Subjects
information literacy, academic library instruction, everyday life information seeking, knowledge transfer, source evaluation
Document Type
Research Article
Abstract
Academic librarians who teach information literacy (IL) skills hope students will transfer those skills to their information seeking in everyday life. However, there is little evidence that students are transferring what they learn about research to their lives outside college. This study aims to find out what search and evaluation strategies college students who have had IL instruction apply to their own personal information seeking behaviors. To do this, a talk-aloud protocol was used to record participants’ thoughts and actions as they navigated scenarios that required them to select a source that met a non-academic information need. The findings indicate that college students employ basic search strategies and are generally skeptical of information on the internet. Additionally, the participants talked about accuracy, bias, and authority as a part of their source evaluation process in a non-academic context.
Persistent Identifier
https://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/44999
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 4.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Ward, S., Dineen, R., & Ilett, D. (2026). Application of Information Literacy Skills to Everyday Life Information Seeking in College Students: Implications for Instruction. Communications in Information Literacy, 20 (1), 4–27. Retrieved from https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/comminfolit/vol20/iss1/2