Information Literacy Commons^™

Boolean Logic/Boolean Searching, Jim Alderman

Beginning Library & Information Systems Strategies

Help using Boolean operators for a successful online or database search.

Books: Their Role In Research, Jim Alderman

Beginning Library & Information Systems Strategies

Help evaluating books as resources in an academic research project.

Parts Of The Book, Jim Alderman

Beginning Library & Information Systems Strategies

Information to help recognize the different parts of a research or academic book.

Bibliographic Styles: A Brief Guide, Jim Alderman

Beginning Library & Information Systems Strategies

Documentation of sources is a critical part of preparing a research project. A responsible researcher will provide his or her readers with a list of all sources referenced in the project and will provide in‐text documentation of all ideas that are not original. Following are some general guidelines for what types of information to record as you use sources in a project.

Article Types: Choosing What Is Best, Jim Alderman

Beginning Library & Information Systems Strategies

Help recognizing different types of articles and choosing what type of article is best for different academic research projects.

Icts For Agricultural Extension: A Study In Ratnagiri District Of Maharashtra, India, Niketa Gandhi, Leisa Armstrong

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

This study describes an assessment of attitudes of farmers from the Lanja tehsil of Ratnagiri district of Maharashtra in order to understand the information seeking behavior and reasons for the farmers seeking this agricultural information through different sources. To meet the objective of the study, a structured questionnaire and interviews were conducted to gather information on number of aspects related to the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) from 100 randomly selected framers. Additional semi- structured questionnaire and checklist was provided to the key stakeholders. The farmer based questionnaire sought demographic data, information requirement data and uses of ICT …

Meeting The Challenges Of Instructing International Law Graduate Students In Legal Research, Nina E. Scholtz, Femi Cadmus

Faculty Scholarship

Teaching international LL.M. students legal research offers its own peculiar challenges. The brevity of the LL.M. program and the limited time available for thoroughly introducing basic research concepts have made it particularly difficult, but the innovative and creative methods of instruction highlighted in this article have provided good solutions.

Building A Professional Learning Community At The University Level: A Case Study Of An Information Fluency Initiative, Susan Bennett Slavicz

UNF Graduate Theses and Dissertations

An examination of the research regarding the problems associated with student academic writing indicated that two abilities, writing abilities and information literacy skills, intersect, and that an accepted term for this intersection is information literacy. The University of Central Florida’s Information Fluency Initiative recognized information literacy as a key component in developing students’ information fluency skills. This qualitative case study of the initiative used semi-structured interviews, study of documents, and observations to gather data in order to describe how the university planned, developed, and implemented the initiative. Study of relevant literature, narrative analysis (Tierney & Lincoln, 1997), inductive analysis (Hatch, …

Purposeful And Repeated Use Of Standardized Assessment Of Information Literacy: A Case Study At A U.S. Private Liberal-Arts University, Carolyn J. Radcliff, Kevin Ross

Library Presentations, Posters, and Audiovisual Materials

Chapman University is a private medium-sized liberal arts university located in Orange, California. With aspirations of national prominence, Chapman University is poised to enter the national stage in the United States and the university library will play an important role in this endeavor. One way that the library has demonstrated this commitment has been to create a scaffolded information literacy program that encourages lifelong-learning and provides instruction to our undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral students.

A crucial element of any highly effective information literacy program is a diversified approach to assessment. The Leatherby Libraries sought out new ways to assess our …

Standardized Assessment Of Information Literacy Skills: What The Sails Tests Reveal Over Time, Carolyn J. Radcliff, Kevin Ross, Annie Knight

Library Presentations, Posters, and Audiovisual Materials

What can standardized assessments tell us about the information literacy levels of our students? When an institution chooses to use a national assessment, the institution is faced with negotiating the existing testing process and making sense of the results within the local context. Chapman University and its sister institution Brandman University have measured information literacy for several years with the Standardized Assessment of Information Literacy Skills (SAILS). In this presentation we compare three models of implementation: (1) administering the SAILS cohort test to incoming freshmen; (2) giving the SAILS individual-scores test to freshmen and seniors; and (3) administering the SAILS …

Time For A Paradigm Shift: The New Acrl Information Literacy Competency Standards For Higher Education, Marcus Banks

Communications in Information Literacy

Academic librarians should expand our understanding of what counts as an authoritative resource, and be unafraid to challenge long-established wisdom in this domain. Wikipedia is far from perfect, but neither is the Encyclopedia Britannica. Wikipedia is updated daily, while the Britannica is no longer printed. If we cling to the Britannica as a symbol of authoritativeness, we will become obsolete ourselves. One way to prevent this fate is to reframe our collective thinking. In 2014 the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) will issue a revised version of the Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education. The task force …

Reflecting On This Issue, Robert Schroeder

Communications in Information Literacy

Introduction to this special issue, Reflecting on the Standards.

Rethinking The 2000 Acrl Standards: Some Things To Consider, Carol C. Kuhlthau

Communications in Information Literacy

I propose three "rethinks" to consider in recasting the ACRL Standards for information literacy for the coming decades. First, rethink the concept of information need. Second, rethink the notion that information literacy is composed of a set of abilities for "extracting information." Third, rethink the holistic process of learning from a variety of sources of information that is central to information literacy. The necessity for these "rethinks" are grounded in my extensive studies of students' experience in the information search process that reveal an evolving, dynamic, holistic process incorporating a series of feelings (affective), thoughts (cognitive) and actions (physical) as …

Minding The Gaps: Exploring The Space Between Vision And Assessment In Information Literacy Work, Heidi L.M. Jacobs

Communications in Information Literacy

The current "ACRL Information Literacy Competency Standard Review Task Force" presents information literacy practitioners with an engaging intellectual endeavor: how might these standards be revised, rethought, re-envisioned? Regardless of what the review yields, the process is an excellent opportunity for us to think broadly and creatively about the Standards and to remember that they are not a fixed set of rules but a malleable and evolving document. Asking questions about the practical, pedagogical, and theoretical implications of the Standards and considering alternative approaches will yield engaging, fruitful, and necessary conversations not only about the teaching of information literacy but about …

The New Acrl Information Literacy Competency Standards: Revising Reception, Benjamin R. Harris

Communications in Information Literacy

The publication of educational standards inspires a variety of responses---from wholesale acceptance and deployment to criticism and blame. The author of this paper contends that the revision of the ACRL's Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education must be accompanied by a critical, conscious, and conscientious reception by librarians and information literacy advocates.

Refreshing Information Literacy: Learning From Recent British Information Literacy Models, Justine Martin

Communications in Information Literacy

Models play an important role in helping practitioners implement and promote information literacy. Over time models can lose relevance with the advances in technology, society, and learning theory. Practitioners and scholars often call for adaptations or transformations of these frameworks to articulate the learning needs in information literacy development. This study analyzes four recently published models from the United Kingdom. The initial findings were presented in a report for an ACRL taskforce reviewing the Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education. This article presents complementary, yet distinct findings from the same dataset that focus on reoccurring themes for information literacy …

Affective Learning And Personal Information Management: Essential Components Of Information Literacy, Ellysa Stern Cahoy

Communications in Information Literacy

No abstract provided.

Proposing A Metaliteracy Model To Redefine Information Literacy, Trudi E. Jacobson, Thomas P. Mackey

Communications in Information Literacy

Metaliteracy is envisioned as a comprehensive model for information literacy to advance critical thinking and reflection in social media, open learning settings, and online communities. At this critical time in higher education, an expansion of the original definition of information literacy is required to include the interactive production and sharing of original and repurposed digital materials. Metaliteracy provides an overarching and unifying framework that builds on the core information literacy competencies while addressing the revolutionary changes in how learners communicate, create, and distribute information in participatory environments. Central to the metaliteracy model is a metacognitive component that encourages learners to …

A Reconsideration Of Information Literacy, Stanley J. Wilder

Communications in Information Literacy

This article is a reflection on the author's 2005 Chronicle of Higher Education article "Information Literacy Makes All the Wrong Assumptions." In it, the author argues that while library instruction is properly grounded in disciplinary norms, information literacy serves a vital institutional obligation as a means of assessing student learning. The content of library instruction thus serves the University's "vertical" disciplinary agendas, while information literacy serves its "horizontal" institution-wide agenda.

Marketing Information Literacy, Maura Seale

Communications in Information Literacy

No abstract provided.