The 195 page exhaustive study presents data from 53 North American colleges and universities about their information literacy efforts. The study helps its readers to answer questions such as: which academic departments are most supportive of information literacy efforts? How much support is college administration giving to information literacy efforts? What new technologies are being used in information literacy and with what impact? How do information literacy instructors evaluate the skill level of their students in various information literacy areas? How confident are they in their knowledge of plagiarism, their use of Boolean search terms, their use of eBook collections or their mastery of citation software? What kind of information literacy tests are being given to college freshmen and in what areas? What new and emerging library technologies are being included in information literacy training? And much more.
This edition especially focuses on the issue of evaluation of students and evaluation of information literacy efforts.
Just a few of the study’s many findings are that:
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More than 77% of those libraries participating do not include coverage of use class management systems in its standard information literacy training.
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Only 7.55% of those libraries responding required an information or computer literacy test for graduation.
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23.53% of private college libraries administered to college faculty a library education services evaluation form to assess faculty satisfaction with library assistance to faculty.
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30.77% of colleges with an enrollment of greater than 13,000 offered classes in the Zotero citation program.
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Survey participants estimated that the number of students served through information literacy classes and presentations increased by a mean of 7% from the fall semester of the 2014-15 academic year to the fall semester of the 2015-16 academic year.