Originally published in SHIPMATE, the Naval Academy's alumni magazine, May 1998, under the title "Library Research as Information Literacy."

Introduction

As the United States becomes an increasingly information-based society, colleges are recognizing that the ability to locate and use recorded information is becoming ever more important for their students' success both in school and after graduation.⁽¹⁾ Wayne State University in Detroit, for example, has just opened its new, 300,000 square-foot Undergraduate Library and the University has announced that in this Library, with its 700 computer workstations as well as more traditional books and journals in paper format, "undergraduate students will have the opportunity to master the skills necessary for academic success at the University and for success as information literate citizens of the twenty-first century."⁽²⁾

An emphasis on success after graduation as well as during one's student years is at least as pertinent when applied to students at our service academies. In recent months I have heard both Dr. Miller, the Academic Dean & Provost, and RADM Roughead, the Commandant, observe that the Academy's graduates are going to be teachers throughout their careers in the naval service. As teachers, it seems clear to me, Navy and Marine Corps officers will themselves need to be information-literate, and they will need to help others become more so as well. In addition, it is important that "life-long" learning be just that, continuing after one's career in the naval service has ended. The USNA mission statement refers both to "a career of naval service" and also to "future development in mind and character to assume the highest responsibilities of command, citizenship, and government."

Components of Information Literacy

What is "information literacy?" The following list of the relevant skills comprising it comes from Oberlin College (a school well known for the high proportion of its graduates who go on to earn a Ph.D. in the sciences):

a. Understand how information is produced, disseminated, and organized.

Students must be aware of the differences among primary, secondary, and tertiary literature as well as the differences between popular and peer-reviewed literature. To be able to get information once they know where it is located, they must be familiar with the various paper and electronic formats used to store information.

b. Know how to formulate and refine questions.

c. Know how to access information, including use of the Internet and the World Wide Web.

d. Know how to evaluate information.

With the rapid increase of information that is available, particularly via the Internet, it is more important than ever that students be able to evaluate the quality of the information they find and its appropriateness to the task at hand. Students need to learn how to ask probing questions about the information they encounter -- questions concerning, for example, the place, context and time in which the information was produced, the reliability and potential biases of the original source of the information, and whether the information has been reviewed by trustworthy referees.

e. Understand how to make use of information.

Students must also be proficient in the final step of the research process, and know how to synthesize and reconcile differences in information obtained from varying and sometimes conflicting sources.⁽³⁾

Middle States Association Perspective

The Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools, the Naval Academy's regional accrediting body, has also underscored the importance of information literacy in its requirements. The following statement is excerpted from a 1994 Middle States document:

"Each institution should foster optimal use of its learning resources through strategies designed to help students develop information literacy -- the ability to locate, evaluate, and use information in order to become independent learners. It should encourage the use of a wide range of non-classroom resources for teaching and learning. It is essential to have an active and continuing program of library orientation and instruction in accessing information, developed collaboratively and supported actively by faculty, librarians, academic deans, and other information providers."⁽⁴⁾

Information Literacy and Computer Literacy

With the growing prevalence of electronic information and data, information literacy is increasingly dependent upon computer literacy. Yet these two sets of skills and understandings are not the same. Computer literacy has many benefits that result from our enhanced technical competence. But in and of itself computer literacy will not tell the student, professor, or naval officer what information to seek out, or how to find it; how to formulate questions; or how to evaluate and use the information that is found. Indeed, the attractiveness and omnipresence of all sorts of information on the World Wide Web poses the danger, already being observed by faculty at the Naval Academy and elsewhere, that students will uncritically use whatever information is most convenient rather than authoritative, high-quality sources. Students sometimes perceive no difference between another student's paper "published" on the Web and a scholarly journal article available just a few clicks away via the same computer. Consequently, the need for information literacy is even greater in an environment marked by the ubiquity of personal computers and electronic information than it was during the time when the print-on-paper medium held a virtual monopoly.

Information Literacy at the Naval Academy

For quite a few years, librarians at USNA have worked with the faculty to teach bibliographic instruction sessions for courses, introducing students to the paper and electronic resources they need to accomplish their work; during the past five years the number of such sessions has ranged between 163 and 198 annually. In 1995 the Middle States visiting team recommended that the Library extend its instruction program, systematically, to incorporate teaching midshipmen how to find information efficiently and effectively on the Internet. Responding affirmatively to this recommendation required a significant investment of computer equipment. Working together, the Computer Services Division and the Library outfitted two electronic classrooms in Nimitz with computer workstations and other equipment.

Through additional collaboration between the Political Science Department and the Library all plebes now receive information literacy instruction in FP130, the introductory American Government course. There librarians not only introduce students to particular resources, such as Innopac, the Library's online catalog, but through hands-on practice as well as demonstrations, the plebes also learn such things as how to identify, analyze, and evaluate sources; how to distinguish between popular magazines and scholarly journals; and how to find high-quality Internet sites, partly with the help of Britannica Online's guide to thousands of such sites in all subject areas. Additional instruction occurs in other core and majors classes.

The librarians conduct evaluations of the information literacy component of FP130, and on the basis of feedback from students and faculty, as well as from our own observations, we can tell that our work in this area is making a difference. As part of their FP130 course, the plebes are required to complete a library exercise, and representative is one plebe's comment on his worksheet: "I did not realize there was so much information until I became lost in it!!! Thanks for your help."

We have also begun giving seminars for faculty on the new electronic resources available in their subject areas. Next year we expect to do more of this, and also to work systematically with the academic departments, to ensure that students in all majors receive what the faculty considers to be an appropriate level of information literacy for majors in each discipline.

Conclusion

We should not allow the recent growth of electronic information technologies to obscure the fact that they will continue to coexist with print-on-paper for the foreseeable future. The scholarly book and, to a lesser extent perhaps, the scholarly journal will continue to be published in and stored on paper for many years to come, with the consequence that paper library collections--including that of the Nimitz Library--will continue to grow. (Readers who are dubious, or just otherwise interested, may wish to consult Walt Crawford's "Paper Persists: Why Physical Library Collections Still Matter," in a recent issue of Online magazine.⁽⁵⁾) Hence the teaching of information literacy at Nimitz, and indeed at virtually all academic libraries, will continue to include elements from both the paper and electronic worlds. Our students and graduates will need to be not only conversant with, but adept in, both environments.

Interested readers are most welcome to browse around the Nimitz Library's Home Page, and to examine in depth any resources there that are accessible to users from outside the Naval Academy. (Because of licensing arrangements with publishers, some items are available only from computers at the Academy.) You can find us by coming to http://www.usna.edu/Library.

1. General Faculty Library Committee, Information Literacy and the Oberlin Education ([Oberlin, OH] September 20, 1996).

2. The Wayne State University Undergraduate Library for 21^st Century Students [Detroit, Michigan, n.d.].

3. Information Literacy and the Oberlin Education.

4. Commission on Higher Education, Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools, Characteristics of Excellence in Higher Education: Standards for Accreditation (Philadelphia, PA, 1994), 15-16.

5. January--February, 1998, 42-48.