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English 103 Library Support

Information Literacy

Information literacy is one of SU's student learning goals that is addressed in English 103, and the student learning outcomes originate from the American Association of Colleges & Universities as follows:

  1. Identifying an information need
  2. Developing a search strategy
  3. Evaluating information and sources critically
  4. Using information effectively in their work
  5. Citing sources ethically

Academic libraries across the nation tend to be the defacto advocates for IL since much of our work seeks to help students and faculty to find and use information effectively. We accomplish this, in part, by working with course instructors to incorporate IL in research assignment design. This is often supplemented by the provision of library instruction workshops that focus on IL outcomes withing the context of assignments. 


The SLOs themselves are arranged in stages that we commonly engage with early on in the research process:

When a student must develop a scoped, substantive topic to investigate further and identify context surrounding that topic, they are

1. Identifying an information need. 

When the student has to search for sources using keywords identified from the topic, and incorporating these in search strategies in a variety of tools, they are

2. Accessing needed information.

When the student evaluates sources they consider using in their work with respect to currency of publication, relevance, authority, accuracy, and purpose of the sources, they are

3. Evaluating information sources critically.

When the student then uses their selected sources strategically in their work, presumably citing the sources, they are

4. Using information ethically and effectively to accomplish a specific purpose.


Consequently, the librarians (strategically) seek to proivde support during Unit 2's annotated bibliography assignment as an opporunity to intentionally help introduce 103 students to three of our learning objectives:

  • efficient and effective use of keywords for use in research tools (students identify scoped research topic in advance)
  • efficient and effective use of the library catalog and a multi-disciplinary database
  • source citation support