What's the best online information literacy tutorial for university-level literature students?

August 25, 2008 5:52 AM

I'm looking for a good general information literacy tutorial with a focus on good search strategies, using bibliographic databases, etc. It needs to be suitable for undergraduate and postgraduate literature students.

I'm putting together a guide on finding secondary sources for university-level students beginning work on children's literature. Most of it is about specific resources, but I'd like to point to a good information literacy tutorial to reinforce the need to learn general skills, and to help those who might not have good information literacy provision in their place of study, or who are independent researchers.

I've used several information literacy models in the past, but not for this purpose - it would be great to get the perspective of the hivemind on which open-to-the-public resources are particularly good for this group.

Thanks!

posted by Webbreader to education (4 comments total)

I know my (MLIS-student) wife wrote part of a paper about TILT in her Academic Library Service course. I'd imagine the Librarians of MeFi (sounds like a medieval scholars' guild, no?) will provide many other answers, but if they somehow fail you, I'll ask the wife this evening.
posted by JMOZ at 7:40 AM on August 25, 2008

UCSC has some good online tutorials, especially the "Types of Info" and "Ethics" parts. Some of it's a bit UCSC specific. Is this the kind of thing you're looking for?
posted by jillsy_sloper at 12:59 PM on August 25, 2008

(I am an academic librarian who makes online info lit tutorials among many other things.) JMOZ is right: TILT is probably the best available. Most schools just link to TILT, re-purpose content from TILT, or base their tutorials off those. Unfortunately most of the others I know are really tied to something (a subject; the way a specific institution makes their information available) and therefore wouldn't be applicable to this subject area or independent researchers.

Places that include big lists of what you are looking for, where you can view them and decide how subject-specific or institution-specific is too specific: Library Success IL wiki ; ALA best practices for IL wiki; LOEX is a clearinghouse of instructional materials for libraries. You might also want to search Google (restrict to .edu domains) for other phrases. I've heard the things you are seeking referred to as information literacy tutorials, digital learning objects, animated tutorials, teaching guides, or interactive tutorials.
posted by holyrood at 9:05 PM on August 25, 2008

the ACRL Instruction Section PRIMO group has a database of online tutorials and selects excellent ones as site of the month.
posted by zepheria at 12:21 PM on August 27, 2008