By Beth Black and Raymond Pun

Research question formation and background research are important parts of the process that set students up for success in seeing their assignments to completion. Credo Online Reference Service is a good tool for giving students practice with these fundamental steps during library instruction sessions. This 2-part series will describe an FYE workshop Beth designed and offered at Ohio State University for honors students. It can be easily adapted to class visits to courses in which students will have a research assignment. The workshop is part of the common read program, and is titled “What’s in a Question? Research Questions and [common read title]”. Make sure students have access to computers or tablets so they can use Credo during the session.

By A.J. Muhammad and Raymond Pun

Today there are opportunities to integrate information literacy into interdisciplinary fields such as Ethnic Studies including African American Studies. According to the Encyclopedia of the World of Sociology, “African American Studies is an academic discipline that focuses on the cultural, political, economic, religious, and social development of black Americans. First established in American universities in the late 1960s, African American Studies Departments were, in part, the product of student protests and the social climate created by the Civil Rights movement and the Black Power movement.” In this interview, Librarian A.J. Muhammad shares his experiences incorporating research and information literacy skills into his work at The New York Public Library’s Schomburg Center For Research Black Culture.

Particularly if you’re in a public library, the material you use to teach information literacy to patrons has to work for those with different IL levels and needs. The following are examples of materials you can use to check different age-level boxes. Remember too that other items you find can often be tweaked to suit your patron population; part of the skill involved in IL work is adapting the resources you find to match local needs.

Looking to up your library's social media game? One of the best ways to engage followers to is to provide a consistent stream of fun/useful content. Understanding that libraries don't always have the time to generate all of the content they'd like, we're here to help! 

By Grace Liu and Raymond Pun

Supporting business and economic research can be quite challenging, but also fascinating. From globalization data to local company profiles, information literacy instruction can be integrated into business and economic research. In this interview, librarian Grace Liu shares her thoughts on teaching information literacy in these fields at the University of Maine, and how she utilizes the ACRL Framework and its resources to support her teaching practices and lesson plans.

Credo has developed a new LibGuide that can help introduce our Instruct product to your faculty. The guide discusses why information literacy is important and how Instruct can help improve student performance without taking away valuable class time. Please feel free to copy our LibGuide and customize it—the spots where you should add links to your institution’s subscription are highlighted in red.

By Jennifer Shimada and Raymond Pun

There has been a long practice in teaching information literacy in various areas of education studies such as P-12 focus, counseling, special education, curriculum studies, educational leadership and policy, and so forth. In addition, many graduate programs in education are offered remotely, where students and faculty are part of a distance learning community. How can librarians support graduate studies in education and distance services? In this interview, Librarian Jennifer Shimada shares some tips and resources from her role supporting online learning programs and instructional services at Relay Graduate School of Education.

This blog series provides easy, free access to open web resources and content that support affordable learning opportunities. A wide variety of resources published by government entities, think tanks, and more are curated to demonstrate what may be relatively unknown or ‘buried’ in the internet. Resources reflect issues happening today for the use of librarians, students, and all audiences.

By John Jackson and Raymond Pun

In this FYE Spotlight Series, we’ve spoken to many academic librarians from community colleges to major universities to hear more about their work in supporting the FYE community. In this interview, librarian John Jackson from Loyola Marymount University Library shares his experiences in collaborating and designing outreach programs for first year students. John also discusses the importance of libraries in connecting with first year students as soon as they start.

Information literacy librarians (correctly) teach students to evaluate the websites they use for papers and other academic purposes by looking at features such as the site’s domain, its appearance, who the author is, etc. These are necessary steps, but there are increasing calls for evaluation to be broader. Mike Caulfield’s Web Literacy for Student Fact Checkers, for example, encourages “lateral reading,” an approach that involves reading “about” a website or other source in addition to reading and analyzing the source itself. Lateral reading of a website involves a short scan of the site followed by researching its ownership and what other sources say the site to help decide whether the information there can be trusted or not.