This report presents data from 55 colleges and universities, predominantly in North America, about their use of open access information literacy tutorials, vendor-supplied tutorials, and other information literacy tutorials developed by organizations other than the end users themselves. In addition, the study looks at how libraries find tutorials on YouTube, Vimeo, LibGuides, SlideShare and other sources, and how the tutorials of other libraries influence the development of a library’s own tutorials. Survey participants also provide the names of universities and other organizations whose info literacy tutorials they use or find influential or helpful in their own efforts, often pinpointing particular urls. Survey participants point to their favorite sources on plagiarism, Boolean logic and searching, data curation, citation software, evaluating information sources, Microsoft Office, Google Scholar, digital repositories and other pertinent areas of interest. Data is broken out separately by college type, size, tuition, and other variables.
The report also gives precise data on the percentage of tutorials offered that are developed by the library itself, come from other libraries, from vendors, or other sources.
Just a few of this 51-page report’s main findings are that:
· Some of the most admired sources of information literacy tutorials about evaluating information sources and Boolean logic and search strategies were: California State University San Bernadino, MIT, Western University, North Carolina State University, and James Madison University, among others.
· Use of Vimeo as a source for info literacy instruction was greatest among colleges in the lower tuition ranges and especially in community colleges, of which nearly 44% had used videos found on Vimeo in information literacy instruction.
· The libraries sampled developed a mean of 50.48% of the tutorials that they use by themselves.