"Information Literacy Pre-assessment

The following set of questions is adapted (with permission) from "Information Literacy
Pre-assessment," CSU Monterey Bay

Academic Session 2008-2009
Semester 1
September 4, 2008
Instructor: Lleuvelyn A. Cacha

1. Forming a research question from a broad topic
Let's say that you wanted to research the topic (computer and Internet crimes) you may change this. Given that broad area of interest, what might be a research question to investigate -- for example, "Should governments get involved in regulating use of the Internet? you may change the question based on your topic.
Research topic
Information seeking behaviours
Research question
"An analysis and categorization of information seeking behaviour of undergraduate students in a networked environment”

2. Identifying keywords
Using the research question you drafted above, what keywords might be good to use in the first
stages of research? (If you didn't write your own research question, use the question given in the example)
What is information seeking behaviour? / What is a networked environment?
How do undergraduates make use of the internet?
Information literacy skills among undergraduates in a networked environment
information seeking strategies of young adults in a networked environment
Investigating information seeking challenges and difficulties among undergraduates in a networked environment.

3. Thinking about resources
Using the research question you wrote above, what kinds of resources do you think you would use to find answers to your question? (If you didn't write a research question, use the question given as the example.)
Primary sources like; dissertations, theses, conference papers, video tapes.
Secondary sources like; abstracts, catalogues, indexes progress reports, review articles bibliographies.
Tertiary sources like; almanacs and fact books,

4. Distinguishing popular from scholarly materials
Popular periodicals (like Newsweek or Atlantic Monthly) are written to appeal to the general public. What are some of their other characteristics?
The content of popular periodicals has no specific format or structure
Popular periodicals lengths are shorter articles providing broader overviews of topics
Advertising of popular periodicals is done in significant amount.
Popular periodicals audiences are the general public, basic reading level, little or no specialized language.
Authors of popular periodicals are either journalist, staff writer or anonymous
popular periodicals sources are rarely any cited; original sources can be obscure (courtesy of Dalhousie university library)

5. Scholarly periodicals (like American Sociological Review or Journal of Social Psychology) are written to appeal to researchers and students in the field of study. What are some of their other characteristics?
Scholarly, also known as academic periodicals have the following characteristics:
The content of scholarly articles is usually quite structured; may include abstract, literature review, methodology, results, conclusion and bibliography
The length of academic or scholarly periodicals is normally longer, with the articles providing in-depth analysis of topics
Advertising is either very little or highly specialized.
The audiences of scholarly periodicals are mostly researchers and professionals, advanced reading level, specialized vocabulary
The authors are noted professional, specialist or experts in the field
Finally their sources are; footnotes and bibliographies.

6. Give example of a secondary resource
A secondary source gives information about a primary source that has already been modified and rearranged for the purpose of the audience. An example is an editorial in The New York Times entitled Everybody Loves Obama. Abstracts, catalogues, indexes progress reports review articles bibliographies are all examples of secondary sources.

7. Using the World Wide Web for Research
Let's say you begin your research on the topic in question 1 using the World Wide Web.
What is the first couple of steps you would take?
Which search engine is better?
What are the key words?
Gather information
Keep a journal

8. Evaluating Web sites
How do you know whether a site you have found on the World Wide Web includes
information that is reliable and appropriate for academic research?
In order to know if a site you have found on the www has reliable information it is good to take note of the following:
First is authority. The author or organization's name should be easily located, credentials of the author are given, sponsorship or potential conflicts of interest are revealed, Bibliography and additional references or websites are provided and the organization clearly explains its purpose. Is the work new? Has it been published by others etc
Note that if the address includes .com or .net it is a commercial site, .edu is an educational site, .org represents a non-commercial site and .gov is government site. There are various others.
Secondly, check on how accurate the site is and try to compare the information with other sources. Have other people recommended this particular website. You can also check on comments by previous users especially with the advent of web2.0 tools and interactivity it offers. It should be easy to find how current the information is, information should be objective and balanced if advertisements or blogs are part of the site, clearly labeled and the sources of the information should be given.
Also the scope, look at the introduction and purpose of the work and check on what it covers and the date it was published. It is also good to look at how well the website organizes its materials as well as its references and indexes.

9. Plagiarism
Plagiarism is presenting the work of others as though it were your own; it is a form of theft.
Which of the following is an example of plagiarism? (Check all that apply)
Using phrases and sentences of others as if they were your own without giving credit
Using ideas of others as if they were your own without giving credit
Copying text written by someone else and using it with no quotation marks
Rewording someone else's information and using it without giving credit
Using copyrighted images from the Web without giving credit

10. Using different types of resources
Information you find on a research topic may come from: (a) Printed materials and electronic resources made available through libraries (for example, databases that provide full text copies of periodical articles) OR
(b) Materials you find using Web search engines
What are some of the major differences between these two sets of materials?

The first difference is that information from library databases are often well organised where as information from search engines are not as organised as that of libraries.
Also the information from libraries is stable. This is not the case with search engines. At times their information is updated or the link is removed and it can not be traced.
The information you find in the library has been purchased by them making it authentic and credible as they will not go for fake material which is not the case with most search engines where anyone can write anything and put on.
Librarians always review and recommend most of the articles and books which is not the case with search engines especially the free ones.

What is web 2.0

The concept of "Web 2.0" was brought about by O'Reilly and MediaLive International. Dale Dougherty, web pioneer and O'Reilly VP, noted that far from having "crashed", the web was more important than ever, with exciting new applications and sites popping up with surprising regularity. Even though there have been some disappointments in regard to this concept of web 2.0, it has witnessed a great boom since its creation with more and more people using it.


'Web 2.0' refers to the evolution of the internet from a static place, where information is simply made available, to a collaborative space where information is created, published and distributed online( Kate Watson and Chelsea Harper) http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/what-is-web-20.html


Library 2.0



Darlene Fichter from the University of Saskatchewan Canada 2006 defines Library 2.0 as (books 'n stuff + people + radical trust) x participation. What Flitcher is saying is that for information to be fluent then people should be given a chance to communicate and interact with the libraries, they should be trusted to do well.
With library 2.0 you can make
recommendations in library catalogues
tagging of books in catalogues
subscribe to RSS feed notifying patrons of new books
library news using blogs format
library patrons add, edit content to subject guide wikis on library we
IM at reference desk
download of music, books onto I pods
offering podcast of events through library website

Differences between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0
(click on the image to view)

What is Information Literacy/ Fluency

Information Fluency (IF)
University of Central Florida (UCF) defines information fluency as “the ability to perform effectively in an information-rich and technology-intensive environment.” That is: information fluency is the ability to gather, evaluate, and use information in ethical and legal ways. According to them, Information fluency encompasses and integrates three important skills: information literacy, technology literacy, and critical thinking. The ability to communicate information in appropriate and effective ways is another crucial part of IF.
We should note that Fluency means not just accessing information on the Web, but creating your own Web pages. Not just downloading MP3 music files, but creating your own digital-music compositions. Not just playing SimCity, but creating your own simulated worlds. (Resnick 2001)

According to UCF someone who is fluent in information should be able to:

Articulate the problem in a selected context.
Recognize the need for information to address the problem.
Identify the available information sources (domain.)
Iteratively collect, analyze, and assess (evaluate critically) the relevant information.
Integrate new information with pre-existing knowledge and context
Draw conclusions.
Effectively communicate results and decisions.
Follow up on actions.

The Association of Colleges and Research Libraries (ACRL) defines Information Literacy as "the set of skills needed to find, retrieve, analyze, and use information. The importance of IL is not a new issue. Students especially, need information literacy, technology literacy, and critical thinking skills to become independent and lifelong learners.

Digital Information Fluency (DIF) Model

DIF is the ability to find, evaluate and use digital information effectively, efficiently and ethically. This is because there is a great difference between digital and print information. At times we need specialized skills to be able to evaluate and use digital information properly.
href=http://21cif.imsa.edu/resources/difcore>




Information Literacy Model
The Society of College, National and University Libraries (SCONUL) in 1999 came up with the Information literacy model and Standards. (Also the British model for universities. The information skills model (see diagram) attempts to show diagrammatically the relationships between the ‘competent information user’ at the base level, and the much more advanced idea of information literacy. The ‘pillars’ show an iterative process whereby information users progress through Competency to expertise by practising the skills. Only those at the higher end will be practising the seventh skill level.


The seven pillars (Information Literacy Model)
1. The ability to recognize a need for information
2. The ability to distinguish ways in which the information 'gap' may be addressed
3. The ability to construct strategies for locating information
4. The ability to locate and access information
5. The ability to compare and evaluate information obtained from different sources
6. The ability to organise, apply and communicate information to others in ways appropriate to the situation
7. The ability to synthesize and build upon existing information, contributing to the creation of new knowledge


href=http://www.sconul.ac.uk/groups/information_literacy/seven_pillars.html>

Web 2.0 Tools

To begin with, Web 2.0 is a concept, not a product, a way of thinking, a way of working, collaborative, social, sharing, reusing, and mixing data, Mashups it is all about taking control of your information

We should note that though web 2.0 involves all sorts of technologies, it is not all about technologies but, it is more about content and information and on how these tools enhance information fluency.

We have numerous web 2.0 tools most of which aid in the promotion of IL. Some of them are: Blogs, Wikis, Myspace, Facebook, Tags, Flickr and many others. They will be discussed below and we shall look at how they are promoting or enhancing Information Literacy.

Blogs

Blogs are online diaries or journals created by individuals or companies and stored on the Internet. They generally consist of text and images appearing in chronological order with the most recent entry shown at the top of the page.
They are a powerful communication and publishing tool, create engagement and are sources of niche information. They are primary sources of information can contain some of the most current opinion on the web and are becoming a valid source to get the latest ideas about a subject.
The task of selecting from the over 72 million blogs is quite tough that is why it will require some assistance from librarians. Tools like Technorati ( http://technorati.com/) and Blogpulse (http://blogpulse.com/) can be useful aids.

Blogs can help to develop writing skills, encourage community and reflection, and thereby assist deep learning. With the support of academic staff they could be used in our teaching, with student content being collected into the teacher’s aggregator
Students doing major pieces of research could be encouraged to keep blogs as a way of recording progress, managing their time and reflection.

Blogs are a powerful tool for information but, there are some pertinent points to take note of when blogging
1. Blogger
2. Blog materials
3. Blog Influence
4. Content Depth
5. Language
6. Blog Activity
7. Blog timing
8. Blog bias
9. Blog usefulness
(Joyce Valenz llinois Mathematics and Science Academy evaluating blogs http://21cif.imsa.edu, http://21cif.imsa.edu/rkitp/assessment/v1n5/valenza1.5_blogeval.html)

Blogging librarians
UK library blogs
http://uklibraryblogs.pbwiki.com
Blogorama in internet Resources Newsletter
http://www.hw.ac.uk/libwww/im
In case you want to create a blog
www.blogger.com,
www.weebly.com,
www.blogsome.com
www.blogwebsites.net
http://www.squarespace.com/

Wikipedias or Wikis

Hawaiian word meaning 'quick' named by Ward Cunningham in 1994. It is an asynchronous collaborative tool he developed for use on the internet. They allow people to contribute to and add definitions or topics. Anyone can edit web 2.0 are offering low-cost, i.e wikis can enable users to build documentation and knowledge base systems. Wikis are flexible, many are free and an open source for information. Authors can choose to "subscribe" to a wiki page, meaning they are notified via email when anyone tries to change a page. They are free, of course, to re-visit the page and investigate what was written Also, the wikis software keeps track of every edit made and it's a simple process to revert back to a previous version of an article.

Wikis are used in libraries for: Document managementArchiving or documentationIntranetcollect best practices, good ideas, useful articles Collaboration by many (but wikis in libraries do have controlled access.)Knowledge baseProject management tool internal Staff communication They are different from blogs in that they belong to no specific organisation, anyone can edit other people's work no one owns the content, unlike in blogs where a person owns their post and organised chronologically. Examples are: http://en.wikiversity.org. http://en.wikipedia.org, http://en.wikibooks.org. Wikiversity will be discussed below.

Wikiversity
This is an open course material started in 2006 and is devoted to learning resources and learning projects for all levels, types, and styles of education from pre-school to university, including professional training and informal learning. Look at its projects Wikipedias: An encyclopedia, Wikibooks: Textbooks http://en.wikibooks.org, Wiktionary: Dictionary, Commons: Media repository - Images, sound files etc.  Wikisource: Source texts, Wikinews: News stories, Wikiquote: Quotations, Wikispecies: Directory of species

Social Networking ( Facebook, Myspace)

This include sites like MySpace and Facebook. Here, people, organisations, schools put up a public profile about themselves.

Facebook
Facebook applications are developed using the Facebook Platform (http://apps.facebook.com/login.php), which was launched on 25 May 2007. Utilizing the Facebook Developer Application, third-party programmers can create applications to suit their purposes. Applications can be created to provide a variety of services, such as displaying an RSS feed, searching an outside resource, or cataloging a person's recently seen movies, to name a few. A Facebook application is composed of several parts. In order to use a Facebook application, an individual must first add that application to his or her profile. Facebook maintains a searchable catalog of all Facebook applications.  Libraries use it as a primary function to provide a means of searching the library's catalog from a Facebook profile. Most library applications are simple catalog search applications. These applications create a box in the user's profile with a search form. When a user enters a search term, the search is executed in a new browser window that loads the library's usual online catalog.


MySpace
MySpace allows organizations to have their own profile page, which can be used by a library as a different sort of home page. MySpace has a blog as a standard feature on profile pages, which many libraries use to keep their patrons up-to-date on library events. Most libraries also provide links to key resources such as article databases and reference guides on the profile page.MySpace has not encouraged third-party development in the way that Facebook and Google have, and for that reason there is significantly less innovation on MySpace. Nevertheless, a large number of libraries have built profile pages in MySpace to integrate themselves into their patrons’ social networking. A list of most or all the libraries on MySpace can be found at URL http://groups.myspace.com/myspacelibraries.Some examples of typical library profile pages are:University of Central Florida – www.myspace.com/ucfaskalibrarian University of Kentucky – www.myspace.com/uklibraries (Andrew Harris and Susan Lessick. 2007. Libraries Get Personal: Facebook Applications, Google Gadgets, and MySpace Profiles. Vol 24 pp 30-32. http://www.emeraldinsight.com )

Slideshare

An example of how to use web 2.0 to share information to the audience. This incorporates Microsoft PowerPoint and makes it easier for the users to share and receive information or ideas and thoughts from one another. Similar links pop up and you can easily find valuable information. http://www.slideshare.net/
Podcasting
A syndicated audio content in a multimedia file meant for a play device like ipod or personal computers. Delivered online by using RSS feeds. Can be shared with others. You can subscribe to a podcast in same way as you subscribe to an email newsletter. Promotes IL in that it can be used for:
Training: Instructional informational materials.
Story telling: for children or visually impaired.
Self-Guided Walking Tours: Informational content.
Talk Shows - Industry or organizational news, investor news, sportscasts, news coverage and commentaries. http://www.podcasting-tools.com/

Tagging

Organizing digital material your own way instead of relying on pre-existing formats. Its importance in IL is seen as it makes it easy to organise information for all users of a site, encourages sharing and collaborationIt is a personal phenomenon—the primary goal is to assist an individual with resource management tasks. examples are:
Del.icio.us, a site for tagging Web bookmarks. Known as the biggest collection of bookmarks. http://delicious. COM/
Flickr, a site for sharing and tagging photographs.
Technorati is a popular site for exploring creator-tagged blog entries (among a few other things).
LibraryThing is an application of tagging to personal book collections. It can pull bibliographic information from the Library of Congress or amazon.com, saving users the time of entering this information manually.
Connotea is a tagging site that is meant for researchers and clinicians to enable them keep links articles and websites used. A way for scientists to organize scholarly reference lists.
http://techessence.info/tagging

More Web 2.0 Tools Discussed

Flickr: will help you to store, sort search and share photos in an organised way to share with friends or tell a story. For example a story about your library

Craigslist: has information on Jobs, housing, goods, services, romance, local activities, advice - just about anything really in US, Canada, Europe, Asia http://www.craigslist.org

TripAdvisor for free travel guide research on trips research website that hosts reviews from users and other information designed to help plan a vacation. http://www.tripadvisor.com

RSS feeds: give us the ability to subscribe to services, and link to other users.
Mashups: are websites or web applications which combine content from more than one source e.g,. Google Maps Mashups
Privnote: This is just where you can be able to send confidential information within your work environment to friends and family. And no hackers spying on you can read the message. It is a free web based service that allows you to send top secret notes over the internet. It's fast, easy, and requires no password or user registration at all. https://privnote.com/about/
YouTube: Moving picture sites like YouTube are encouraging production posting and sharing via the web.

Conclusion

Web 2.0 delivery mechanisms- such as blogs and RSS-significantly enhance search engine exposure through their distributed nature. The open, participatory web 2.0 environment encourages user contribution, enhancing customer loyalty and lifespan.

How Web 2.0 Tools in Medical Librarianship Support Medicine

Slide, video and photo shares can be used to show medical footages, atlases, educational clips in medical libraries, an example of atlases of skin diseases heart operations.
Wikis can be used as an open-source depository of case studies and finally a best source of evidences.

Really Simple Syndication (RSS) gives the possibility of being informed about new items added to the interested site. Librarians can utilize the RSS feeds to catch up trends and changes of desired medical specialty, and simultaneously to give the same opportunity to user community to keep themselves up-to-date.

Blogs can be considered a very useful and good source of information to find information about the trends and debates in specific field.
An example can be seen at
http://www.mayoclinic.com

From the above discussion it can be deduced that:

Web 2.0 is a system in which online users become participants rather than mere viewers.

It Allows dual communication instead of single source information.
Web 2.0 tools are fast making the internet a true democratic system, a digital democracy. Instead of getting information from once source that could have an agenda or could be bias, information is received from multiple sources, making it easier for decisions to be made.

Web 2.0 tools are helping in making the internet more personalized. Everyone has different needs, and it will allow each individual to have information that is tailored to their needs and interests.

Information can now flow freely, and people can express their ideas without fear of subjugation.

Web 2.0 has made communication a lot easier. It has become obvious that the Internet is one of the greatest communication mediums in the world. For example, Cataloguing in libraries is made easier through facebook applications as already seen above.

Problems with Web 2.0

One of the key problems with Web 2.0 is dependence. Some people over depend on the internet that if the server goes down or there is no connection they will have to wait to get their work or assignments done down.
What about students who just copy and paste information from the net.
What of those people who do not know how to evaluate information from Wikis, Blogs, etc
What about the fact that security of information in some of these free service sites is not guaranteed. Hackers can easily get into the system.
What of those people sharing information that is copyrighted? If this information is shared freely how can people generate income?

Thus;
It is for this reason that information literacy is important because someone who is information fluent will know how to give credit to the authors or owners, as such solving the problem of copyrighted material.

Those who are information fluent will be able to find, retrieve, evaluate, analyze, share and use digital information well ( see Digital Information Fluency Model above) They will be able to use web 2.0 tools to make them independent and lifelong learners.

More Web 2.0 sites
http://www.go2web20.net/ : web 2.0 directory
http://readwriteweb.com/: ReadWriteWeb is one of the world's top 10 most popular blogs according to Technorati.
http://web2.0slides.com/: Web2.0Slides is a self-running slide show of over 1,400 of the best Web2.0 sites. It's categorized by tags and sorted alphabetically.
http://www.web20workgroup.com/: a network of premium blogs on the new generation of the Web.
http://www.judybrown.com/tools.html : web 2.0 applications for potential use in education and training