Information Literacy Internet Site

Through Alta Vista, I located two sites that dealt with information literacy in elementary schools.

The first site, www.school-libraries.org/resources/literacy.html, is a wonderful compilation of information literacy sites for school librarians divided into the following categories - general information, library instruction, web page evaluation, and web page evaluation instruction and tutorials. This site would be a wonderful resource to any school librarian and one that I will refer to many times in the future. I am glad that I found it.

The second site, http://www.cde.state.co.us/litstandards/index.htm, is the handbook "Colorado Students Achieve Power @ Your Library: Quality School Libraries Enhance Student Achievement" created by the Colorado State Library at the Colorado Department of Education in conjunction with the Colorado Association of Libraries. The handbook is a tool for school librarians that includes studies on information literacy, information literacy standards, program evaluation, and resources to help librarians collaborate with teachers. Thus, improving academic achievement through information literacy standards. This tool is a wonderful way to support information literacy in your school library. It provides documentation of increased student achievement due to quality school libraries and gives information on how to evaluate and improve your library. This site is a good starting point for beginning collaboration with teachers.

ERIC ~ successive fraction search

I performed a successive fraction search in the ERIC database.

• S1 ~ school librar* OR school media center ~ 7820 results.


• S2 ~ S1 + information literacy OR library skill* OR information skill* ~ 1011 results


• S3 ~ S2 + elementary school* OR primary school* ~ 137 results

Many of the records from the third search were from School Library Media Activities Monthly which the university library does not own. This was disappointing after becoming interested in the articles from reading the abstracts.

The hit from this search supposedly included many articles from Library Talk but only the first article listed appeared in the HTML and PDF full text. This was a collaboration unit about zoo animal research. It included preparation details and activities, a research planning sheet, a fact-gathering sheet, and presentation ideas while discussing how to incorporate copyright and plagiarism into the unit.

This is my preferred search method. As Heting Chu states, "this search strategy is highly recommended to users, especially to novice users" (2005, 84).

Chu, Heting. 2005. Information Representation and Retrieval in the Digital Age. Medford, NJ: Information Today, Inc.

Academic Search Complete ~ specific facet search

For this search I used the search terms from the citation pearl growing search. I began the search with "research" as my first term. This yielded 1,592,814 results. Most of the first few pages of results were not related to school libraries.



I narrowed my results by adding "AND school media center OR school librar*." The new result list contained 1375 records. Many of the articles were for middle school or high school libraries. I further narrowed the search by adding "AND elementary school*." This addition produced 65 results.



The hit is a collaboration unit involving the classroom teacher, librarian, and art teacher. It includes science standards, information literacy standards, technology standards, and art standards. The image purposefully includes an abstract of the article. I think this unit is one that the second grade teachers at my school might be interested in doing.

Library Lit ~ citation pearl growing search

For this search, I began with a great article on information literacy in the elementary school library I found in a previous search. The article, "A road map for the journey," was written by Peggy Milam in Library Media Connection.

I first searched for other articles by Milam. There were 15 records on flexible scheduling, mentoring, reflection in the research process, scientifically based reading research, and National Board Certification. I continued the search by using the subject terms from the article. "Bibliographic instruction/elementary and high school students" was the only term listed for the article. There were 1191 records from this term. Many of the first few pages of results were not available through the university library since the library did not own the journal. One of the related subjects from these pages was "research and the library." I searched using this term and received 461 records. I tried to narrow it down by adding "AND school media center OR school librar*" but received 2122 results. I was able to narrow the results using "AND elementary school." This produced 303 records. In these records I found many information literacy units that could be used in the elementary school library. The hit I chose was an article entitled "Planets Up Close". This is a collaboration unit I could adapt and use in my library with third or fifth grade students.

This search turned out much different than I had planned. I had previously used this article in a citation pearl search but received much different results from the number of articles by Peggy Milam to the subject terms. I did enjoy the challenge.

DIALOG database ~ building block search

I performed a building block search in Gale Group Magazines in the Dialog database. My first search term was "information literacy or library skill? or information skill?." This produced 31 results. My second search was "school librar? or school media center?." There were 718 results. My third search was "elementary school? or primary school? or intermediate school?." This produced 2163 results. When I combined the three search terms, I received O results. I was disappointed so I only combined the first two search terms and that produced 56 results. The display sets are in the first image.


I looked through the results and found "Information literacy in school libraries: it takes a community." This looked interesting and I plan on further looking for this article.

I enjoyed searching in Dialog. It was very different from all of the other searches that I have performed. It required a lot more preparation and the fact that has per minutes rates made me a little nervous.

Information Literacy Multimedia

I searched Google Images for information literacy. I uncovered many images, pictures, and photographs that represented information literacy. I chose this image because it best gives a visual representation of all that information literacy encompasses. Information literacy is not one skill but a combination of many. The image is from http://library.otis.edu/infocomp.htm.

Information Literacy Tags

(1) InfoLit(1) information literacy(1) library instruction(1) reading(1) specialisation(1) theory(1)

These tags were for the book The Seven Faces of Information Literacy by Christine Bruce found on librarything.com. This book offers a different perspective on information literacy. Bruce does not view information literacy as a list of skills or attributes but as ways that students use information literacy. More information about Christine Bruce and The Seven Faces of Information Literacy can be found at http://sky.fit.qut.edu.au/~bruce/inflit/faces/faces1.htm.

http://www.librarything.com/work/859149