The following list gives examples of the kinds of skills and competencies that
might be taught to in courses being developed or revised with support from the
Andrew W. Mellon grant, Integrating Information Literacy into the Liberal Arts
Curriculum. This list is highly selective, and is intended merely as a starting
point, or "touchstone", for those doing course development work in this area.
Generally speaking, undergraduate students in their first couple of years will
acquire, use, and refine their basic research skills (Basic Competencies), and
students in their junior and senior years will use and refine the more advanced
skills (Advanced Competencies).
| Basic |
| information literacy competencies |  |
|
|
Students should:
- Understand that materials in academic libraries are classified by subject
(no fiction or biography sections, as in typical high school libraries), and be
able to interpret a call number.
- Be able to identify the parts of a bibliographic record.
- Be able to use reference tools such as dictionaries, encyclopedias, handbooks, almanacs, and statistical sources to achieve a manageable research focus.
- Be able to distill a complicated research question into searchable concepts/keywords/synonyms.
- Understand the concept and usefulness of a controlled vocabulary (all online catalogs and many databases & indexes employ controlled vocabularies).
- Understand the difference between subject searching and word searching.
- Understand commands of the online catalog (Boolean, truncation, adjacency, etc).
- Be able to formulate a research strategy, and understand the process through which questions are refined, and redefined in the course of research.
- Understand that both popular and scholarly material exists on most any topic; be able to distinguish between these 2 types of material, and determine when it's appropriate to use each type and why.
- Be able to distinguish between primary and secondary resources; be able to determine when it's appropriate to use these 2 types of resource and why.
- Understand the nature of periodical literature, and why and when it's useful.
- Understand what periodical literature abstracts and indexes do, and why they are useful. Understand that these resources vary in scope (what subjects are included, how many titles are indexed, etc.), arrangement (classified, subject, etc.), and content (full-text, abstracts, citation only).
- Be able to critically evaluate information for usefulness, bias, currency and authority (including Internet resources).
- Have an understanding of plagiarism and intellectual property issues-quoting, paraphrasing, attributing ideas; what is fair use?
- Be able to use a style manual to correctly document information sources in many different formats.
| Advanced |
| information literacy competencies | |
|
|
Students should:
- Be familiar with the subject-specific tools in their discipline (indexes, abstracts, electronic texts, and other specialized resources)
- Understand how scholars and practicing professionals in their discipline generate, control, and use information (published/unpublished sources, electronic & personal communications, etc.).
- Understand and effectively communicate the steps required for effective research, including formulating a thesis, creating a search strategy using a variety of sources.
- Develop the ability to critique their own research process; was the original need met?
