---

An interactive information search strategy for freshmen

---

Project summary

This proposal is for funds to work with faculty to enhance a five-campus library Web site with more interactivity, to sponsor an all day faculty/librarian training session for the site and to develop information literacy skills to embed into freshman writing programs.

Principal investigator
Shaleen Barnes, Information Services Librarian
Advising Center
UMass Dartmouth
285 Old Westport Rd.
N. Dartmouth, MA 02747-2300
508-999-9299
sbarnes@umassd.edu

Project narrative

"Takin' it to the Web" is a proposal that builds on past efforts on all five UMass campus libraries and serves students, faculty, and staff by providing both a Web-based support curriculum and faculty development in actual classroom applications. For the past two years, all five UMass Libraries, with funding from the President's Office, have been working together to develop information competencies for UMass graduates, and to create a WWW site that would be both generic enough for all the campuses and specific enough to be useful to faculty and students.

In the course of our discussions these past two years, we realized that the five UMass campuses are distant and dissimilar. To complicate matters further, UMass Worcester offers nothing but graduate degrees. During our discussions, we discovered wide differences and difficulties among our campuses - every library's home page is organized differently, every campus has different OPAC software, some of us have more established library instruction programs, all have different levels of systems support. While these differences sometimes bogged down our discussions, in the final analysis they didn't matter. Students still need basic skills, we need to decide what those should be,and we need to deliver those skills in the most expeditious and pedagogically sound way.

In the first year of the Project, the committee developed information competencies for all UMass students. After a literature search and adoption of American Library Association's definition of information literacy, we adopted broad goals (based partly on some developed in Colorado) that stated that by the time they graduate all UMass students will be able to:

* recognize the need for information;

* formulate questions based on information needs;

* identify potential sources of information;

* develop and use successful search strategies;

* evaluate information

* use information.

In the second year of the Project, during Spring 1998, we developed a prototype Web site [ http://www.umassd.edu/SpecialPrograms/Info_Lit/ Username: infolit; password: 4sharing] which is running as a pilot on four of the UMass campuses. This site leads students through a search strategy that includes finding, citing, and evaluating both print and electronic resources. At UMass Dartmouth the Project has been incorporated as part of a larger general education initiative, which will be presented as a poster session at the annual UMass Instructional Technology Conference in Boxboro.

With money from the President's Office for AY1998-99, we intend to enhance the prototype Web site based on evaluations from this year's pilots, to build in more interactivity so faculty or librarians can exchange ideas with students, and to sponsor a workshop for faculty-librarian-computing professional teams from all five campuses By next year, in other words, the five-campus library site will be ready for prime time. The workshop, primarily intended for faculty teaching freshmen, will build a faculty audience by including specific ideas for incorporating the 5-campus library Web site into classes. For example, one of the pages on the Web site describes to students how to broaden or narrow a topic. With interactivity incorporated into the site, students could complete a Web-based worksheet in class that facilitates learning the subject matter

at the same time it teaches students the conceptual skills of refining a subject. Students studying the environment might begin with a broad topic such as the safety of drinking water and, working in the Web site and reading some online literature, be prompted to investigate specific aspects of drinking water safety such as the chemical, biological, or political aspects of this subject. During the course of completing their worksheet, students would learn to access both electronic and print literature about their topic.

Since its inception, the UMass Information Literacy Project was invited to write an article for an online journal, Internet Trend Watch for Libraries (Barnes, March 1998) and will also be written up in an upcoming book edited by Kathy Spitzer to be published by the ERIC Clearinghouse on Information Resources at Syracuse University.

Simultaneous with its participation in the UMass Information Literacy Project, UMass Dartmouth has been developing an information and computer literacy component for all freshmen enrolled in ENL101, Critical Writing and Reading I. This proposal for an interactive information search strategy for freshmen merges the efforts of the UMass Information Literacy Project and the General Education initiatives at UMass Dartmouth by providing faculty with an additional resource for teaching information literacy. This Spring, freshmen enrolled in a pilot information and computer literacy initiative will be testing the UMass Information Literacy web site when they write an argumentative paper at the end of this semester.

In discussions surrounding information literacy, librarians have expressed concern that information literacy is becoming confused with and sometimes even subsumed by computer literacy. . . that would be fine if you could push f6 to learn how to think. This proposal supplements computer literacy skills such as spread sheets and word processing with electronic access to information search strategies (information literacy skills) that build on and enhance traditional library instruction. Information literacy competencies cross traditional disciplines, promote communication between campuses and advance an understanding of information technology.

While librarians and academic computing personnel have made some commendable efforts at teaching information literacy, new technologies are developing at such an enormous speed it is nearly impossible to keep up. Librarians, academic computing personnel, and teaching faculty rarely have a chance to discuss, share, and practice pedagogy regarding these issues. This will provide that opportunity.

Grant principal investigator and project participants

Shaleen Barnes, Principal Investigator, has chaired the UMass Information Literacy Project for two years and has overseen the drafting of the information competencies and the development of the Web site. She is currently organizing UMass Dartmouth's information and computer literacy project in all sections of the University's Critical Reading and Writing I and II courses as part of a larger general education initiative on the campus.

Other project participants include
Jill Ausel, Instructional Services Librarian
UMass Amherst
ausel@library.umass.edu

Diana Azevedo-Carns
User Support Specialist
Computing & Information Technology Services
UMass Dartmouth
dcarns@umassd.edu

Peggy Dias, Director
Educational Technology & Support Services
Computing & Information Technology Services
UMass Dartmouth
mdias@umassd.edu

Gael Evans, Reference Librarian
UMass Medical Center
gevans@library.ummed.edu

Ron Karr, Reference librarian
UMass Lowell
Ronald_Karr@uml.edu

Rachel Lewellen, Digital Initiatives and Planning Librarian
UMass Amherst
rlewellen@library.umass.edu

Joyce Merriam, Head, Reference Department
UMass Amherst
joyce.merriam@library.umass.edu

Frances Schlesinger, Reference Librarian
UMass Boston
frances@delphinus.lib.umb.edu

Peg Spinner, Reference Librarian
UMass Medical Center
pspinner@library.ummed.edu