Illustrates the importance of students knowing how to effectively search electronic resources. Discusses a Web site created at Chico High School and describes the three major components of the organization of electronic resources (outreach, training, and planning interview). Gives an example of a class research assignment and discusses other…

"Mental modeling" refers to a student's ability to visualize or comprehend the information research process. This article reviews 50 years of changing conceptions of how we learn: behaviorist, cognitivist, and constructivist perspective; describes the application of three "mental models" to interactive technology; and discusses…

Teaching how to choose a research topic in a bibliographic instruction class should emphasize the underlying methods and principles of library research while making research tools as unobtrusive as possible. This approach teaches the basics of scientific inquiry and provides a structure in which to teach library skills. (EM)

Elementary students can investigate U.S. geography and exercise critical thinking and research skills by compiling a computer database on state facts and figures. As they research and work, they develop their own questions to ask and answer and make thoughtful hypotheses about how and why facts may be related. (SM)

Although this guide was designed to support "Pennsylvania Online: A Curriculum Guide for School Library Media Centers" (1985), the State of Pennsylvania curriculum guide for online searching, many of its components are also suitable for use by school librarians when teaching the elements involved in searching for resources manually. Designed to…

Discusses overuse and abuse of the online search in academic libraries, citing cases where patrons are not well served by it. Suggestions include helping students define and refine research goals and use of print indexes and abstracts which display citations in context of related literature. (15 references) (EJS)

A freshman humanities course in reading and research was used by three English instructors to investigate the appropriateness of having students use an online database as a research tool. The results show that the acquisition of basic online database search skills is not qualitatively different from that of more traditional research skills.…

Describes a course in information research in which students use a package of representative information sources to identify seminal works in a given field of inquiry. The materials contained in the package and specific procedures followed by students are described, and some informal evaluation of the process is provided. (CLB)

This book is a user-friendly guide explaining the fundamental principles of academic library research. It guides students through the specifics of finding, using and evaluating information in print, electronic and multimedia formats, and is geared towards helping students judge information sources for what they convey. The focus is on teaching…

Intended for use in secondary schools by the teachers and librarians responsible for the preparation of college-bound students, these guidelines of a program of the Ohio State University (OSU) libraries were designed to help secondary school students achieve a basic level of library literacy prior to entering college, instruct them about the…

Intended for teachers and teacher-librarians, this guide provides instructional materials and commentary to help students grow in their ability to gather, process, and share information, and develop research skills applicable to any subject area and in real life situations. The guide is divided into seven chapters: (1) "Introduction and…

In an effort to provide for a smooth transition from an "open schedule" library media center to scheduled library periods, a series of 13 instructional models were developed for use in Detroit's public schools. The models provide a framework for developing a plan of sequential library instruction which can be adapted to the teaching programs of…

The world of electronic technology is opening up vast new opportunities for learning, gathering, and sharing information. This guide is for teachers and students in grades 4-8 to learn how to use electronic tools to conduct research to find information at school or around the world. The guide includes introductory pages for each topic, student…

This document presents a module on learning library resources by researching Latin American topics to be used in the Use of Library Resources course at St. Louis Community College at Meramec (Missouri). The goal of the module (to give students a basic knowledge of library resources and to introduce them to Latin America by researching Latin…

The ever-increasing availability of electronic information resources online and on CD-ROM presents library media specialists, teachers, and students with a new set of challenges for accessing information. Electronic information resources enable access to nonlinear information, which allows searchers to explore relationships and make connections…