Project Information Literacy’s New Report

Library Journal’s website recently featured a review of a report from Project Information Literacy about the everyday research habits of college students. This study explored the information needs that college students have when they are not doing homework, and it investigated the ways in which students go about meeting those information needs.

According to the reviewer, many of their results were not surprising, however, a few of the findings she reported were news to me, such as the finding that the category of everyday information most sought out by students was News! I was also supprised at the number of students, 40 %, who had consulted a library database for help with an everyday information need (28% of students consulted print library resources).

In addition to researching how students find information, the study also looked at the problems that students encounter with their everyday research. One of their findings was that students have trouble sorting through all of the information they retrieve and picking out the most relevant results. This means website and source evaluation skills are still a needed component of information literacy instruction on college campuses.

You can read Barbara Fister’s full review of the study online at Library Journal’s Website, or view the full study itself.

More About Project Information Literacy

The University of Washington’s Information School is the guiding force behind Project Information Literacy, an ongoing research study started in 2008, which collects data from many different types of campus from all over the country. The publications tab on their website contains a collection of progress and research reports which look like very interesting reading!