Reading Report #5

This article is about college students and how they can be overwhelmed by the amount of information that is available to them. Colleges are helping students gain better “information literacy” by holding sessions where a librarian guides them through the school’s databases. Students tend to lean towards the internet to find their information, which may not be the most reliable source. Librarians are trying to help students to be able to sort through this information to find what is relevant and trustworthy. Standardized test are being created to evaluate students information literacy skills and college graduates must be able to pass this.
I found this article interesting because it is a growing concern in colleges and universities today. It is good to know that libraries and professors are starting to recognize this problem and taking steps to solve it. I think it is very important that students know what information is out there and also what information is reliable. When starting to do research, it is easy to get overwhelmed and hard to know where to start. The library sessions are very helpful but I think it would be more important for students to take a whole library class for their basic studies requirements because at some point throughout everyone’s college career, they will be required to do research. As far as the standardized test for evaluating information literacy, I think it is unnecessary. It would be more effective to require students to make a certain grade in a library class, than to require a standardized test.

Reading Report #4

This article is about students forgetting what valuable resources the library has and how libraries and librarians are frustrated that students are not using these resources. Students want a lot of results as quickly as possible, so they are constantly using Google instead of the libraries journals, which have much more relevant information. Libraries are now looking for a way that students can quickly and efficiently look through their journals by having a Google-like search. Not only are they looking for an easier way to search through these databases, they are also trying to provide more full-text articles. Professors can also help this problem by requiring students to uses sources other than Google in their research projects. Librarians should try to persuade professors to do this by showing them how useful their databases are if the professors are unfamiliar with them.
I think this article was very interesting because I do believe this is a growing problem in colleges and universities today. The idea of making databases available easier and more available for people to use is a great idea. I think students can be overwhelmed by the libraries many databases so they just use Google because it is so familiar to them. But by doing this, they are missing out on a lot of quality information that could really enhance their research projects. Students would be much more willing to use a Google-like search that had full-text articles. Colleges could require students to take a basic library class which would help their research skills because before I took this library class, I was unaware of all the information available to students.