Library Competencies for Juniors & Seniors

University of Mississippi Libraries, Information Literacy Committee

Here are some skills that Juniors and Seniors should know in order to be competent researchers in their majors.

Students will:

• have a familiarity with research and publication protocols, such as knowledge of the discipline's major journals, methods of publication (articles, books, peer review, etc.)
• demonstrate an ability to model their writing after subject related protocols
• have an ability to incorporate scholarly research into their prose
• have interdisciplinary competence in library research and will be able to transfer knowledge of their own major into high level work in other fields (an English major will be able to do research in history, political science, etc.)
• be able to differentiate between popular and scholarly resources
• be able to identify the right resources for their research needs
• be able to locate articles that are not full text through indexes and then through locating print library journals
• have the ability to determine if journal articles, in print or online full text, are available through library resources
• be able to navigate complex research resources and will have knowledge of catalog and database-specific language, including broader and narrower terms
• be able to differentiate between the free versus the fee-based web
  be proficient in multiple citation formats for compiling bibliographies for several disciplines.