Information Literacy Concepts

Information Literacy
Concepts
An Open Educational Resource

© 2017 Joyner Library, ECU.
Information Literacy Concepts:

by David Hisle and Katy Webb
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-
NC-SA 4.0)
A fully editable copy of this resource is available under the above

license at:
https://libguides.ecu.edu/libinstruction
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INFORMATION LITERACY CONCEPTS
Information Literacy
Concepts
by David Hisle and Katy Webb
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Table of Contents
Introduction:
What is Information Literacy?
CHAPTER ONE:
How Libraries Work
CHAPTER TWO:
What’s Credible Anymore? Fake News and evaluating the
information you encounter during your research
CHAPTER THREE:
The Information Landscape: an Overview of information
types and when they appear in publication
CHAPTER FOUR:
Navigating the Information Landscape: Search Engines,
Library Databases, Library of Congress Classification, and
Discovery Tools
CHAPTER FIVE:
The Research Process: Settling on a topic, identifying key-
words, and retrieving the information you need
CHAPTER SIX:
The Ethical Use of Information: About academic integrity,
avoiding plagiarism, and scholarship as a conversation
GLOSSARY
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INTRODUCTION:
What is information literacy?
What is information literacy and what does it mean to

be information literate? The American Library Association
defines information literacy as a set of abilities empowering
individuals to recognize when information is needed and to
be able to locate it, evaluate it, and use it effectively. While
information literacy is often talked about on college campuses
in terms of doing library research for papers and annotated
bibliographies and other sorts of classroom assignments,
we use and need information in every aspect of our lives.
Think about all of the informal research we do each

day. We look up movie and book reviews, how-to videos
on YouTube, product reviews, and strategies for parenting.
We Google how to fill out some field on our tax forms, we
look up job ads and tips on job interviews, how to spell or
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define some unfamiliar word or acronym. We all have in-
formation needs, and being able to effectively identify and
meet those needs is at the core information literacy. Being
able to differentiate quality information from questionable
information is also critical. Is that shocking article your sister
posted on social media actually true? What about health
advice offered by a friend? What about some surprising
statistic you heard cited by a politician or political candidate?
The American Library Association asks to think about

information literacy in six ways.
1. Authority Is Constructed and Contextual
When you use information, or choose one source of in-

formation over another, you presume a certain amount of
expertise on the part of the information’s author on the topic
they are writing about. What gives the author that authority?
What makes some information more authoritative than other
information? What makes a piece of information authorita-
tive can vary from discipline to discipline and be based on
context. So for example, an author may be an authority on
a given topic because of extensive experience, or because
of extensive education. Even without deep experience or
education, an author may bring authority to their writing
based on their having witnessed or participated in some
major event. In both cases, their authority is contextual. A
physics professor may have authority when writing within
their field, but be considered far less authoritative when
writing in an unrelated field.
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2. Information Creation as a Process
Information appears in a variety of forms. Depending on

whether it is in the form of a newspaper article, a scholarly
book, or a formatted report, the creation of information
requires a process. Understanding how and why authors
publish in a particular format, what those formats require
in terms of fact checking, or sourcing, or expertise, what
editorial oversight exists, the role of publishers—all these
considerations may play into your thinking about the rel-
evance of a particular information source to your research
question.
3. Information Has Value
Information has value, and this fact has very real implica-
tions to researchers and information consumers in both how
information is produced and how it is disseminated. It has
economic value as a commodity, for example, as evidenced
by intellectual property rights and other legal considerations,
and by the considerable role of the publishing industry.
Information also has educational and social value, with its
ability to inform, educate, and persuade.
4. Research as Inquiry
One can think of research as an inquiry. A researcher

asks a question, or identifies some gap in our current under-
standing of a topic, and in the process of filling that gap, new
questions and new avenues for further research emerge.
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5. Scholarship as Conversation
Scholarship on a given topic will grow and evolve over

time. New theories, new interpretations, new experiments,
new facts are always being discovered and debated. As the
references or citations of any scholarly article demonstrate,
every researcher is building on the work of many other re-
searchers. Conscientious scholars will always go to great
effort to indicate what previous work has informed their own
work. College students are expected to adopt this practice as
well, citing the work that informs their own work and situat-
ing their ideas and theories within the larger conversation
taking place in their respective discipline.
6. Searching as Strategic Exploration
Over time, as you gain experience and your research needs

grow more complex, you will likely develop sophisticated
strategies for locating relevant information. Searching for
information is rarely as simple as just plugging a keyword
into a search engine or library database and getting all the
books and articles you need. You’ll likely try different ways
of searching for information, and in different places. You
may want to brainstorm, or talk to a librarian.
The five chapters in this text each look at a different aspect

of information literacy but will collectively provide you with
an overview of those concepts most critical to navigating
today’s information environment. After each chapter you
will have the opportunity to test your understanding with a
brief reflection. We begin by looking at the research process.
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CHAPTER ONE:
How Libraries Work
We can always benefit from knowing a little more about
how our campus libraries operate. Understanding the dif-
ferent roles the library and librarians play on your campus
can help us to ask better informed questions and go deeper
in our search for relevant and high quality information.
Campus libraries are always changing to accommodate new
technologies and the evolving needs of the students and
faculty who use them, but the core functions of libraries
remain mostly unchanged.
Access Services
Access Services is a major department in any library,

though it will sometimes be called the circulation depart-
ment. Access Services provides students with the means to
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access a library’s collections, meaning that they check books
in and out and maintain borrower records. These borrower
records, or library accounts, are usually only available to
access services staff. In other words, if we have any ques-
tions about our library account, or want to check books in
or out, or want to pay or contest a fine, Access Services is
who can help.
Access Services may have other services as well. Course

reserves are usually kept here, as is the technology (cameras,
microphones, laptops, etc.) that your library may loan out.
Reference
Reference librarians assist students with locating relevant

information for their projects. They can also (often) track
down answers to especially challenging questions. Your
library’s reference department will probably have a service
desk where you can ask question and talk to librarians. At
some libraries, the reference desk is combined with access
Services.
Besides offering one-on-one assistance with research,

reference librarians may also teach library instruction classes
on your campus. If you are uncertain about the best places
to look for information on a given topic, ask a reference
librarian. Typically academic libraries will have librarians
with specialized areas of expertise, so expect your library
to have a business librarian, a STEM librarian, and so on.
Special Collections
Most large libraries will maintain special collections.

These collections may be based on particular themes, often
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with a focus on local history. Special collections are often

comprised of primary documents. These primary sources
may be letters or old photographs, drafts of a poet’s works,
or the correspondence of a notable scholar or politician.
Technical and Discovery Services
Technical services largely refers to acquisitions and cata-

loging, with the former purchasing books and journals for
the library and the latter integrating them into the collection.
You will rarely see these librarians, as they typically have no
public service role, but they make up a big part of staff in
any large library. The search (discovery) tools themselves
also require time and staff to develop and maintain, so
your library will also have staff devoted to operating and
improving the library catalog interface and whatever other
local discovery tools are available for research.
Services You Can Expect
Your library may have a print collection with thousands

or even millions of volumes--it may provide you with instant
access to millions of electronic articles and books. But no
library owns every title. You may need some seminal work
on your topic--or perhaps just the next book in a series you
are reading for pleasure--that is not part of your local library’s
collection. This does not mean that the item is unavailable to
you. Expect your library to have an interlibrary loan service
to help fill in the inevitable gaps in its collections.
Interlibrary loan services borrow the materials we need

from other libraries and make them available to us. Some
requests can be filled quickly. For example, if you need an
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article, it may take only a day or two for the library to fill
the request. A book may take a week. Rare titles may take
longer. Some interlibrary loan programs are free of charge,
others may require a small fee. Some programs will request
media on your behalf, while other may not. Your library’s
interlibrary loan program should have their policies clearly
stated on their web site.
Also expect your library to offer special programming

throughout the year. This might include exhibits and displays,
guest speakers and lecture series, workshops, or even exam
time stress relievers. For example, game nights are popular
at some libraries during exam periods. Other libraries may
offer yoga, pet therapy events, or snacks.
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CHAPTER TWO:
What’s Credible Anymore? Fake News and
evaluating the information you encounter
during your research
Fake News, Information Bubbles, and Filter Bubbles
Whether the agenda is to sway public opinion, to affect

the outcome of an election, or simply to make money, the
proliferation of fake news creators and distributors has
complicated our already complicated information environ-
ment. Perhaps as bad, “fake news” has become an easy
way to dismiss stories and information we don’t like without
addressing the actual content of such stories.
When you get your news primarily from one source or

from one partisan perspective, you are operating in an in-
formation bubble. You encounter stories that confirm your
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view of the world and avoid stories that challenge those
views. Information bubbles have a natural appeal—they
provide us with stories and perspectives that reinforce what
we already believe about the world.
Information bubbles happen naturally when we seek

out news and news sources that align with our world views.
This isn’t limited to politics and current events either. They
can happen within professions and within organizations
too. Social media can also create information bubbles, as
like-minded friends share articles they haven’t verified but
that conform to some preconceived idea of the world. And
once a story has been shared enough times, “fake news” can
take on an unearned mantle of authority.
Worse, “filter bubbles” are making it more difficult to

step outside of those information bubbles. Social media
and search engines use algorithms to rank what appears in
your feeds and search results. These algorithms look at your
previous engagement with social media posts and search
results in order to provide you with content that aligns with
your interests. These sorts of tailored experiences online-
-whatever their virtues--limit our information gathering in
ways we can’t anticipate. The algorithms are always changing
and usually closely guarded by the companies that create
and implement them.
This chapter outlines some strategies that you can use

to evaluate particular sources of information and particular
articles you may encounter. But this is only part of the solu-
tion to separating truth from fiction in the information we
encounter. Better information habits are required of us.
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Until we apply skepticism and critical thought to the infor-

mation that aligns with our world views just as we would
for information that challenges us, we set ourselves up to
be fooled by fake news. Until we expand our information
bubbles to include more perspectives and coverage from a
more diverse community of scholars and reporters, we limit
what we can know and learn about our world.
Evaluating Information
Being able to critically evaluate the information we en-

counter on the web is a hugely valuable research skill. Why?
Because so much information can be found online, and not
everything we read is true. Sometimes information can be
narrowly accurate, yet still be so biased, selective, or leading
as to make the information essentially useless for research
purposes. Some information may have once been accurate,
but is now simply be too out-of-date to be useful. Some-
times the authors of an article are not experts on what they
are writing about. And sometimes the problem is not the
accuracy of the information, it’s the lack of research-quality
detail and substance.
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Being a critical consumer of information is helpful not
only in school, but also in our daily lives. Just as we need the
information in our college papers to be based on reliable,
quality sources, we also want the health advice, product
reviews, and other kinds of information we personally use
to be reliable.
Accuracy
How do we really know that a given piece of information

is accurate? While there is no single rule that guarantees the
correctness of the information in a given article or website,
there are ways to increase your confidence that the informa-
tion is factually correct.
If statistics or quotes are provided in an article or on a

web page, does the author provide their source? Can that
statistic or quote be verified by a reliable second source?
If you encounter a quote, might that quote be overly selec-
tive or misleading? And can statistics be correct but still
misleading?
They can. Misleading graphs (or distorted graphs) are

common online. Truncated graphs, while perfectly appro-
priate in many cases, are a particularly easy way to deceive.
Let’s look at a quick example. The graph below shows rather
dramatic change across groups A through E.
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But notice that the Y axis does not begin at 0. Instead it

begins with 9,100. If the Y axis did begin with 0, we would
see much less dramatic variation across the groups:
Quality information sources will cite their statistical data

so that researchers can go to the original source and see
the data for themselves.
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Quotations can also be taken out of context, as in the
example below.
“This would be the best of all possible worlds if there

were no religion in it.”
-John Adams
This quote has appeared on many websites and in ar-

ticles, and it seems clear in meaning. So how could such
an unambiguous quote still deceive us? If we look at the
full context of the quote, which appeared in a letter Adams
once wrote to Thomas Jefferson, it shows a very different
meaning:
“Twenty times, in the course of my late reading, have

I been on the point of breaking out, ‘this would be the
best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion
in it!!!!’ But in this exclamation, I should have been as
fanatical as Bryant or Cleverly. Without religion, this
world would be something not fit to be mentioned in
public company--I mean hell.”
-John Adams
Whatever one thinks of Adam’s perspective, his views

are clearly misrepresented in the original quote, despite it
being taken word-for-word from his own writings.
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Authority
When we quote from an author or article in a college-

level research paper, we are presuming that the source in
some way strengthens the argument we are trying to make,
or provides some insight into our research question. But
this requires that the sources we use have some kind of
authority on our topics. And how to do you know that they
do? Why quote or cite an article we’ve discovered on the
web and not, say, the opinions of our parents or our friends?
Our educations and life experiences provide each of us

with unique expertise, but not all expertise is relevant to
a particular research question. A famed political scientist
may be an authority on game theory, for example, but that
hardly qualifies him or her to conduct heart surgery, or draft
technical drawings. The quality of your research very much
depends on the authority of your sources, so it is important
we learn what we can about the authors we cite and what
qualifies them to speak authoritatively on a given topic.
When you evaluate an article or website for use in college-

level research, consider these factors:
• What is the author or organization’s credentials?
• Are any credentials even provided? If not, why do

they deserve to be cited?
• Is the author qualified to write about this topic?

What is their area of expertise? Is the author affiliated with
an educational or research institution?
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Objectivity
When we talk about objectivity, we are largely talking

about the author’s objectives in producing and publishing
the information. Why does the article or website exist? What
are the biases of the authors or the organization behind the
information? Bias isn’t necessarily bad. Just because an au-
thor or organization has a particular point of view does not
mean that their information is inaccurate or lacks authority.
The very reason that many groups exist is to advocate for
a particular position, and to that end they often collect or
generate a lot of high-quality research. That said, you will
want to be aware of the objectives of the authors or groups.
And in order to write a well-rounded paper, you will likely
want to collect information from authoritative groups with
different perspectives as well. When all your information
comes from just one side of a debate, your paper will lack
balance and perspective.
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Do note that all perspectives are not equally informed

by relevant expertise. If you are presenting multiple per-
spectives in a paper, be sure that all those perspectives are
informed by authoritative sources.
When considering objectivity, also pay close attention to

advertising that appears on a website. The purpose of some
websites is to sell a particular product, not necessarily to
educate. While they may host articles as well, the articles
are basically just ads for the product. Even more insidious,
companies may run elaborate advertisements on legitimate
websites that are meant to look and read like normal articles,
but are in fact just promotional materials. “Sponsored con-
tent” on legitimate news websites is increasingly common.
These articles may be written by industry lobbyists or political
partisans and can appear alongside legitimate news stories.
Often all that distinguishes “sponsored content” from real
news is a small, easily overlooked label. Do not be fooled.
Ask yourself…
• Is the information fact, opinion, or propaganda?
• Is the information well-researched? Is there a bibli-

ography or citations or references at the end?
• Is the author objective and unbiased? Bias isn’t

always disqualifying, but you will always want to be aware
of what the author’s bias is.
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Currency
Some of your research projects may require very up-

to-date information. For example, if you are researching
present-day population statistics, you won’t want to use the
1980 census figures. If you are writing about public senti-
ment on a hot-button social issue, old data is worse than
useless--it may be downright deceptive. When we talk about
currency, we’re talking about how current the information is
in a book or article. For some projects and discipines older
information might be fine. But for many research topics,
currency is a major consideration.
Sometimes the only information available is a bit more

aged than is ideal. In those cases we make a judgement
call about whether to use it in our work. Often though, we
can track down more recent statistics with a little detective
work. For example, what is the source of the information?
The US government is one popular source for statistical
information. If the government statistics you encounter
in an article are dated, perhaps newer statistics have been
released since the article was published. Going to the in-
formation’s source is good first step.
Ask yourself:
• When was the information published or produced?

Will dated information still be relevant to my research proj-
ect?
• With web-based articles, how many dead links ap-

pear on the site? Does the site still receive regular updates
appropriate to the content?
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Coverage
Earlier when we talked about objectivity, we also talked

about bias. While bias is not inherently bad, you would not
want your total pool of resources to reflect the same bias.
Otherwise you are only getting part of the picture. In part,
this is what “coverage” asks: what part of the picture are
you getting with your information resource?
Is the material presented at an appropriate level? An

article may contain correct information, but may lack the
sort of depth of content necessary for research purposes.
Does the resource add new information or does it simply
compile information easily found elsewhere? If the work
merely compiles the work of others, would those original
sources be more appropriate for use in your work?
When considering accuracy, authority, objectivity, cur-

rency, and coverage, there are often no clear-cut answers.
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An article that may be appropriate for one kind of research
question may not be appropriate for another. Make delib-
erate, informed judgements, as the quality of your sources
will greatly impact the overall quality of your work.
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CHAPTER THREE:
The Information Landscape: an Overview of
information types and when they appear in
publication
Students often encounter a checklist of different pub-

lication format requirements when they receive their first
major research assignment. They may be asked to use a
certain number of books as sources, or a certain number of
scholarly journal articles; they may be asked to use several
different formats for the same paper.
Before starting on a research assignment, students may

not have thought much about these different kinds of sources
and why each exists. Some formats will be relevant to one
research question but not others. Which are likely to be
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most useful to you will depend on both your assignment
requirements and the nature of your research question. Let’s
look briefly at the major formats you are likely to encounter.
Scholarly Journals
Scholarly journals are the gold standard when it comes

to high-quality research sources and you will likely be asked
again and again to use scholarly journal articles as you move
through your degree program. Scholarly journals go by
other names. You may see them called academic journals,
or peer-reviewed journals, or refereed journals, but they
all refer to the same thing. Here’s what you need to know
about them.
Researchers and scholars publish their work in scholarly

journals. You may read about some new discovery or re-
search study in a newspaper article, or see it covered by a
science reporter on cable news, but these sources are simply
reporting on what was originally published in a scholarly
journal article.
Because scholarship builds on earlier scholarship, it is

essential to the community of researchers and scholars
that their literature is as correct and rigorous as possible.
To ensure that only quality articles are published, scholars
use the process of peer-review.
Let’s walk through an example:
Jim Schultz is a professor of sociology. He recently com-

pleted a study of student groups on campus, and has written
an article. Because scholarly journals can be very narrowly
focused on highly specialized fields of study, Jim’s first step
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is to identify a journal that publishes the kind of research

he has conducted. He may consult with a librarian or with
colleagues in order to identify promising journals.
Jim investigates the formatting and citation style required

by a promising journal, formats his paper accordingly, and
submits his article for possible publication. The editor of the
journal reviews the article and determines that it could be
a good fit for the journal. The research is within the main-
stream of research in the field and it contributes original
knowledge to the field.
The editor then sends the article to a small group of

scholars experienced with Jim’s kind of research. These
scholars are anonymous and will go through the article with
a fine toothed comb, scrutinizing the methodology of the
study and making sure other aspects of the article (such
as its review of the existing literature and its discussion of
findings) are of sufficient quality for publication. The review-
ers make notes on where the article could be improved, on
important citations missing from the literature review, and
every other aspect of the paper.
Jim doesn’t know who his reviewers are, but he received

their comments. From there he makes revisions to his work
and resubmits the article to the journal. If this revised ver-
sion of his article is accepted, his work will be published in
that journal.
The peer-review process is the most rigorous process

we have for ensuring quality; it is also a major requirement
for most forms of faculty tenure. For both these reasons
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expect scholarly journals to loom large in your future re-
search in college.
Tip: most databases and discovery services will include a check

box for scholarly or peer-reviewed journal articles. By checking
it off, you will only get scholarly articles in your search results.
Trade and Popular Publications
Many of us grew up reading magazines like Time or

Newsweek. Whether at the grocery store or the newsstand,
the overwhelming majority of the magazines we encounter
are considered popular publications. This includes titles
ranging from Popular Science to Rolling Stone. What makes
these titles popular? Briefly put, the business model of these
publications depends on advertising dollars; how much the
publications can charge for advertising space depends in
large part on the number of readers (i.e., how popular the
title is with readers.)
Plenty of experts and authorities write articles for popu-

lar publications. But it should already be apparent that the
motivations of popular publishers are different than those
of scholarly journals. The editors of popular magazines
decide what to publish based at least in part on whether
the content will sell more copies. Articles are fact-checked,
but without the same scrutiny that peer-reviewed articles
undergo.
Popular magazines can be perfectly adequate for some

kinds of research, but expect to find them less and less useful
as research sources as you progress through your classes.
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They simply lack the authority and coverage essential to

college-level research.
A second kind of magazine will likely be more useful-

-trade publications. Trade publications (sometimes called
trade rags or trade magazines) are similar in many ways
to popular magazines. They rely on advertising dollars to
stay in business and they do not provide the same rigorous
peer-review process that scholarly journals do.
The real difference between popular and trade publica-

tions is audience. Most popular titles are written for general
audiences. This means that the language is at a relatively
low reading level and few technical terms are included.
The publications presume their readers know little about
the content area. With trade publications, the audience is
a particular industry or job field.
An example of a trade publication is Advertising Age. For

those in the advertising or publishing industries, Advertis-
ing Age is an important source of current information on
the state of the industry. The magazine presumes that the
reader already has a good working knowledge of advertis-
ing, so the articles are more narrowly focused and likely to
include industry-specific terminology and concepts.
As a way to learn about a new job field, or to stay current

on new technologies and trends in your future professions,
trade publications are an important go-to source.
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Newspapers
Newspapers will probably not be a common source of

information for your college-level research papers. News-
paper articles are edited and fact-checked, but without the
same scrutiny as a peer-reviewed article. Newspaper articles
typically lack depth and background information. Their real
value is in their immediacy. Newspapers provide current
coverage of events and so can be helpful to us when our
research topics are historical in nature. We will have more
to say about the immediacy of newspaper articles later in
the chapter when we talk about the information time line.
Monographs
Monographs (also known as books) provide detail and

comprehensive coverage of topics that isn’t duplicated by
other formats. Books, or monographs, are sometimes ne-
glected as sources by new student researchers. They cannot
be accessed quite as quickly as electronic articles, and one
often has to physically locate a book to determine whether
it will really be useful on a given project.
Part of the challenge of using books for a project is that

library catalog records tell us relatively little about what a
given book contains. A typical book record will include title
and author, publication information, a handful of subject
headings assigned to the book, location information, and
(sometimes) a table of contents. This is enough informa-
tion to identify promising book titles to further investigate
for use in research, but not enough to know definitively
whether a book directly or sufficiently addresses a research
question. With print books, you will want to physically locate
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and investigate the book. This can be difficult to do when

a student researcher is conducting their research online.
Ebooks are one option for off-site researchers. Besides

including the full text of their print-version equivalents, they
are usually full text searchable. That means you can much
more quickly determine whether a given title is going to be
useful for your research project.
Grey literature
Sometimes important information for a project comes

not from books or articles, but from a thesis or dissertation,
or from the proceedings of a conference. Grey literature is a
catch-all term for these types of sources. Other examples of
grey literature include technical documents and formatted
reports, such as those produced by industry and various
think tanks.
Grey literature has traditionally been more difficult to

track down for student researchers, but a great deal of grey
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literature is now available in databases. Organizational
websites and think tank websites also create and distribute
grey literature.
Social media, blogs, vlogs
Similar to newspapers, the real value in social media

content is in the immediacy of the information. Social media
provides real-time coverage of and reaction to events. How
and whether social media is a viable source of information
will depend on the nature of your research project.
The Information Timeline
The information timeline is one way for us to think about

how different kinds of publications provide different per-
spectives on a topic based on when they are published,
from when information on a topic or event appears in initial
broadcasts or web-based reports to far more comprehen-
sive analysis and coverage in peer-reviewed scholarship
and books. Understanding the information timeline lets us
know when we can expect information sources to appear in
publication, and more broadly improves our understanding
of the role each type of source plays in our research. Differ-
ent formats of information, after all, have varying levels of
research depth, credibility, and proximity to the event you
might be researching.
Let’s walk through an example. If you are writing a col-

lege research paper about the terrorist attacks on 9/11,
these are some common information types and when they
became available.
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On the day of the attacks, the only information you would

find would be from news websites, broadcast media such
a CNN, and social media. This breaking news content can
provide immediate information on the event, but can also
lack context and background information. Coverage may
be confused and facts may be misreported.
The following day stories are published in newspapers.

Newspaper articles often provide more in-depth actual in-
formation than the television or online news sources. These
newspaper articles will begin the task of contextualizing the
attacks and will include additional fact-checking. They will
also synthesize much of the reporting of the previous day.
Popular magazine coverage appears one to two weeks

later, with articles on the attacks appearing in publications
such as Time and Newsweek. Magazines often provide
greater context to a story than is found in newspaper or
web-based articles, and will develop the background of a
story in greater depth. Articles may be authored by national
security experts and others with relevant expertise. While
the articles will not be extensively sourced at this point,
analysis is much more robust than that found in social
media or newspapers.
After about six months, scholarly journals will begin to

publish articles on the attacks. These journal articles provide
peer-reviewed, discipline-specific research relevant to the
attacks. These scholarly articles are written by experts, are
formally objective, and likely include original research and
analysis. Note that they are also likely to be very narrowly
focused. Trade publications may also provide relevant trade
33
and industry-specific information and analysis around this
time.
Finally, books will begin to appear a year so after a story

or event. Books are useful for their in-depth research-
based information about your topic; the best of them will
also include extensive footnotes, background information,
context, and analysis.
34
CHAPTER FOUR:
Navigating the Information Landscape: Search
Engines, Library Databases, Library of Congress
Classification, and Discovery Tools
Some of your college instructors may have grown up in

a very different information environment, using different
research tools to find the information they needed. Instead
of electronic databases, they may have used indexes like The
Readers’ Guide to Periodical Literature to identify promising
articles and then located the full text of the articles in large
bound volumes of print journals in library stacks or on
microfilm. To find print books, they may have used a card
catalog. Card catalogs allowed library patrons to search for
print books in one of three ways—alphabetically by title,
alphabetically by author, and by the handful of subject head-
ings that were assigned to books based on their content.
35
Browsing physical shelves, browsing subject-related print
journals and indexes, and following citations found in the
references of books and articles were all essential research
strategies.
To some degree these strategies remain essential to

conducting research, though the tools have changed dra-
matically over the last couple of decades and research
behaviors have evolved accordingly. The electronic indexes
of today are much more powerful research tools. Today’s
library databases allow you do full text searches of millions
of articles at once. Ebooks have made the large print col-
lection optional for many kinds of research.
Has something been lost in this change from print to

electronic collections? Perhaps so. Browsing physical books
and scholarly journals was once a terrific way to come up
with interesting research questions and make connections
between different concepts, different experiments, and
theories, and this strategy is far less common today. After
all, why browse library shelves for long hours for informa-
tion when you can quickly find what you need to answer a
research question with just a few thoughtful keywords? In
that sense the improvements to the accessibility and search-
ability of information may actually put today’s researchers
at a bit of a disadvantage.
Making conscious choices about where you do your re-

search requires an understanding of what tools are available
and when each tool is best suited to addressing a particu-
lar research need. For example, as we discovered earlier,
peer-reviewed scholarly literature is the gold standard for
36
many types of research. A simple vanilla Google search

is unlikely to connect you with scholarly literature, so it
would be a poor choice of search tool for finding scholarly
articles. The Library Catalog is also a poor place to locate
peer reviewed scholarly literature, though it might be ideal
for finding books and films. Let’s briefly look at the most
popular research tools, along with the kinds of content you
can expect to find in each.
Library Catalogs
Library catalogs allow researchers to search the local print

collection at their library. Typically the catalog is a useful way
to find print books, though ebooks, microform, films, and
special collections records are also likely to be included. A
library catalog allows users to search by author, title, journal
title, subject, and often by series, ISBN/ISSN, publisher, and
call number as well. A catalog may search all these fields at
once, or only the fields you have selected to search.
Note that when doing searches in library catalogs, you

are usually not searching the full text of the books and other
materials that are indexed by the catalog. As we said earlier,
we are searching though the subject headings each item in
the catalog has been assigned, along with a few other basic
pieces of information about the book. Book records in cata-
logs are thus quite sparse compared to the more extensive
indexing found in article databases. The subject headings
assigned to books come from a “controlled vocabulary”
that ensures the same language and terminology is used
to describe similar topics. So for example, if your subject
37
search is giving you poor results, you may not be using the
correct “controlled vocabulary” to describe your topic.
Tip: A subject search on “feline” is likely to give you very

few results, because books about felines use the controlled
vocabulary term “cats.” One you have found an item on your
topic, you can look at the item’s record and see the subject
headings that the item has been assigned. You can then click
on the subject heading to see other items in the catalog that
has been assigned that same subject heading.
Library Databases
You will often hear about databases in academic libraries.

Library databases are an important resource for research-
ers, both student and professional, and understanding how
they work will make your library research in the future easier
and more productive.
So what is a library database? A database is just a search-

able collection of information. We use different kinds of
databases every day. Apple’s ITunes is a database of songs
to buy. Amazon.com is a huge database of products for
sale. Even your cellphone includes a database of family
and friends’ names and phone numbers. Library databases
are collections of magazine and newspaper articles, book
chapters, conference proceedings, and other kinds of digi-
tized research material.
Different library databases contain different kinds of

content. Most databases only include articles for a particular
subject area. An example of a subject-specific database is
the Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature
38
(CINAHL,) which contains the full text to over 600 different

nursing and allied health related journals. Naturally, the
CINAHL database would be a poor place to find English
Literature or History articles, but would be excellent for find-
ing high-quality articles for nursing or other health-related
areas like nutrition.
Some databases contain only certain formats of material.

ProQuest Newsstand contains hundreds of reputable national
and international newspapers, but only newspapers—no
journals, no book chapters. Films on Demand contains only
videos. ACLS Humanities E-Book contains only ebooks. So be
aware not only of a database’s subject area, but also of the
kinds of material formats it contains.
Finally, a few databases are multi-disciplinary. This means

that a single database might cover many different subject
areas. These large multi-disciplinary databases are often
the best, first stop when doing library research. ProQuest
Research Library is an example of a multi-disciplinary data-
base. You’ll find articles in ProQuest Research Library on a
wide variety of topics, from political science and psychology
to English literature and education.
Because databases contain such a huge amount of content,

you will want to think about ways to weed unhelpful items out
of your search results. Before you begin a database search,
select any limiters that you’d like to use. Limiters filter out
content that you know you don’t need. So for example, do
you need articles from only a particular date range? There’s
a limiter for that, which will weed out articles outside that
particular range. Only interested in scholarly articles? Mark
39
off that limiter, and all but scholarly articles will be weeded
out of your search. While different databases may look dif-
ferent, the tools are all generally pretty similar.
One thing to note is that not every database or database

record is available in full text. A database might contain
hundreds or even thousands of different full text journals,
but may also include article records where the full text is
not available. These abstract-only article records may not
be immediately useful to you, but most libraries have an
interlibrary loan service that can quickly request the full text
of the articles for you. If you have questions about using
interlibrary loan and accessing items beyond your library’s
collections, speak with a librarian.
Tip: Databases typically focus on particular areas of study,

such as communications or engineering, and they can be enor-
mously helpful for finding discipline-specific information relevant
to your topic. But ask yourself if your research topic has a
multidisciplinary angle and choose your databases accordingly.
For example, if you are researching bullying in schools, you
may want to do your searching in databases from a number
of database categories, as the topic touches on a number of
literatures: Education, Sociology, Child Development & Family
Relations, etc. Think about the whole range of places where
published research on your topic is likely to appear.
Discovery Services
Library discovery services are the newest of the tools

available to student researchers. Discovery services allow
a user to conduct a search across multiple collections at
once. Whether you need books from your library’s physical
40
collection, a piece of microfilm, a newspaper article from

the 1800’s, or a scholarly article just published in a well-
regarded journal, a discovery service will provide relevant
search results.
It has long been a dream of libraries to provide their users

with a single search tool that searches across their entire
collections, both print and electronic. Discovery services
represent their current best effort at creating such a tool,
allowing users to search the full contents of a library’s local
print collection and a majority of the database content in
a single search.
Discovery services are not without issues that you need

to know about. While the content of most databases sub-
scribed to at your local library may appear in its discovery
service search results, the content of some databases will
not. Determining which databases are included in your
local discovery service and which are not can be difficult.
Another shortcoming of discovery services is the lack of

discipline or database-specific search tools. For example,
consider the nursing database CINAHL. While articles lo-
cated in CINAHL may appear in keyword searches in your
local discovery service, you will not have access to CINAHL’s
special subject heading controlled vocabulary tool unless
you conduct your search within the database itself. Or a
student researcher interested in finding content on certain
kinds of businesses and industries may want to search for
information using NAICS (North American Industry Classifica-
tion System) codes. These six digit codes can be searched in
select business databases, but a discovery service is unlikely
41
to provide that same functionality, even if the articles and
reports themselves will appear in discovery service search
results.
Tip: For research projects where you are asked to have a

mix of books and articles as references, discovery services can
be ideal places to begin your research. Discovery services can
also be helpful when your research topic is multidisciplinary
in nature (i.e., it touches on the literature from several fields of
study,) as it draws in search results from databases in a number
of different fields in a single search.
Google
Google is a terrific tool for locating information across

the more than 30 Trillion web pages it indexes. What can
you expect to find with a Google search, and what is likely
to be excluded? While Google indexes and connects you
to a massive amount of information, it does not necessarily
own the content it indexes. Books and scholarly journals
are typically not free, and so Google is a poor way to find
these types of sources. More exactly, Google may lead to
you useful book and article citations, but is unlikely to give
you full access to those books or articles. Still, Google can
be useful for gaining a global understanding of an unfamiliar
topic, and can connect you to useful sources such as profes-
sional organizations and federal documents.
TIP: Vanilla Google searches can be made more powerful by

taking advantage of a few useful tricks. For example, you may
want to only search a particular domain or website. Do so by
adding “site:” before or after your search terms. For example:
42
site:.edu or site:.gov
You can also have Google provide you with only certain types
of results. For example, if you only want to see PowerPoint
presentations or PDFs in your search results, try:
Filetype:pdf or filetype:pptx
Google Scholar
Google Scholar indexes peer-reviewed articles in much

the same way that vanilla Google indexes web pages. Un-
fortunately, Google Scholar does not own the content of the
articles it indexes. So while a Google Scholar search may
yield genuinely useful, high quality results, the full text of
the articles may not be available. Note, though, that there
are two major exceptions:
• Content owned by your library
If the article in your Google Scholar search results is owned

by your library, you may have access to it in your Google
Scholar results. Click on “settings” and then “library links”
to see if your campus is set up to work with Google Scholar,
or just check with your local librarians. A “Google Scholar”
link that automatically connects you to content your library
owns may be available on your library’s website.
• Open Access Journal articles
Because of the high cost of peer-reviewed journal subscrip-

tions, a number of journal publishers have switched to an
open access publishing model. In addition, many universities
have adopted open access mandates, requiring that their
researchers make copies of their research freely available
43
in institutional repositories. Accessing these open-access
articles requires no special fees or affiliations.
TIP: The option to do an “advanced search” in Google Scholar

currently only appears after an initial search. Once you have
done a search, look for the downward arrow on the right side
of the screen to select “advanced search.” From here you can
search for articles by title, author, or publication.
44
CHAPTER FIVE:
The Research Process: Settling on a topic,
identifying keywords, and retrieving the infor-
mation you need
We will approach the research process in this chapter

by looking at examples of student research. Before that,
though, we need to cover some basic, essential terms.
Limiters
Have you ever searched online for a product to buy?

Then you have probably used limiters. For example, sup-
pose that you
Boolean Operators
When librarians use the phrase “Boolean operators,”

we refer mainly to the words AND, OR, and NOT. These
45
words work a little differently in library search tools than
they do in every day speech. Having a working knowledge
of Boolean operators and integrating that knowledge into
your searches will make your future research both quicker
and more effective.
How Keywords Work
We conduct keyword searches in Google often daily. The

basic process seems clear—we type in a word or string of
words and Google provides us with a ranked list of websites
on which those words appear. This is how we find products
to buy on Amazon and how we find the music we enjoy on
iTunes or Spotify.
Choosing a topic and keywords: a scenario
Colleen’s composition instructor has assigned a research

paper to the class. Colleen has never written a college-level
research paper before and is uncertain about the best topic
to help her succeed on the paper. Recently a younger cousin
of Colleen told her about some negative experiences on Twit-
ter and remarked on how social media can make otherwise
pleasant people yell at total strangers. Colleen thought this
might be a promising idea for a research paper, and she
consulted with her composition instructor. The instructor
was supportive of Colleen’s topic, but felt it was too broad
a topic. Colleen would need to narrow her topic to a more
researchable question. Colleen accepted this, but struggled.
She mused on her initial topic idea: “How does Twitter af-
46
fect the way people talk to each other?” What aspect of this
topic most engaged her? How could she narrow it further?
The journey from choosing a topic to completing a re-

search-based assignment is called the research process. It
is made up of all the necessary steps you complete to be
successful in finding the information you need. Choosing
a topic is an important early part of that process.
Flexibility is a virtue when choosing a topic, and your

finished topic may not always look exactly like your original
one. Your original topic might be too broad (as in Colleen’s
case) or too narrow, or there may not be enough informa-
tion on your topic, or you may discover a more interesting
one as you conduct your research.
Once you have a general idea of your topic, you may be

tempted to head straight for the library databases to begin
your search, and you may not initially see a lot of useful
information. This does not mean you have a bad topic.
Begin instead with a search for background information,
especially if you are not familiar with the subject area. This
will help to better inform and define your topic.
As you search for background information, look for key-

words that you may be able to use a search terms within the
databases. These may be words that you see over and over
as you read through the information on your topic. Your
keywords may also be synonyms or related terms.
Colleen reflected on her topic. Twitter seemed like a

good, solid keyword. But was there a better, more succinct
47
way of describing “the way people talk to each other?” How
about “communication?”
She now had two keywords: Twitter and Communication.

Because she wanted to find articles that mentioned Twitter
and communication within the same article, Colleen knew
to include the Boolean operator “AND” in her initial search:
Twitter AND communication
As you recall, Boolean operators like AND, OR, and NOT

allow researchers to construct more complex searches,
providing only items with the required keywords in their
search results, or excluding content from their results.
Still, Colleen was not satisfied with her initial search re-
sults. Using advice she had received in a library instruction
class, she experimented with her keywords.
Instead of “Twitter,” she tried “social media.” Instead of

“communication,” she tried “personal communication.” She
found useful results this way, but still wasn’t satisfied. She
reflected more on how Twitter affected the way people talk
to each other. It certainly seemed like people were meaner
on Twitter than in real life. Was there a useful keyword in
that? A keyword related to anger or aggression?
Anger and aggression are synonyms, and she wanted

to find articles that included either of the terms. She knew
the Boolean operator “OR” would be helpful, and wrote:
“social media” AND “personal communication” AND

(anger OR aggression)
48
By using “OR,” she knew articles using either term would

appear in her search results, provided the other two key-
words were also present.
One result Colleen noticed was on cyber bullying. That’s

it! Not only had Colleen narrowed her topic sufficiently, she
had already found some articles.
49
CHAPTER SIX:
The Ethical Use of Information: About academic
integrity, avoiding plagiarism, and scholarship
Why we cite
To participate in college-level research is to engage with

a chain of debate and scholarship that extends well beyond
any individual scholar or researcher’s efforts. As new knowl-
edge builds on or upends older established knowledge,
a conversation of sorts develops across time. When we
conduct or synthesize the research or writings of others
in a college-level research paper, we participate in that
conversation. Key to holding this vast enterprise together
is the notion of citation.
Citation is how scholars acknowledge or point to the

work of earlier scholars. Ideally, citation provides a stan-
50
dard means for tracking down the research of others by

providing sufficient information about the original source
so it can be easily found. Citations typically include things
like article titles, journal titles, authors, dates, and publica-
tion information. Citations will look different depending
on citation style, discipline of study, and the format and
nature of the information itself. The purpose is the same:
to make the original source of any information you refer-
ence easily findable by others. This is our responsibility
as participants in research. One day others may use your
work in their own research, and those future authors will
be obligated to cite you.
Citation also allows you to avoid plagiarism. Most every

educational institution has some sort of academic integrity
policy that outlines a student’s responsibilities as a researcher.
These policies may vary slightly from institution to institu-
tion, but typically warn against two behaviors:
1. Committing plagiarism. Plagiarism is when we use

the ideas or research of others and fail to attribute those
ideas or research to the original authors. This is a form of
theft easily remedied by extensive use of citation. Did you
get an idea from a book, article, or website? Cite it as spe-
cifically as possible. Did you find a terrific graph or image
online that you want to include in your paper? Cite it. Using
a quote from any source? Cite.
2. Self-plagiarizing. This happens when you submit

work you completed in one class for a different class. Most
syllabi expressly forbid this. If you are considering using
your previous work for a current project, be sure to cite
51
yourself and to note how extensively you are reusing the
work. Also be sure to talk to your instructor. What con-
stitutes self-plagiarism may seem murky to you, but your
instructor may have bright red lines over what is and isn’t
allowed in a particular class.
Why are there so many citation styles?
One common frustration with student researchers is the

need to learn more than one citation style. You may learn
MLA in an English composition class, but may also need to
learn APA for a sociology class, or Chicago style citation for a
history class. Why are there so many? Styles have developed
for the most part organically to reflect the needs of different
areas of study. While the differences between styles may
seem arbitrary, they emerge from how scholars in various
fields cite sources and present their research. For example,
historians often use the Chicago style. Why? One reason
is that Chicago accommodates the footnotes and endnotes
essential to history researchers in a way other styles do not.
52
A Glossary of Terms
Boolean operators
A method of searching created by mathemati-
cian George Boole that uses the terms AND, OR,
and NOT to broaden or narrow a search. Key-
words or controlled vocabulary subject terms
are combined using these three “operators.”
For instance, AND allows two different but related

terms to be searched, which narrows down your
search to be more specific. An example would be
PTSD AND soldiers, which would search all of the
literature first on PTSD, but then limit to only the
articles that were written about soldiers with PTSD.
The operator OR allows you to search two like terms

and have the results of both searches appear on the
same page. An example of using OR would be to
search for PTSD OR Post Traumatic Stress Disorder,
which would return results that used either of the
two forms of the term. NOT excludes certain terms
from being included in a search. In the same vein
as the other example searches, you may be inter-
ested in finding out only about soldiers in the Army,
but not other branches of military service. A search
with not could be PTSD AND soldiers NOT Navy.
53
Catalog
An online tool in libraries that is usually used to find
items housed physically in the library. Some libraries
also list their eBooks and other electronic items in
this search interface. You will not be able to search
for journal articles by subject or title in the catalog.
Citation
A reference to where you found a specific piece of
information or opinion that you have used in your
paper. Citations will be found in a references list,
bibliography, footnotes, or works cited page and fol-
lows a specific format, such as APA, MLA, or Chicago
Style. In-text citations are used to mark the specific
information that you are citing. Citing is important to
give authors credit for their work and prevents you
from plagiarizing. Another reason it is important to
cite is to situate your work within the scholarly con-
versation happening on a topic.
Controlled vocabulary
Refers to the way that articles or abstracts are or-
ganized in a database by a set lexicon of terms that
are defined by the creators. Seasoned researchers
will take their keywords from their research topic
and look them up in the thesaurus of the database
to find out which terms the database vendor has
used to tag the concept being researched. You may
also find related terms in the thesaurus that you had
not previously thought of. Some thesauri allow you
to “explode” the topic, which means that all related
54
terms will be searched at once. In the U.S., the most

common controlled vocabulary is the Library of Con-
gress Subject Headings.
Discovery services
An online tool in libraries that searches multiple
databases and the library’s catalog at once. A dis-
covery service is normally behind the search box on
the front page of the library. Discovery services are
great tools for finding a lot of research on a topic
quickly, but they may bring back too many results
from many different fields of study on a particular
topic. Additionally, there will be certain databases
that are not included in a discovery service, so it is
still important to check the subject-specific data-
bases on your topic to make sure that you have not
missed any research that may not show up there.
eBook
A monograph that appears in electronic format, nor-
mally located in a database or on the web. eBooks
are normally read online in a browser window or on
an e-reader device.
Grey literature
Scholarly writing that appears outside the scope
of the normal publishing channels (journals and
books), such as reports, dissertations, theses, and
conference proceedings. Grey literature is normally
created by scholars in the field or graduate students,
55
but it does not undergo the same level of peer re-
view as a journal article or scholarly book.
Multidisciplinary database
A broadly scoped database that includes articles
from many different fields of study, rather than fo-
cusing on one specific academic discipline. A multi-
disciplinary database is a good place to start if you
are in a general composition class or you are unsure
what fields of study are undertaking research on
your topic. Many experienced student researchers
start in a multidisciplinary database to see what is
published on a topic and then move into a subject-
specific database that is tailored to their major.
Subject-specific database
A database that is scoped to include only jour-

nal articles, book chapters, citations, and sources
from one particular academic discipline.
Scholarly or Peer-reviewed Literature

Scholarly literature usually appears in journal arti-
cles and books. It is written for an audience of other
researchers in the field and it usually builds on the
past research of others. The process to get a schol-
arly article published is rigorous, and includes peer
review undertaken by other experts on the topic.
Popular publication
Examples of popular literature are magazines and
newspapers. Articles in a popular periodical will be
56
written for the purpose of entertaining or informing

a wide audience. You can find examples of popular
periodicals on newsstands and in book stores. They
are usually written by journalists.
Trade publication
Articles in trade publications are written for an audi-
ence of professionals that are already working in the
field. They will usually include relevant trends, news,
and reports on successful projects that other profes-
sionals may want to duplicate on their own.
Journal article
A written work that appears in a periodical that
is published on a regular basis, whether that is
monthly, quarterly, annually, etc. Journal articles are
normally written by scholars, researchers, or experts
in a field and they are peer reviewed by other re-
searchers in order to ensure accuracy. Articles will
usually have a methods section and a bibliography
or works cited that situates the current information
in the body of previous research on the topic. The
writers are normally not paid directly for their con-
tributions, rather, they are publishing on the topic
because they are contributing to the formal schol-
arly conversation on a given topic.
Keywords
A method of locating library literature in a database
that requires you to search using broad, user-de-
57
fined search terms to find all of the literature on a
topic. Keyword searching is the type of library search
most closely aligned to the way we naturally speak
or write; look for the main ideas of your topic sen-
tence to determine your keywords. Keywords may
be separated by Boolean operators.
Magazine article
A written work that appears in a popular periodical
that you would find in a bookstore or on a news-
stand. These articles are written by professional
journalists for a mass market audience and will be
written at a lower reading level than a scholarly jour-
nal article. The purpose of a magazine article is to
inform and often to entertain the reader. There will
not be citations in this type of article.
Monographs
Put most simply, a monograph is a book. A mono-
graph is a non-serial publication that is published on
a particular topic; in academic libraries, this would
normally be published by a special educational
publisher or a university press. Different fields of
study may publish monographs more than others.
For instance, in the hard sciences, you will find fewer
monographs published, since the focus is on bring-
ing new research to light more quickly in journals. In
a field like History, some professors will be expected
to publish in monographic format to gain tenure at
their university.
58
Newspaper article
A brief, article, or description of a current event that
appeared in a daily publication. Newspaper articles
are written by professional journalists and do not
normally contain citations. They are written for the
purposes of informing the general public about hap-
penings in the world.
Periodicals
A publication that is regularly released monthly,
quarterly, annually, etc. Individual articles are sub-
mitted by researchers for consideration in the jour-
nal and then peer reviewed before being accepted
to be published. Journals are ranked by something
called impact factor, which gauges the level of influ-
ence they will have on the field. Impact factor is de-
termined by how many times past articles published
in the journal have been cited by other researchers.
Many journals are published by academic societies,
professional associations, or university presses.
Reference Books
Usually located in a special collection of non-circu-
lating books, reference materials include encyclo-
pedias, dictionaries, and atlases. Most reference
works include a summary of information taken to
be factual, rather than analysis or new research on
a topic. These works are a great place to start your
research, as you will discover related terms and ac-
59
cumulate background information on
your topic.
60
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Information Literacy

An Open Educational Resource

Information Literacy Concepts:

A fully editable copy of this resource is available under the above

by David Hisle and Katy Webb

What is information literacy and what does it mean to

Think about all of the informal research we do each

The American Library Association asks to think about

1. Authority Is Constructed and Contextual

When you use information, or choose one source of in-

2. Information Creation as a Process

Information appears in a variety of forms. Depending on

3. Information Has Value

One can think of research as an inquiry. A researcher

Scholarship on a given topic will grow and evolve over

6. Searching as Strategic Exploration

Over time, as you gain experience and your research needs

The five chapters in this text each look at a different aspect

Access Services is a major department in any library,

Access Services may have other services as well. Course

Reference librarians assist students with locating relevant

Besides offering one-on-one assistance with research,

Most large libraries will maintain special collections.

with a focus on local history. Special collections are often

Technical and Discovery Services

Technical services largely refers to acquisitions and cata-

Services You Can Expect

Your library may have a print collection with thousands

Interlibrary loan services borrow the materials we need

Also expect your library to offer special programming

Fake News, Information Bubbles, and Filter Bubbles

Whether the agenda is to sway public opinion, to affect

When you get your news primarily from one source or

Information bubbles happen naturally when we seek

Worse, “filter bubbles” are making it more difficult to

This chapter outlines some strategies that you can use

Until we apply skepticism and critical thought to the infor-

Being able to critically evaluate the information we en-

How do we really know that a given piece of information

If statistics or quotes are provided in an article or on a

They can. Misleading graphs (or distorted graphs) are

But notice that the Y axis does not begin at 0. Instead it

Quality information sources will cite their statistical data

“This would be the best of all possible worlds if there

This quote has appeared on many websites and in ar-

“Twenty times, in the course of my late reading, have

Whatever one thinks of Adam’s perspective, his views

When we quote from an author or article in a college-

Our educations and life experiences provide each of us

When you evaluate an article or website for use in college-

• What is the author or organization’s credentials?

• Are any credentials even provided? If not, why do

• Is the author qualified to write about this topic?

When we talk about objectivity, we are largely talking

Do note that all perspectives are not equally informed

When considering objectivity, also pay close attention to

• Is the information fact, opinion, or propaganda?

• Is the information well-researched? Is there a bibli-

• Is the author objective and unbiased? Bias isn’t