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Information Literacy for Junior Year Writing

By Isabel Espinal, Librarian for Information Literacy, UMass Amherst

The What and Why of Information Literacy

Information literacy is a crucial set of abilities for successful academic and professional writing. Information literacy encompasses the ability to recognize when information is needed and how to locate, evaluate, and effectively use information in writing and other contexts.

There are various reasons for including library instruction/information literacy in Junior Year Writing:

1. Good writing is always informed by the literature of the field and by published evidence.

2. Students need to be introduced to how real practitioners and scholars in their chosen fields write – both how they write and what they write about.

Students need to learn how to access and make effective use of this vast literature. They need to become familiar with the indexing databases and reference sources and search strategies in their majors and for their future professions.

The How: Work With the Librarian Assigned to Your Department

The Library has subject specialist librarians for each department who can help you teach information literacy to your students. To find your Subject Specialist, see www.library.umass.edu/reference/liaisons.html . 

Your department liaison librarian can:

• Work with you to help you design assignments that teach students to use appropriate sources for their disciplines and future professions, and that help them learn research skills and tools in their fields of study.

• Conduct a library instruction session during either a lecture or discussion portion of your class. Library subject specialists offer subject-specific instructional sessions to assist students in gathering high-quality resources to complete academic assignments.  Library classrooms allow for hands-on learning.

• Arrange for you to use a library classroom to conduct your own Junior Year Writing research session.

• Help you provide your students with access to subject-specific library resources.

• Work with you on creating a web page research guide specifically for students in your Junior Year Writing classes, with links to the most useful resources for your subject, discipline or course. For a list of existing Subject Guides see www.library.umass.edu/subject/.

• Integrate information literacy into your SPARK site,  or course web page, or blog.

• Help you develop links to catalog searches, online journals and full-text journal articles from a wide range of sources.

Some Ways to Incorporate Information Literacy into Junior Year Writing Classes

• Work with your subject librarian. See above.

• Assign an annotated bibliography as a writing assignment. Make sure to be specific about what should be included and give students an opportunity to comment critically on the information sources. Encourage students to use a citation manager like RefWorks, available on the library webpage. For collaborative work or for sharing of bibliographies, consider RefShare, a feature within RefWorks.

• Assign a research log or a database searching log where students articulate the search and evaluation process.

• Have students do searches on the same topic, using different information sources or indexes and write a comparison of the results. For example, they can compare the results from a general scholarly database like Academic Search Premier, a discipline-specific database like CINHAL, PsychInfo or Anthropology Plus, a current events database like Lexis-Nexis, Google, or Google Scholar.This assignment can also help them learn about writing by discerning different types of writing for different audiences.

Special Library Resources Available to Assist Student and Faculty with Research in Junior Year Writing

• Department Liaison Librarians Find out who your librarian is and start working together to promote information literacy for your Junior Year Writing students. http://www.library.umass.edu/reference/liaisons.html 

• Subject Research Guides These guides are tailored to specific majors, subjects, and sometimes even courses. http://www.library.umass.edu/subject/

• RefWorks Bibliography Manager RefWorks collects, stores, and organizes citations from books, articles, web sites, and other sources. It automatically converts citations into properly formatted bibliographies in a multitude of styles appropriate for every major. The RefShare feature lets students and faculty share work.  http://www.library.umass.edu/reference/refworks/

• Plagiarism Prevention and Detection Services The UMass Amherst Library partners with other campus offices to offer online plagiarism detection services for faculty support and student education. http://www.library.umass.edu/tools/plagiarism/

• Information Literacy and Library Instruction This webpage has other resources you can use in teaching. http://www.library.umass.edu/instruction/ 

• Reference and Research Assistance Located in the Learning Commons and available anywhere, 24/7 through chat and IM, librarians help and teach students and faculty  one-on-one. We welcome basic and complex questions! Encourage students to use the “Ask  a Librarian Services” listed at http://www.library.umass.edu/ask/

 

Updated September 3, 2008

 

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