Information Literacy Goals

1. The student will be able to describe the many ways of accessing information and discuss their appropriateness for a given information problem.

2. The student, when faced with an information problem, will be able to develop a search strategy and conduct a search of multiple sources within a given period of time.

3. Given a topic, the student should be able to refine it and formulate a research question.

4. The student should be able to define the differences between reference books, journals, newspapers, and Internet sources.

5. The student should be able to define categories of finding tools, such as periodical indexes or online catalogs or web search engines.

6. The student should have a broad, general knowledge of how information is organized, such as a library's classification system by subject or type of material.

7. The student should be able to analyze search results from keyword and subject searching, using truncation and Boolean logic in online databases.

8. The student should be able to discuss the importance of intended audience in determining the appropriate information source.

9. The student should be able to recognize the various elements of any given citation.

10. The student should be able to locate any needed item after executing a search in an access tool such as a periodical index or online catalog.

11. The student should be able to evaluate information to determine its relevance, accuracy and significance.

12. The student should be able to realize when the limits of their information seeking ability have been exhausted and the necessity to consult an information expert (including librarians).