Teaching of Intellectual Property As Part of Information Literacy: Still a Challenge

One of the challenges facing librarians in their information literacy classes is how to teach students to identify credible sources of information and comply with guidelines applicable to intellectual property. This is no easy task when one takes into account of how information is being promulgated in our world today. Web 2.0 and public domain applications provide the means for everyone to exercise their right to express their original thoughts in a variety of formats and with few restraints. The Internet provides a haven for posting user-generated content. Many college students know this and have the savvy for using it to find information for their research assignments. Their efforts are enhanced by using powerful and easy to use search engines such as Google. Their search results are plentiful and varied. In addition, they are held back by very few use restrictions. This easily leads to students overlooking the need to verify whether their sources are credible or not. In this paper I am proposing to present the following: -what we have learned from observing how students seek and use information -reasons for teaching about intellectual property as part of information literacy -examples of techniques used by other libraries for teaching about intellectual property -challenges we have identified in addressing the boundaries of intellectual property -initial steps we have begun to take to revamp our approach to teaching information literacy -plans for additional steps we plan to tak