Library Competencies for First Year Students & Sophomores
University of Mississippi Libraries, Information Literacy Committee
Here are some primary and secondary skills that first year and sophomores should know in order to prepare them for junior and senior level research work.
Primary competencies
- Students will have knowledge of library etiquette
- Students will be aware of services offered by the library (chat reference, library coffee shop, group study areas)
- Students will know the location and function of essential areas in the library (reference and circulation desks, library website, online catalog, reference collection, periodicals, stacks, and media services);
- Students will be able to performs complex searches to locate books and materials in the library catalog
- Students will know how to locate and check out library books and other materials;
- Students will be able to focus and articulate their information needs and identify key concepts of their topic;
- Students will use key concepts to find resources on a topic by using the online catalog, periodical indexes, and other sources as needed;
- Students will interpret bibliographic citations from the search results and locate the materials cited;
- Students will evaluate the information retrieved, discerning the strengths, limitations, and usefulness in relation to a topic, including assessing Internet sources
- Students will incorporate retrieved information into their own texts.
Secondary competencies
- Students will understand that materials not owned by the library can be obtained from other sources;
- Students will understand the difference between controlled vocabulary (subject headings or descriptors assigned by the producer of an index or database) and key words;
- Students will understand how to use Boolean operators when searching database.
Competencies modified from: Jacobson, T. & Mark, B. L. (2000). Separating wheat from chaff: Helping first-year students become information savvy. Journal of General Education 49 (4), 256-278.
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