2. The Vision & Mission
• Vision: information literacy empowers
• Develop research skills & rock SHC
• You can determine what & how much information is
required, access it efficiently & effectively, evaluate it
critically & competently, & use it accurately & legally
(ACRL standards)
• Mission: graduation & dream job
• With your information literacy awesomeness, you
effectively evaluate information & use it to better your
future
3. The Goals: KSDs
• Knowledge is a mastery of facts, range of information in
subject matter area
• grades
• Skill is proficiency or competence in given area
• competencies, certifications
• Disposition, or attitude means demonstrated
commitment to stick with it
• graduating
4. The Team: you & the library
People:
•Boise Campus
• Email: rachel.hollis@stevenshenager.edu
• Phone: 383-4540, x1814
•Nampa Satellite
• Email: heather.lowe@stevenshenager.edu
• Phone: 467-0501, x1811
Physical, the SHC library inventory
• The catalog. There are about 2300 books, periodical
titles, VHS & DVDs at the three Idaho locations
Electronic, the databases
• LiLI & ProQuest
5. Library Databases
• SHC ProQuest has more than 4,200 titles:
• http://search.proquest.com/
• LiLI is a cohort of databases courtesy the Idaho
Commission for Libraries
• http://lili.org/
• EBSCOhost is the main resource
• LiLI also has:
• Gale Virtual Reference Library
• LearningExpress Library
• Idaho Career Information System
• Links to research materials, something to read, health information &
more
6. The Risks
• Plagiarism: cite your sources
• There’s a lot of information out there
• Credible information is out there, the library
catalogs & databases make is much easier to find
• Select peer-reviewed resources, otherwise look for
bias
• Use the CRAAP method
• Be sure to cite your sources & avoid plagiarism
Editor's Notes
FWIW, Libraries are held to standards; ACRL has 5 standards & 22 performance indicators for information literacy. Their standards state that you can determine what & how much information is required, access it efficiently & effectively, evaluate it critically & competently, & use it accurately & legally (http://www.ala.org/acrl/standards/informationliteracycompetency). While here, you’ll have to do boring research for dumb papers for your classes, & I feel for you. But while you’re doing this you'll be perfecting your research skills & these same skills will benefit you throughout the rest of your life. Once you graduate with your awesome knowledge, you can use your mad research skills to your benefit. Consider these real differences: “ I want to join the military because I saw a video on YouTube.” –my friend Michelle, her choice is based on a recruitment video. “ I want to live in New Mexico because I like the mystery writer Tony Hillman's books.” -my mom, her choice is based on novels with fictitious characters who live on fictitious reservations. “ I want to get a Motorola Droid because it is rated highly by several rating sources & is within my price range.” –me, BTW Consumer Reports rates the Droid X slightly higher but is $50 more & its voice quality is not as good. I want you all to make fantastic decisions based on sound information & to be able to back-up your decisions with that information whether it be shopping for the best cell phone or car, moving to an neighborhood with a better school district, or researching the company that just offered you an almost too-good-to-be-true job offer to see if the offer is from Satan.
Have goals aligned to KSAs. Knowledge is a mastery of facts, range of information in subject matter area. Knowledge is applied directly to the performance of a function. The more knowledge, the better the grades. Skills is proficiency or competence in given area. Skills can be readily measured by a performance test where quantity & quality of performance are tested, usually with a time limit. Examples are the skill of operating a machine, or using a software. Abilities means demonstrated performance to use knowledge & skills when needed. Ability refers to the power to perform an observable activity at any time. This means that abilities have been seen through activities or behaviors. An example is the ability to plan & organize. Abilities are different from aptitudes; aptitudes are only the potential for performing the activity. Knowledge at SHC is good grades Skills is demonstrated by competencies & certifications Disposition is shown by graduating
The success team is made up of you & the library. Yes, the library is like any other library: books are everywhere, & they checkout & are expected back in a timely manner… or about two weeks. These people are here to help you & if they don’t know, they’ll find you someone who does know! The catalog is a collection of mostly print resources. Remember to allow several days for titles you’d like to use to get to you: they could be in Idaho Falls, checked out or lost. Do not use the catalog if your paper is due the next day! The databases contain electronic information mostly as articles for magazines & journals. We’ll check out all of the sites I reference. Remember to bookmark/favorite them.
Catalogs & databases have their own specialized language. Searches are better using fewer words & the language of the databases when possible. My databases instructor told our class that if you know how to use one database, you know how to use nearly all of them. ProQuest is a good database to use when you are taking non-major classes because it is not gigantic like LiLI. Once you get to classes in your major, I recommend that you use LiLI as it has the subject-specific databases that you’ll need. ProQuest has helpers such as Thesaurus, Browse Topics, drop-down menus to specific sets of categories. LiLI has helpers in the form of Subjects & each of the menu items links to that database's specialized language. Cleaver use of Boolean operators (AND, OR, & NOT), wild cards (* & ?) & phrase searches (“”) will help your research. These also work with other search engines such as Yahoo, Bing & Google. Practice & use improve your search skills; I’ve become seriously better in the few years that I’ve been helping folks with research.
Remember to use quotation marks when quoting directly as well as to cite sources in-text & on your reference page. If you learned something you did not know before, cite the source; you cannot use ideas as your own, even if unintentional. Poor citation, or no citation - also known as plagiarism - is serious stuff & is grounds for dismissal from Stevens-Henager and is not tolerated in professional settings. There’s a bunch of information available now & finding & using good information can be difficult. The internet has made it possible for everyone & their cat to have a website, blog or whatever. The librarian at Boise High estimates that 90% of what is on the internet is crap & I think she’s correct. “Twenty years ago we had challenges helping kids find enough information. Now we have the opposite problem. There's plenty of information out there. Now it’s a matter of training students to think critically about what they find. Because 90 percent of what they find on the Internet is garbage.” - Boise High librarian Pat St. Tourangeau A teacher in Marsing assigned her class a research project & told them not top use Wikipedia. Then she changed all of the Wikipedia articles in the research project to say ridiculous things like that Christopher Columbus discovered peanut butter; anyone saying the same was busted. I want you all to do terrific research, determine if the source is credible & to be able to reference your research. Then I want you to use these mad skills you’ve developed at SHC to rock your world.
