Information Literacy: Information Literacy Framework: FY Student Perspective

The following are some typical areas where first-year students may lack experience. This is not a critique of incoming students, but rather a reflection of the shared responsibility we have in guiding them toward effective research practices.

1. Limited Exposure to Scholarly Writing-Many students are unfamiliar with the norms and expectations of academic writing. As a result, they often:

• Don’t recognize common scholarly formats such as journal articles, edited collections, and academic books.
• Struggle to distinguish between sources intended for general audiences and those written for academic purposes.
• Don’t yet understand that citations are part of a broader scholarly dialogue, and they rarely have experience locating cited works—aside from those found in Wikipedia.
• Are unsure how to navigate academic texts using tools like tables of contents, indexes, and abstracts.

2. Unfamiliarity with Academic Libraries and Research Tools- Students often have limited experience with the resources and systems used in academic libraries. For example, they may:

• Not know how to use reference materials to help refine research topics or generate search terms.
• Be unfamiliar with the Library of Congress classification system, making it difficult to locate physical materials.
• Feel reluctant to approach reference librarians for help, whether in person or via email.
• Default to using Google or Google Scholar for research, often overlooking library databases and missing key academic sources.
• Be unaware of how interlibrary loan works—or that it’s free to use.

Students often need structured guidance to build confidence and competence in key areas of the research process. Many first-year students:

• Struggle to generate and refine effective search terms, especially for unfamiliar topics.
• Have difficulty evaluating and selecting the most relevant sources from search results.
• Are unfamiliar with the strategy of skimming a source to quickly assess its usefulness.
• May resist learning new research methods, believing they can always find something online.
• Often feel embarrassed to admit confusion, assuming that everyone else already understands how research works.

In addition, students frequently:

• Rely on the same database they’ve used before, even if it’s not the most appropriate for the subject.
• Avoid retrieving physical materials, whether books on the shelves or print versions of articles, even when they’ve found them online.
• Focus on meeting a required number of sources rather than identifying the most insightful or relevant ones.
• Select sources that confirm their initial thesis, rather than engaging with the broader scholarly conversation and drawing informed conclusions.
• Choose the first few sources that appear in search results, regardless of quality or relevance.

By helping students build these foundational skills early in their academic journey, we empower them to conduct more thoughtful, effective, and independent research throughout college and beyond.