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A multi-disciplinary team of reviewers from journalism, medicine, health services research and public health assesses the quality of the stories using a standardized rating system. Stories are graded and critiques are published on this website.

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Information Literacy from the Trenches: How Do Humanities and Social Science Majors Conduct Academic Research? (PDF; 697 KB)

This article examines the ways in which students majoring in humanities and social sciences conceptualize and operationalize course-related research. Findings are presented from an information-seeking behavior study with data collected from student discussion groups, a student survey, and a content analysis of professors’ research assignment handouts. Results indicate that students first use course readings and library resources for academic research and then rely on public Internet sites later in their research process. Students adopt a hybrid approach to course-related research. A majority of students in this study leveraged both human and computer-mediated resources to compensate for their lack of information literacy. In particular, students faced problems with determining information needs for assignments, selecting and critically evaluating resources, and gauging professors’ expectations for quality research.

Source: College & Research Libraries, forthcoming (Alison J. Head)

Blogger turns out to be Hernando’s assistant county attorney

In a local Internet forum, a poster pitches his new online news site touting it as an alternative to the “two dead-tree media sources” now informing readers of the news of Hernando County.

The writer states that his report would appear “without the agenda-driven bias” of the other sources. “That’s why I call myself Mr. News,” the poster proclaims.

Turns out, a more accurate title would be: Mr. Assistant County Attorney.

Source: St. Petersburg Times

Note: RS Senior Editor Shirl Kennedy worked on this story.

From the article:

“Some of the biggest technology firms, including Microsoft, Intel, Google and I.B.M., are banding together to fight information overload. Last week they formed a nonprofit group to study the problem, publicize it and devise ways to help workers — theirs and others — cope with the digital deluge.”

Source: NY Times

Direct to Presentations

The conference took place last month in Chicago was titled: Librarian as Architect, Planning, Building, and Renewing.

Source: LOEX

+ Researchers’ ‘Facebook’ launched (via EurActiv)

+ Misinformation tangles the web (via IWR)

+ 28 New Documents added to CIA Electronic Reading Room

+ The Associated Press Unveils Findings Of Anthropological Research At World Editors Forum

+ WorldWind (a 3D digital globe) Releases Updated Saturn Add-On

E-mail on military deaths is shaky on facts

A spam e-mail making the rounds in the military community serves as a reminder that facts can be flexible when they are launched anonymously into the vast void of cyberspace.

The e-mail, entitled, “Some very interesting statistics: Military losses, 1980 through 2006,” states that more U.S. service members died on active duty during the eight years of the Clinton administration, when there were no major U.S. military conflicts, than in the first six years of the George W. Bush administration, during which the military was fighting two large-scale wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The e-mail offers year-by-year U.S. military death totals from all causes — operations, illness, accidents, suicides, etc. — from 1980 through 2006.

The data supposedly were taken from a periodically updated Congressional Research Service report on the subject, which in turn is based on statistics compiled by the Pentagon’s Defense Manpower and Data Center.

There’s just one problem: The figures listed in the email are wrong. They vary markedly from the figures published in the cited CRS source document.
…
The claims of this particular e-mail are easily disproved. But the online proliferation of such anonymous documents highlights a serious concern for researchers and scholars about how to separate fact from fiction within the vast quantities of raw material online — and being consumed by users who often have no easy way to gauge the reliability of the information they see.

The Web site of The Sheridan Libraries, the main research facility at Johns Hopkins University, includes a lengthy “how to” guide for evaluating Internet information that underscores the difficulty.

“When you use a research or academic library, the books, journals and other resources have already been evaluated by scholars, publishers and librarians,” the Web site states. “Every resource you find has been evaluated in one way or another before you ever see it.”

Online, however, “none of this applies — there are no filters,” the library Web site states.

Source: Army Times

Hat tip: Secrecy News

From the abstract:

As centers of lifelong learning, museums and libraries contain a wealth of resources and information that can help youth fulfill their vast potential. To assist museums and libraries in their development of effective and engaging youth programs, the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) has published Nine to Nineteen: Youth in Museums and Libraries; A Practitioner’s Guide, the newest resource in the Museums and Libraries Engaging America’s Youth Initiative series.

The guide features several examples of successful youth programming from around the country, as well as useful information for planning exemplary youth programs. In the guide, practitioners can find resources on funding, evaluation, and out-of-school programs gathered from those working in the youth and community development, education, and informal learning fields. Nine to Nineteen is geared toward museums and libraries, but is also useful to community planners, youth development leaders, and educators who want to connect with the many types of organizations and institutions that serve youth in our communities.

Source: IMLS

Use Wikipedia ‘facts’ at your own risk

I’ve taken Wikipedia with a grain of iodized salt ever since I looked up the exact date the Titanic sank, only to find a pornographic photo.

Of course, that was long after one of my high school teachers based an entire class discussion on a questionable definition of a literary term he lifted from Wikipedia.

P.S.: Check Wikipedia for the origin of the phrase “grain of salt.”

Wikipedia is a starting point, but it’s not the final answer. The site says, “Do not rely upon any information found in Wikipedia without independent verification.”

Wait, can someone independently verify that for me?

Wikipedia is the fast food of reference material: You go there when nothing else is open (like a library), you don’t realize how much you’ve consumed until it’s too late and, if you eat enough of it, it will probably kill you.

Source: The Independent Florida Alligator

Towards Information Literacy Indicators
46 pages; PDF.

From the report’s summary/news release:

A comprehensive perspective on what information literacy means and how to measure its impact on society.

Governments and international organizations are looking for ways to measure the information society. Despite the good intentions, there is a tendency to focus almost exclusively on the technology involved. Yet, the real interest lies in monitoring the impact of these technologies ­ not simply access to them.

In response, the UNESCO Information for All Programme (IFAP) and the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) are working closely to develop a comprehensive framework to measure the impact of knowledge societies from the perspective of people and priorities of governments.

Source: UNESCO (via Basefsky’s IWS Documented News Service)

Making Wikis Work for Scholars

Even if they won’t admit it, students are using Wikipedia to kick off their research and fill the gaps in their class notes … right now. It might not show up in the bibliography, but the free, open source online resource has long since become the starting point for settling factual disputes, brainstorming paper ideas and even offering suggestions for further reading.

If that’s an open secret, then so is this: For all the hand-wringing over whether Wikipedia is a legitimate source for completing college assignments, some professors are quietly incorporating it into their classrooms and even their research. Others, noting features of the Web site that contribute to inaccuracies and shortchange the value of expertise, are building variations on the model that are more amenable to academics and to peer review.

A good number of college professors “work on Wikipedia pretty regularly, and of course their work is one of the main reasons why Wikipedia is as good as it is,” said Larry Sanger, one of the founders of the site who has since become a critic of what he refers to as its “worst elements.”
…
Wikipedia “speaks with a million voices, and these voices kind of jump on each other,” he said. In this view, the site’s openness — the ability of everyone to participate, without having to identify themselves by name — leads to an erosion of accountability and, often, an increasingly shrill cacophony. Matei is academic content coordinator of the Eduzendium initiative, an attempt to bridge the wiki format and academe. Entire classes can join up so that professors can coordinate the production of certain articles with students — either individually or as a group assignment. It’s up to the instructors how exactly to divide the labor, but the idea is that more accurate content will result from putting one’s real name (and, possibly, grade) on the line and from the checks and balances set up to minimize the kind of interference seen on Wikipedia pages.

The project is only a few months old, part of the larger Citizendium enterprise initially set up by Sanger as a “fork” of Wikipedia. One of his main criticisms of that site, which he co-founded and helped conceive and develop in its early years, was what he characterized as users’ general skepticism of the value of expertise in a given field. “I think that it would be possible for people to, if they were properly motivated, to make a lot of good solid changes to Wikipedia articles. My question is whether they would think that it’s really worth the effort …,” he said, to “do battle” with more energetic editors who perhaps don’t have the same expertise.

Source: Inside Higher Ed

Psst! It’s no secret: copying is plagiarism

“It is extremely easy for students to make the mistake of cutting and pasting from the Internet,” said Catharine O’Connell, vice president for academic affairs and academic dean at Defiance College. “In the old days, when one had to type in text from a source, there wasn’t as much temptation, and it would have been very difficult to use large sections of a source without realizing it. Now, it is so easy to cut and paste that students can end up using large sections of someone else’s work almost before they know it.”

In the freshmen courses, first-year seminar and global civilization, academic honesty and plagiarism are addressed.

“Many faculty members revisit the topic in other classes, but we believe it is important to have the conversation about plagiarism right at the beginning of a student’s career at DC,” stated O’Connell.

Source: Crescent-News.com

Webcast: The Anthropology of Digital Natives
by Edith Ackerman
Recorded at The Library of Congress
April 4, 2007
Running Time: 119 Minutes

Young people today born into a digital world are experiencing a far different environment of information-gathering and access to knowledge than a generation ago. Who are these “digital natives” and what are they thinking? How are they using the technology, and are IT experts adequately responding to them?

These questions will be addressed in a new Library of Congress series titled “Digital Natives.” The four-lecture series will examine the generation that has been raised with the computer as a natural part of their lives, with emphasis on the young people currently in schools and colleges today. The series will seek to understand the practices and culture of these digital natives, the cultural implications of the phenomenon and the implications for education — schools, universities and libraries.

This first lecture explores how young people think, learn and play. Speaker Edith Ackerman is particularly interested in helping shape the future of play and learning in a digital world. “I study how people use place, relate to others and treat things to find their ways — and voices — in an ever-changing world,” she said.

Source: LC

From iHealthBeat

A new survey found that consumers trusted information about the causes of illnesses and treatment options about 80% of the time but only trusted quality data about half as often. A researcher attributed the gap to consumers being less familiar with quality data. Modern Healthcare.

Source: iHealthBeat

From the article:

A digital treasure trove of information is out there for the taking, but only if students have a means of discovering the way to find it - a search engine that is both academic and user-friendly.

Scores of academic search engines provide a heavyweight alternative to the commercial ones and work against what Brighton University’s professor of media- Tara Brabazon has termed “the Google effect” - a tendency towards mediocrity.

Source: EducationGuardian.co.uk