Developing Information Literacy Skills Early in an Undergraduate Curriculum

Several core competencies related to information literacy have been identified by the Association of College and Research Libraries. Students must learn to gather relevant information and communicate their findings effectively. The collaborative activity described here, which could easily be adapted for other disciplines, introduces first-semester freshmen to the standards of professional scientific writing, the different forms of publication, search strategies to effectively find information using a relevant database, and plagiarism. Analysis of our pre- and post-activity assessment demonstrates that students gain both confidence and knowledge on several important skills as a result of this activity. Providing content-relevant information literacy experience lays the foundation for students to be successful consumers of information