For Aedan and Andrew, who are growing up in
this information-driven world
Michael

For my parents, Alan and Mary Canada, who taught me early
the value of knowledge
Mark

Today, more than ever, progress—even survival—in science, business, criminal justice, and every other field depends on information literacy. People who can find, evaluate, and use this information will make the difference between success and failure, victory and defeat, life and death.

Introduction to Information Literacy for Students will help you transform your students into those successful movers, shakers, designers, explorers, educators, and leaders. A guide to doing every kind of academic research—from research papers to dissertations to multimedia TED talks—it presents a stable, practical, accessible method that students at any level working with any kind of source in any form of assignment can use.

Research: A Way to Understand

This book discusses research in terms familiar to every human being—that is, as a means of understanding. You don't have to be a historian or a chemist to be curious. Indeed, we spend much of our lives, even much of our time on any given day, trying to understand the people, things, and situations around us. In our daily lives, understanding is often slow and haphazard. The individual pixels come to light one at a time until, if we're lucky, a pattern emerges.

Academic research, on the other hand, is—or should be—more methodical. Although they may not realize it because they have internalized the process through their long experience and follow it unconsciously, scholars of all stripes follow a series of steps when they conduct research. For most students, who must face the library stacks or the vast, invisible “Web” without the benefit of this experience, research is often mystifying, chaotic, frustrating, and, in the end, unsuccessful. If only there were a clear, explicit method for finding, evaluating, and using information, students could start to become expert researchers in their own right.

There is, and they can.

The Method

Drawing on our own experiences as researchers and teachers, we have articulated a straightforward, effective method for navigating the information universe, one that any student can use to move successfully, expeditiously, and relatively painlessly through the research process. The method consists of seven discrete steps, from adopting a research mindset to mining sources. Individual chapters in the first half of the book walk students through each of these steps, providing practical strategies for completing each step. The second half of the book features chapters on various types of sources, organized in the order that students may wish to consult them to develop a well-rounded understanding of their topics. The final chapter helps students see how they can apply what they have learned to future research challenges in other courses, graduate school, careers, and personal and civic lives.

• 1: Think Like a Detective helps students develop a research mindset. It discusses various literacies, including information literacy, and, through an analogy with detective work, describes both the purpose of research and the central role it plays in the academic world.
• 2: Ask a Compelling Question helps students generate research questions that can drive productive research.
• 3: Search for Answers covers foundational research strategies, such as crafting keyword searches and setting up a research log.
• 4: Explore Possible Sources surveys numerous kinds of primary, secondary, and tertiary sources.
• 5: Evaluate Sources prepares students to evaluate sources based on timeliness, relevance, and credibility.
• 6: Create a Paper Trail covers ethical uses of information and appropriate forms of attribution and documentation, equipping students to record and cite relevant source material as they encounter it (instead of trying to add documentation later and risking plagiarism, misrepresentation, or simply errors in documentation).
• 7: Mine Your Sources introduces students to the crucial skill of mining sources for the right kinds of information.

Types of Sources

• 8: Reference covers encyclopedias, subject encyclopedias, dictionaries, and other foundational sources, which students can use to get a bird's-eye view of their topics, along with relevant definitions, common themes and issues, bibliographies, and more.
• 9: Books covers both printed and electronic books, as well as call numbers and catalogs.
• 10: Periodicals covers databases and various kinds of periodicals, general and discipline-specific scholarly journals, as well as popular magazines, newspapers, and more.
• 11: Statistics helps students navigate statistical sources, not only those available online, but also a few hidden gems available in print format.
• 12: Government Sources provides an overview of various sources maintained by local, state, and federal agencies, as well as international organizations.
• 13: Webpages covers various kinds of Internet sources, as well as search engines and ways to set limits for results and otherwise narrow searches.
• 14: Other Sources points to many kinds of new media, such as podcasts and social media sites, as valuable sources of information.
• 15: Now What? helps students apply what they have learned to future classes, their careers, and their personal and civic lives.

Like you, we want to help enable students to become people who make a difference. As an English professor who has taught many composition classes (as well as literature, linguistics, and freshman seminar classes), Mark has worked with thousands of students since the 1990s. He also regularly locates and uses information in his own research on American literature, pedagogy, and student success. As an academic librarian, Michael has worked with thousands of students since the 1990s and taught library research, composition, and freshman seminars. We know what works, and we know the obstacles that students often encounter when they are seek information for course assignments. To help students face these challenges, now and later, we have interspersed among these chapters a number of tips, shortcuts, and strategies for using search limits strategically, setting up an interview, taking notes on sources, and more.

By the way, although students will see some screenshots of various item records and search boxes, this book does not take the “Click here” approach to research instruction. (After all, every database is a little bit different from another, and every one seems to change at least a little every month.) Instead, the book teaches students basic principles, common tools, and, most important, ways to think about information and research. What they learn here will help them navigate any database, evaluate any source, integrate any fact or statistic.

The method described here is probably new to most students, but don't worry. We won't let anyone get lost in the stacks (or the cyberstacks). The first page of each chapter features a flowchart showing the entire process with the current step highlighted. While some steps, such as evaluating sources, are essential for any project, other steps may not apply to certain projects. You should feel free to assign or use the steps you feel that your students need.

The Approach

Our goal in this book is the same goal we pursue in our classrooms: to teach in a way that both engages students and equips them to succeed in the world of research. That means including real-life examples, connections to careers and the larger world, “Think Fast” review questions, “Quicktivities,” “Steps to Success,” and conversational language (as well as a few attempts at humor along the way). The chapters cover all the basics—keywords, Boolean operators, periodicals, paraphrasing, and scores of other terms and concepts—but they also teach students how to use hypernyms to broaden a search, how to take notes on sources (and what to include in them), how to use indexes and bibliographies strategically, how to capture online sources before they disappear, and more. We also have included, in boxed “Insider's Tip” features, suggestions from a variety of professionals, including a detective, a professional basketball coach, a university career specialist, and more. By the time they are done, your students just might feel like concertgoers with back-stage passes, enjoying access to all the tricks “behind the scenes” of information literacy. It's a shade less sordid than what they might see with those back-stage concert passes, but it's every bit as interesting—and incalculably valuable.

What This Book Can Do for Students (and You)

You and your students can use this book in one of two ways. If you are teaching a course in information literacy or a course that requires students to conduct a lot of research and share the results in a project, you probably will want to move through the chapters in order. Each chapter gives students exactly what they need when they need it. On the other hand, if you are teaching a content course that includes a research component, you might assign chapters or parts of chapters as appropriate. In either case, you and your students can count on this book for clear, practical strategies, complete with examples, instructions, activities, and more.

Information literacy, as the first chapter explains, is a crucial skill in this Information Age. This book can help you empower your students to become masters of information: the kinds of people who can use facts and interpretations, both the types they find in others’ research and the information they turn up in their own work, to improve the world.

The authors would like to thank the following for all of their crucial assistance, encouragement, and support.

First, we would like to thank our very patient and supportive family members. Michael thanks Aedan, Andrew, Brian, Cynthia, and Stacey. Mark thanks Lisa, Essie, Will, Alan, and Mary.

A special thanks goes out to Robert J. Arndt, Reference/Instructional Services Librarian at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke, for providing technical advice, test-driving our chapters with his students, and providing us with their crucial feedback.

We also wish to thank Christopher Bowyer, University Library Technician for Government Documents/Development & Primary Web Information Coordinator at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke, for being our photographer.

Thanks also go to Leighana Campbell for being our student model and to Rob Wolf, Electronic Resources Librarian at Farleigh Dickinson University Libraries, for his valuable technical assistance and for his help with creating a companion site and materials for the text.

Thanks to all of our colleagues and friends at the Mary Livermore Library and the University of North Carolina at Pembroke.

Thanks to our editorial and production team, Graeme Leonard and Manish Luthra.

Thanks to Steve O'Dell and Jodi Ezell at EBSCO.

Thanks to Carol Schlatter at OCLC.

Thanks to Corye L. Bradbury at ProQuest.

Thanks to Carolyn Shomaker, Federal Documents Coordinator; Gwendolyn Hope Smith, United Nations and International & State Documents Coordinator; Jacqueline Solis, Director of Research and Instructional Services; and Kimberly N. Vassiliadis, Instructional Design and Technology Librarian, at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Libraries.

Thanks to Karen Vaughn, Digital Services Coordinator, Perry Library, Old Dominion University.

Research is not always a totally linear process, but it helps to try to conduct steps in the order listed below. For example, it makes sense to settle on some keyword combinations before you start searching for sources. Also, because reference sources will expose you to basic terms and background, it's a good idea to consult them before moving on to other sources.

The flowchart below shows the various steps of the research process in an order that should prove helpful to you. You will see this same flowchart at the beginning of each chapter, where the current chapter will be highlighted. You may need to return to an earlier step from time to time. That's OK. For example, as you look through sources, you may come up with some new keyword combinations or even a new research question. When you do, use the flowchart to get back in the flow.