Needle - Haystack + You: How Undergraduates Search and Use the Internet
http://www.stc.org/confproceed/2002/PDFs/STC49-00054.pdf

Stern, Caroline M.
STC Proceedings
2002

Abstract:

This paper considers the current trends in information literacy in higher education and presents some of the results of a survey of in-coming college freshmen that sought to measure their information literacy in the area of Internet use. The twenty-question survey gathered responses from 1,184 students in a total population of 2,345. The data sought to determine students’ patterns of Internet use, their attitudes toward the reliability of information that they found via the Internet, and their competencies in structuring an Internet search and evaluating the data retrieved. The complete results and their implications are still being analyzed. Preliminary data analysis demonstrates that although many students self-report that they are advanced in their Internet expertise, they could benefit from systematic and cumulative information literacy instruction and be tutored in the important difference between research in a traditional library and research on the Internet.