Information Literacy Skills for First-Year Speaking Courses

Information Literacy Skill: Improve student's ability to use the library catalog.
 

Assignment: Within the context of one of their speeches, students will turn in an annotated bibliography of at least two catalog sources to be used in their speech.

The online tutorial for FS courses is titled "Research in Databases" and is linked off the Library website.

The table below reflects current goals and behaviors.   This table is under revision in academic year, 2011-2012.  Class practice may reflect anticipated changes.

                                                                                                   
 

  Teaching Goal  

  		 

  Outcome Behavior  

 

Define Catalog  

Students will understand what is found in a library catalog, particularly BearCat  

Overview of Classification Systems  

Students will understand that materials are physically organized for ease of retrieval, that the Library of Congress scheme is by subject, and that it is useful for browsing.

Call numbers and how to find items on the shelf  

Students will be able to retrieve an item from the shelf given the location and call number  

Browsing strategies  

Students will be able to browse the reference and circulating collection by subject areas.  

Reference collection utilization  

Students will understand the role of reference materials in the research process.  

Identify a variety of formats (books, videos, cds,…) and relate them to content.  

Students will understand that appropriate content may be available in different formats (e.g. microform, electronic print).  Students will understand that there are a variety of print formats (book, articles) which contain a variety of information types.

Read a catalog record  

 

Students will be able to interpret the field tags in a catalog record to determine:  

 
  •   Author  
  •   Title  
  •   Date(s)  
  •   publisher  
  •   controlled vocabulary  
  •   Library location  
  •   Call number  
  •   Circulation Status (to see if it is checked out)  
 

  Explain citation / reference / bibliography entry  

Students will understand that 1) citations contain standardized common elements that enable the user to precisely identify sources, and 2) that each format (e.g. book, article, DVD, video) has a particular set of elements needed for identifying/locating an item of that format.

  Interlibrary Loan (ILL)  

Students will understand that they have access to materials in other libraries and when it is appropriate to use this service.

  General physical layout of the library  

  Students will be able to identify and locate the various collections and services.  

  Explain topic analysis  

Students will be able to craft a basic research question from a broad initial topic and derive search vocabulary and a search strategy from it.

  Specific searches (author, title, subject, and keyword)  

  Students will be able to perform basic author, title, subject and keyword searches as appropriate.