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Chapters

1. Basics

The information world can be viewed from many different, overlapping points-of-view. For example, common concepts like fiction and non-fiction, speech and writing, or broadcasting and print divide information into broad categories that can be helpful in understanding, evaluating, and organizing it.

• Basic understanding of the Internet
• Distinguish scholarly from popular communication
• Distinguish primary from secondary information sources
• Recognize information cycles

2. Topics

This chapter will help you find an appropriate topic or question for research and demonstrate how that question can be focused to suit the limits of time available, length of assignment, or scope of the problem to be solved.

• Select an appropriate topic for research
• Generate questions from a topic
• Broaden and narrow a question
• Identify key concepts and vocabularies related to a topic
• Broaden and narrow concepts and vocabularies related to a topic

3. Research

This chapter  covers how to choose and use a database correctly, & how to craft your research question (& related vocabularies) into search queries that can be understood by computers.

• Distinguish a database from other types of information collections
• Identify the coverage of a database
• Understand the concept of field, or advanced searching in a database
• Construct effective search queries using logical operators and related strategies

4. Locate

This chapter will show you how to find and get your hands on actual sources.

• Determine the nature of a source from a citation
• Use citations to find physical sources
• Locate sources using classification systems
• Understand library collections and services

5. Results

This chapter will introduce criteria for evaluating your research strategies and for evaluating information sources helping you to:

• Develop a basic set of criteria for evaluating your search strategy
• Develop a basic set of criteria for evaluating information sources

6. Ethics

This chapter will discuss ethical issues in the research and writing process:

• Citations
• Plagiarism
• Copyright

Self-Test | 1 Basics | 2 Topics | 3 Research | 4 Locate | 5 Results | 6 Ethics  

ARCC ILT © 2013
Anoka Ramsey Community College Library
Information Literacy Tutorial

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