The study presents data from 1,100 US full-time students at 4-year colleges about their experiences with academic library information literacy programs. The study presents detailed data on awareness of info literacy training, evaluation of such training, perceived need for such training, and much more. The report provides specific data on the percentage of students that use information literacy tutorials, as well as support, or lack thereof, for required courses in information literacy. In an open-ended question, survey participants relate those areas of information literacy and library proficiency about which they would like to know more.
Data in the report is presented in the aggregate and then broken out separately for sixteen different variables including but not limited to: college grades, gender, income level, year of college standing, SAT/ACT scores, regional origin, age, sexual orientation, race & ethnicity, college major and other personal variables, and by Carnegie class, enrollment size and public/private status of the survey participants institutions of higher education.
Just a few of the 85-page report’s many findings are that:
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66.06% of students surveyed received instruction on how to use their college’s library. Data differed significantly by Carnegie Classification; 75.68% of students at BA institutions received library instruction compared to 51.91% at Doctoral Universities with the Highest Research Activity.
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Students’ academic performance and test scores were significant factors correlating with perceived inability to use library databases effectively; only 6.94% of students with a C or C+ average and 6.33% of those who received a 17-19 ACT or 900-1050 SAT scores rated their ability in this area as highly competent.
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Older students and those raised abroad were significantly more likely than their younger or domestically raised peers to feel that their college should require an information literacy course for graduation.