive programs does not mean they do not have time for the library. Passive programming or independent programming can draw young adults into the library and get them active in the young adult section.

Family Place Libraries: Recognizing Best Practices In Child Development, Lindsey Miller

SLIS Connecting

The Family Place Libraries™ Initiative was created to meet a need for library programming that catered to the educational needs of parents and the developmental needs of very young children. Established in 1996, the initiative has worked to create a network of libraries nationwide that actively works toward meeting the needs of modern families. Core components were created as a foundation for all programming and training of other libraries, which began in 1999.

From The Gas, Congratulations, Publications, And Presentations, Teresa S. Welsh

SLIS Connecting

Read a highlight from one of the GAs, and all about what our alum, students, and faculty have been doing

Student Associations And Upcoming Events, Teresa S. Welsh

SLIS Connecting

Presents updates and news from the Library and Information Science Student Association (LISSA) and the Southern Miss Student Archivists Association (Southern Miss SAA) along with upcoming events of interest.

Spotlights: Faculty, Alum, And Course, Stacy Creel

SLIS Connecting

Meet Dr. Elizabeth Haynes, Director of The School of Library and Information Science, and SLIS alum, Stephen Cunetto, who is the Administrator of Systems at Mississippi State University (MSU) Libraries. Discover how you can become an expert in genealogy by taking LIS 692 Independent Study: Genealogy Research with Dr. Teresa S. Welsh.

Slis Update, Elizabeth Haynes

SLIS Connecting

Updates and welcome from the Director of the School of Library and Information Science, Dr. Elizabeth Haynes.

Just Keep Plugging Away, Alexander K. Schweizer

Blogging the Library

I am not the greatest technology user, but I am in the process of creating a page on the library’s resource guide that will include resources, links to resources, and links to links to resources about pretty much anything anyone might ever want to know about the President’s Own Marine Band. It will include audio resources, as well as links to more audio resources. It will include links to notable and informative websites that will show you super cool pictures of various aspects of the Marine Band, as well as its musicians and directors, past and present. It will even …

Community Engagement Through Service-Learning, Maureen Barry

University Libraries' Staff Publications

Community engagement and libraries go hand-in-hand. Our communities are vital to our very existence. For academic libraries, serving students, faculty and staff is their primary role, and the immediate campus is often the community with which the library engages most often. But new roles, such as service-learning (S-L), provide meaningful opportunities for the library to connect with the surrounding communities and regions.

Liminal Librarianship: Transgressing The Threshold, Patrick K. Morgan

Faculty Presentations

Librarians have lately become enamored of threshold concepts. This enchantment is so compelling that the inchoate update of the ACRL information literacy competency standards--in which "standards" have apparently been replaced with a more flexible, concept-oriented framework--depends on them heavily. The appropriateness and feasibility of the ideas behind these terms, however, have been only weakly addressed. Certainly, it makes sense to take information literacy instruction beyond a focus on skill acquisition and into the realm of the conceptual, at least if teaching librarians want their work with students to be meaningful beyond the limited confines of producing "academic artifacts" of little …

The Information Literacy User’S Guide: An Open, Online Textbook, Open Suny Textbooks, Deborah Bernnard, Greg Bobish, Daryl Bullis, Jenna Hecker, Irina Holden, Allison Hosier, Trudi Jacobson, Tor Loney

Open Educational Resources Collection

Good researchers have a host of tools at their disposal that make navigating today’s complex information ecosystem much more manageable. Gaining the knowledge, abilities, and self-reflection necessary to be a good researcher helps not only in academic settings, but is invaluable in any career, and throughout one’s life. The Information Literacy User’s Guide will start you on this route to success.

The Information Literacy User’s Guide is based on two current models in information literacy: The 2011 version of The Seven Pillars Model, developed by the Society of College, National and University Libraries in the United Kingdom and the conception …

Finding, Tracking, Advocating - Keeping Up With Legislation And Legislators, Timothy A. Balch

Librarian Research

No abstract provided.

Production And Consumption: A Closer Look At Adult Digital Literacy Acquisition, Gloria Jacobs, Jill Castek, Drew Pizzolato, Stephen Reder, Kimberly D. Pendell

Presentations and Publications

In this column, the authors discuss emerging research in the field of adult digital literacy acquisition. The authors argue that the field of adult digital literacy acquisition has been under researched, especially in relation to multiliteracies and multimodal literacy practices. Data emerging from a large scale mixed methods study of adults engaged with Learner Web, a selfaccess online learning system, indicate that opportunities to engage in tutor-facilitated digital literacy acquisition, among populations that have been historically left out of the digital revolution, has the potential to change lives. Additionally, the research provides insights into the shifts learners undergo as they …

Information Outlook, March/April 2014, Special Libraries Association

Information Outlook, 2014

Volume 18, Issue 2

“Let Me Gather Spring Flowers For A Wreath”: Writing About Historical Trauma For Young People In A Wreath For Emmett Till, Kelly Wissman

Literacy Teaching & Learning Faculty Scholarship

Marilyn Nelson's book, "A Wreath for Emmett Till", (2005) was named a 2006 Coretta Scott King Honor Book and given the 2006 Printz Honor Award. "A Wreath for Emmett Till" tells the story of a 14-year-old African American boy who was lynched in 1955. Within 15 sonnets accompanied by illustrations by Philippe Lardy, Nelson not only provides an account of Till's experience but also describes the wreath of flowers that she would create to honor him. In this article, Kelly Wissman explores how Nelson provides guidance to young readers in ways that make reading this text "bearable." Wissman first provides …

Engaging With Research And Resources In Music History Courses, Jennifer Oates

Publications and Research

With the ever-expanding sea of resources available to students today, it is now more important than ever to teach students how to navigate, assess, and interpret resources. Given the ease of access to information, students tend to seek out the path of least resistance, most often a Google search and/or Wikipedia. Their unfamiliarity with print resources, such as thematic catalogues, means they are missing out on significant music scholarship that is not available online or through Google. Today’s students have grown up searching the internet. The single-search approach of a web search leaves many students confused by terms like …

What Do Students Learn From Participation In An Undergraduate Research Journal? Results Of An Assessment, Sharon A. Weiner, Charles Watkinson

Libraries Faculty and Staff Scholarship and Research

INTRODUCTION Undergraduate research journals provide students with an opportunity to disseminate their work while learning about the scholarly publishing process. The opportunities to learn about scholarly communication have been demonstrated, but such journals also offer a means of helping students attain necessary information literacy competencies. By partnering in the publication of undergraduate journals, libraries can further strategic goals related to information literacy and establish a connection between library publishing and student success. This paper reports on an assessment of the Journal of Purdue Undergraduate Research (JPUR) that was designed to evaluate student learning outcomes and demonstrate connections between journal participation …

Measuring New Media Literacies: Towards The Development Of A Comprehensive Assessment Tool, Ioana Literat

Journal of Media Literacy Education

This study assesses the psychometric properties of a newly tested self-report assessment tool for media literacy, based on the twelve new media literacy skills (NMLs) developed by Jenkins et al. (2006). The sample (N=327) consisted of normal volunteers who completed a comprehensive online survey that measured their NML skills, media exposure, digital participation, and civic engagement. A factor analysis performed on the survey items yielded 10 NMLs that emerged as significant subscales. A series of multivariate analyses of variance indicate a strong relationship between these NMLs and respondents’ exposure to new media forms, their participation in Web 2.0 …

Preaching What We Practice: Educating Stakeholders About Research Data Management At Purdue University, Lisa Zilinski

Libraries Faculty and Staff Presentations

Over the past few years, an increasing number of academic libraries have been adding or supplementing research data management support and services to their offerings. In an effort to support different stakeholders (e.g. students, library faculty and librarians, and disciplinary faculty), Purdue Libraries faculty and staff have developed several different tools and resources specifically designed for librarians and liaisons in supporting research data management. These resources and tools have been developed through innovative partnerships and include the Data Information Literacy (DIL) Project, a partnership between faculty and librarians across multiple institutions; the Purdue University Research Repository (PURR), created through a …

When You Need To Know, These Are The Places To Go: Investigative Research On The Web, Suzanne R. Graham

Continuing Legal Education Presentations

Provides an overview of the kind of publicly-available information on the Web. Includes tips for how to find vital data about a person (birth and death dates and contact information), about investment and salary, and about prior interactions with court system.

Econtent Quarterly - Volume 1, Issue 3, Sue Polanka, Mirela Roncevic

University Libraries' Staff Publications

Welcome to the third, Spring 2014 issue of eContent Quarterly. Since launching the journal at 2013 ALA in Chicago, we’ve covered an array of topics from every corner of the industry, including sweeping overviews of the vastness of the e-content landscape; case studies pointing to how e-content continues to revolutionize research in academic and school settings; and various product reviews, with insight from those who create them and feedback from those who use and purchase them. To our own surprise, we’ve also been able to structure each issue around a central theme. Issue 1, thus, focused on the importance of …

Himmelfarb Library Liaison Letter - March 2014, George Washington University, Himmelfarb Health Sciences Library

Himmelfarb Library Liaison Letters

No abstract provided.

Information Literacy Skills Of Faculty Members: A Study Of The University Of Lahore, Pakistan, Ghulam Murtaza Rafique

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

Purpose – The objective of this study is to gauge the level of information literacy skills of faculty members of the University of Lahore.

Design/methodology/approach – To collect required data from population, survey method was used. The participants consisted of the faculty members currently working in the University of Lahore, which reflected the conditions and environment of all campuses of the University of Lahore. A simple random sampling technique was used to select the sample from population of 650 faculty members of the university. The sample size consisted of 84 faculty members in randomly selection. A questionnaire was formulated and …

Meetings, Weedings, Development.. Oh My!, Celia M. Hartz

Blogging the Library

Hello!! Since the last time I posted a lot has happened and so far, still good. That’s not to say I haven’t needed help on a few Reference Questions but things are going pretty well. I’ve had a few ‘RefWins’ where I’ve felt that I was particularly helpful, one was even over chat! Everything is going great thus far and I’m definitely learning, a lot. [excerpt]

Beyond Search: Information Literacy, Special Collections, And The First Year, Stefanie R. Bluemle, Sarah M. Horowitz

Library and Information Science: Faculty Scholarship & Creative Works

Recent research in information literacy (IL) suggests librarians should shift the emphasis of IL instruction toward higher-level concepts rather than search mechanics. This session describes how the Augustana library drew upon the results of local assessments and national research to re-imagine its first-year learning outcomes so as to focus on higher-level skills and recognize the importance of special collections in teaching IL in the college’s required first-year sequence. We address transforming IL pedagogy throughout the library as well as designing special collections as a hands-on learning laboratory.

Creating And Sharing Information Literacy Open Educational Resources, Philip Russell

Support services (Former ITT) - Conference Papers

From June 2010 until the present, a suite of online reusable learning objects (RLOs) has been created at the Institute of Technology Tallaght (ITT Dublin) library covering a range of information literacy (IL) competencies. These RLOs have helped to facilitate student transition from second to third level, advance IL and enrich the student learning experience. The paper outlines the development of these resources, how these learning objects have been integrated into academic modules at ITT Dublin and how they have been shared and reused as open educational resources at national and international level. The author also discusses future plans for …

Librarianship Is Neat!, Celia M. Hartz

Blogging the Library

I’ve got a few weeks under my belt now with this Internship and so far, so good. I’ll be totally honestly though, when I first started every time someone came near the desk I got a little nervous because after 3.5 years I thought I knew my way around the Library; nope. BUT, now with three weeks of perusing research guides, databases, asking a zillion questions and rereading everything in my training guide approximately three times, I feel confident that I can be helpful, and that’s great! [excerpt]

Information Outlook, January/February 2014, Special Libraries Association

Information Outlook, 2014

Volume 18, Issue 1