Information literacy (IL) is a multifaceted skill that encompasses information seeking, identifying research questions, finding answers to research questions, and then evaluating and using information appropriately (ALA 2001). Much research has been conducted on the low level of IL found amongst high school students. Failure to make connections…

Just as fluency isn't knowing every word in a language, source literacy isn't knowing every source. It is, instead, the ability to interpret from context, to know what to ask, to read the clues, and to use the understanding brought from knowing about other sources. A person fluent in source literacy is able to do this automatically, the way you…

Information literacy instruction continuously adapts to changes in the information environment, whether those changes are small and focused on a regularly used tool or much broader in scope. What is harder to conceive of and implement are more radical, overarching shifts. These transformations go far beyond introducing new and revised tools or…

Since 2007 the author has been teaching a hybrid Information Literacy course at Lakeview High School in Battle Creek, Michigan. It combines an online information literacy focus with real-world library work experience in her media center. This blended course has just been revised so that high school graduates will be able to fulfill Michigan's…

In this Information Age, students produce research projects by piecing together passages quoted verbatim and stitched together with a few introductory or transitional words. They assemble research as patchwork quilts rather than weaving a fabric of new knowledge. This common practice raises ethical issues and poses new challenges for library media…

Every educational institution ought to ensure that students are sufficiently prepared to meet the needs and expectations of the twenty-first-century college, career, and civic environments. Yet technology has seeped into a number of areas from a number of sources without schoolwide consensus on goals, methods, or responsibilities. In this article,…

While the promotion of literacy is a fundamental mission for all librarians, over the past decades the definition has expanded and, paradoxically, fragmented into various multiliteracies, such as computer literacy, visual literacy, media literacy, and so forth. From these, a broader concept of student competencies, one that includes both…

This article describes Tool for Real-time Assessment of Information Literacy Skills (TRAILS), a freely available, online tool designed to measure the information literacy skills of high school students. It is based on information literacy competencies for ninth-graders found in the "Ohio Academic Content Standards" (Ohio Department of Education…

TRAILS (Tool for Real-Time Assessment of Information Literacy Skills), is a free online test of student information-handling skills. It was formulated by the Institute for Library and Information Literacy Education and Kent State University Libraries. Based on the Ohio Academic Content Standards and the philosophy of Information Power, it assesses…

In this article, the author discusses how she uses formative assessments of information literacy skills in the high school IMC. As a result of informal observation and conversations with individual students--a form of formative assessment itself--the author learned that students were not using indexes to locate relevant information in nonfiction…