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The author's review of the readership statistics for his own papers has some implications for both open access and information literacy instruction.

The new ACRL Framework for Information Literacy gives a higher priority to understanding how knowledge is produced and shared. This article discusses ways that could play out in the design of library services. How could it affect your course and curriculum design?

Terrific podcast interview with Bryan Alexander, looking largely at digital literacies and students as creators. Bryan will give a workshop on digital storytelling at Kenyon this summer; contact Joe Murphy for details.

"The authors of the article suggest one fairly simple but meaningful strategy. Stop talking about "finding sources." Frame the work as learning about something."

This article makes a smart distinction between students' abilities to accomplish a task online (which may be overstated) and their framework for critically evaluating that task, and the tool they use.

The author uses a syllabus so detailed that it can function like a textbook, and offers specific tips on how she uses the syllabus every day. This is an intriguing way of making sure the syllabus is not just a contract read on the first day and referred to only when people break it. I was particularly taken with the approach Dr. Crossman uses to make students actually do the "recommended" reading.

"The larger the island of knowledge grows, the longer the shoreline - where knowledge meets ignorance - extends." Some interesting ideas about teaching the limits of our knowledge, as well as established facts and methods.

A good research or critical thinking assignment teaches students to refine their questions as they gather and review evidence. Do we give enough attention to the process of generating those first introductory-level questions?

Barbara Fister tells the story of a first-year seminar studying Golden Gate Park which actually presented their early research in the park. Lots of neat ideas here as we consider teaching and learning with a sense of place.

The Digital Public Library of America is recruiting educators interested in curating digitized primary sources and writing teachers' guides to using those sources from grade school into college.

This report is about a "nationally representative" survey which finds that educational attainment is one of the best predictors of high technology and information literacy skills - so I would assume that the results aren't quite as dire for those Millennials who go to college. That said, it's a good reminder that many so-called "digital natives" are not (yet) sophisticated creators and managers of information with their devices. I also want to point out that the kinds of information management tasks tested are perfectly relevant to research in the humanities, social sciences, and fine arts, not just STEM as the think tank suggests.

While written for a K-12 audience, the principles apply very well for a college teacher interested in an inquiry-based course. The sooner you talk to your librarian about possible resources and research strategies for your students, the better!

"We are very good at helping people to find the articles they are looking for and can describe. But the next big thing we would like to do is to get you the articles that you need, but that you don't know to search for. Can we make serendipity easier? "

A study in the Journal of Experimental Psychology "found that after using a search engine, people were more confident in their ability to explain an unrelated topic." This poses an interesting question for the lit review component of research assignments - how do they affect students' self-perception of learning? What do you do to help students accurately assess their own ability to answer questions? Hat tip to Simon Garcia for the link.

By building an open, multi-disciplinary collection of SMART recipes (Simple, Modular, Assessable, Reproducible,and Tested) that could be integrated into any curriculum, we intend to bring information literacy to the forefront of liberal arts education.

An example assignment from the HASTAC Pedagogy Project suggests having students submit their bibliographies in process to peer review. Getting students to review one another's sources can help them think about their own, and breaking out the research step fights the tendency to write the whole paper at the last minute. (A similar collaborative feature is available in RefWorks, a web-based citation manager available through Kenyon LBIS.)

A short open access textbook which presents main concepts of various kinds of information literacy to students. It includes case studies and hands-on exercises.

"Both digital writing and information literacy call attention to today's interactive and multimodal information environments, which have both expanded and complicated the ways people use, create, and share information. As both composition instructors and librarians expand our conceptions of writing and of research, we may find that rhetoric becomes all the more essential for situating information literacy and writing."

Can "information literacy" exist as a skill outside of "domain knowledge"? And if it does, what does it look like?

How can library research assignments help students learn to guard against accepting only the information which confirms their beliefs?