Information Literacy education is challenged by an ever-changing and complex environment. The design and development of current and effective Information Literacy education requires a thorough understanding of how young people search information online, which mainly happens with generalist search engines. The present study involved a voluntary…

Telephone interviews were conducted with 18 blind academic library users around the United States about their experiences using their library and its website. The study uses the perspective that blind users' insights are fundamental. A common theme was that navigating a webpage is time consuming on the first visit. Issues identified include the…

The present study examined undergraduate students' multiple source use in response to two different types of academic questions, one discrete and one open-ended. Participants (N = 240) responded to two questions using a library of eight digital sources, varying in source type (e.g., newspaper article) and reliability (e.g., authors' credentials).…

This study investigated interactive effects of navigation and offline comprehension skill on digital reading performance. As indicators of navigation, relevant page selection and irrelevant page selection were considered. In 533 Spanish high school students aged 11-17 positive effects of offline comprehension skill and relevant page selection on…

Introduction: This paper investigates techniques used by children in year 4 (age eight to nine) of a UK primary school to reformulate their queries, and how they use information retrieval systems to support query reformulation. Method: An in-depth study analysing the interactions of twelve children carrying out search tasks in a primary school…

Students more and more have access to online recordings of the lectures they attend at universities. The volume and length of these recorded lectures however make them difficult to navigate. Research shows that students primarily watch the recorded lectures while preparing for their exams. They do watch the full recorded lectures, but review only…

Federated searching was once touted as the library world's answer to Google, but ten years since federated searching technology's inception, how does it actually compare? This study focuses on undergraduate student preferences and perceptions when doing research using both Google and a federated search tool. Students were asked about their…

Solving real-world problems is an effective learning activity that promotes meaningful learning in formal educational settings. Problems can be classified as being either well structured or ill structured. Internet information search approaches have an influential role to play in the successful performance of problem solving. A better…

Tag clouds generated in social tagging systems can capture the collective knowledge of communities. Using as a basis spreading activation theories, information foraging theory, and the co-evolution model of cognitive and social systems, we present here a model for an "extended information scent," which proposes that both collective and individual…

Information literacy is an essential skill for business communication students. Traditionally taught by librarians, there is a pressing need for all business instructors to incorporate informational literacy training into their courses. Moreover, students need to hone their research skills, moving beyond a dependence on Google and Wikipedia. This…

Image searches are now crucial for obtaining information, constructing knowledge, and building successful educational outcomes. We investigated how reading ability and Internet experience influence keyword-based image search behaviors and performance. We categorized 58 junior-high-school students into four groups of high/low reading ability and…

Introduction: The Internet is a dynamic environment which is continuously being updated. Search engines have been, currently are and in all probability will continue to be the most popular systems in this information cosmos. Method: In this work, special attention has been paid to the series of changes made to search engines up to this point,…

It is critical that students learn how to retrieve useful information in hypermedia environments, a task that is often especially difficult when it comes to image retrieval, as little text feedback is given that allows them to reformulate keywords they need to use. This situation may make students feel disorientated while attempting image…

How well do children navigate the ocean of information that is available online? The enormous variety of Web-based resources represents both opportunities and challenges for Internet-savvy kids, offering extraordinary potential for learning and social connection but little guidance on assessing the reliability of online information. This book…

The aim of this study was to describe and analyze the involvement showed by 190 students who participated in an introduction to Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) project, in public schools from Spain. By means of an Internet browsing test, access and information selection processes were afforded. The purpose of the study was to…