eBook downloads, eBook resources & eBook authors
Skills for finding information are essential for academic study and beyond. This illustrated guide provides practical advice on how to source and use the right resources. It includes guidance on how to carry out a literature review as well as the skills needed for finding and evaluating information.
In librarianship today, we encourage voices from our field to join conversations in other disciplines as well as in the broader culture. People who work in libraries and are sympathetic to, or directly involved in, social justice struggles have long embodied this idea, as they make use of their skills in the service of those causes. From movement archives to zine collections, international solidarity to public library programming, oral histories to email lists, prisons to protests - and beyond - this book is a look into the projects and pursuits of activist librarianship in the early 21st century.
This engaging handbook gives students and working scientists and engineers the information literacy skills they need to find, evaluate, and use information. Beginning with a strong foundation in the utility, structure, and packaging of information, this useful handbook helps students and working professionals decode real-world information literacy problems. Mary DeJong provides a compelling context and rationale for the skills scientists and engineers need to succeed in challenging careers that rely on the successful discovering and sharing of complex information. Students will appreciate the in-depth information on sources, especially those needed for research assignments, and scientists and engineers who write for publication will benefit from chapters on searching databases and organizing and citing sources. Written with science and engineering students and professionals in mind, this book is thorough, well-paced, engaging, and even funny.
Developing Information Literacy Skills provides guidance and practice in the skills needed to find and use valid and appropriate sources for a research project. Anyone who does academic research at any level can benefit from ways to improve their information literacy skills. This text has been structured around the six critical elements of the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy in Higher Education, contextualizing these elements by fitting them into the research and writing process. The book focuses on providing students with the critical-thinking and problem-solving skills needed to: (1) identify the conversation that exists around a topic, (2) clarify their own perspective on that topic, and (3) efficiently and effectively read and evaluate what others have said that can inform their perspective and research. The critical-thinking and problem-solving skills practiced here are good preparation for what students will encounter in their academic and professional lives. As an experienced writing instructor, the author has evaluated the final written products of hundreds of students who were trained through one-shot workshops and first-year introductory courses. She has applied that knowledge to create the tasks in this book so that students have the skills to successfully find, evaluate, and use sources and then produce a paper that incorporates valid research responsibly and effectively.
Exploring the ways in which today's Internet-savvy young people view and use information to complete school assignments and make sense of everyday life, this new edition provides a review of the literature since 2010. The development of information literacy skills instruction can be traced from its basis in traditional reference services to its current growth as an instructional imperative for school librarians. Reviewing the scholarly research that supports best practices in the 21st-century school library, this book contains insights into improving instruction across content areas—drawn from the scholarly literatures of library and information studies, education, communication, psychology, and sociology—that will be useful to school, academic, and public librarians and LIS students. In this updated fourth edition, special attention is given to recent studies of information seeking in changing instructional environments made possible by the Internet and new technologies. This new edition also includes new chapters on everyday information seeking and motivation and a much-expanded chapter on Web 2.0. The new AASL standards are included and explored in the discussion. This book will appeal to LIS professors and students in school librarianship programs as well as to practicing school librarians.
"This book contributed to the debate about the importance of research-based studies in the field of educational policy making in general and learning technologies, particularly the use of interactive whiteboards for education"--Provided by publisher.
Hosier shows academic librarians how to use context when teaching information literacy, an approach that offers a substantive and enduring impact on students' lifelong learning. Librarians know that information literacy is much more complex and nuanced than the basic library research skill that it's often portrayed as; in fact, as outlined by the ACRL Framework, research is a contextual activity. But the settings in which we teach often constrain our ability to take a more layered approach. This book not only shows you how to teach information literacy as something other than a basic skill, but also how to do it in whatever mode of teaching you're most often engaged in, whether that's a credit-bearing course, a one-shot session, a tutorial, a reference desk interaction, or a library program. Taking you through each step of the research process, this book shares ideas for adding context while exploring topics such as how conversations about context can be integrated into lessons on common information literacy topics; examples of the six genres of research and suggested course outlines for each; ensuring that context strategies fit within the ACRL Framework; questions for reflection in teaching each step of the research process; four different roles that sources can play when researching a topic; helping students refine a topic that is drawing too many or too few sources; cultivating students to become good decision-makers for the best type of research sources to use depending on their need; and how to address the shortcomings of checklist tools like the CRAAP test.
This simple new approach to teaching information skills takes students beyond mere fact-finding to designing and recording search strategies. Structured as a game-with search maps, award badges, and search strategy suggestions-the activities help students acquire and sharpen reference, information retrieval, and problem-solving skills on a daily basis. As they explore print materials and audiovisual, computer, and human sources, they also build their background knowledge in a variety of subjects. Credit is given for process (search strategy) as well as for product (fact-finding). With these activities, school librarians and teachers collaborate as a teaching team to meet goals for improved reference skills. Adaptable to any size and format of library, media center, or classroom, the game has been successfully used at middle and high school levels in both libraries and classrooms. A classified subject index, bibliography of sources, and alphabetical index ease the process of curriculum integration.
This book presents empirical evidence that the information skills of students of higher learning institutions can be improved using a set of personal and environmental variables. Using a judiciously planned and scientifically carried out study, it represents a great contribution in addressing the learning crisis that the Google generation face. The results of the study offer great hope for teachers and students at higher education institutions in an information overloaded society. Through its simplicity in presentation, meticulously planned procedure, and in-depth analysis, this book is a must-read for researchers in the field of education.
