The following statement by the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) can be used as a general guide for student library assignments:

An information literate person is able to:

► Know when information is needed.
► Find relevant information.
► Evaluate the quality of information.
► Select, organize and use relevant information.
► Use information ethically and legally.

1.) Know when information is needed
Information may be needed, for example, to solve a problem or resolve a conflict. [These problems or conflicts may be social or academic, and may be selected by the student or assigned by the faculty.]

2.) Find relevant information
The student researcher should be able to use the library catalog and databases (both general and subject specific) to locate information. In addition, the student researcher should be able to locate and use a variety of sources, such as:
Books
Scholarly journal articles
Popular magazine articles
Research reports
Newspapers
Web sites

The library offers a number of regularly scheduled basic orientation classes throughout the school year to assist the student researcher with the above. Various online library tutorials are also available on the library’s home page. The online tutorial entitled Basic Library Orientation is especially relevant. Faculty members can also schedule tailored, subject specific library classes for their specific courses.

Suggested general databases: InfoTrac OneFile and OmniFile Full Text Mega.
Suggested newspaper databases: NewsStand, New York Times, and New York Times Historical Archive.
Databases are listed alphabetically at Online Databases on the library's homepage.
Consult the library’s Subject Research Guides, also on the library's home page, for subject specific databases.

3.) Evaluate the quality of information
The student researcher should be able to evaluate information using the following general criteria (as well subject specific criteria):

Purpose
Evaluate the purpose of the source, whether it is intended to provide public forms of evidence, to sell a product, to promote an ideological, political, or religious orientation, etc.

Documentation
Check to see if the author supports knowledge claims with the proper forms of public evidence, and if the author cites other research that is relevant to his or her claims.

Timeliness
Check the date of publication, since the timeliness of research is crucial to certain fields, especially medicine and the natural sciences. Timeliness is less important to fields such as literature and philosophy.

Authority
The author should have the appropriate education or training in the subject area being presented.
Books published by an academic press, articles appearing in peer review journals, and websites sponsored by the government or a university are generally regarded as being more reliable and as possessing greater authority.

Suitability
Scope - Is the source a general overview of an entire topic or field? Or is it highly specific? Or is it something in between? The scope of a piece should be appropriate to its claims.
Audience - Who is the intended audience of the piece? What is the educational level or political, or religious, or ideological orientation of the intended audience? Knowing the intended audience of a piece may help with the evaluation of its assumptions, biases, etc.
Scholarly - Scholarly journals are generally peer reviewed, that is, their articles are read and evaluated by experts in the field under consideration. They generally include signed articles, a statement of the author’s credentials or academic affiliation, and a bibliography. All of these attributes help make the source more reliable.
Popular - Popular magazines, such as Newsweek, are generally intended to reach a wide audience. The articles that appear in them are generally not peer reviewed and usually do not contain a bibliography. The reliability of popular sources is thus generally regarded to be below the level of scholarly sources.

Research
Primary text - These books or articles provide original research or reports.
Secondary text - These books or articles summarize, evaluate and report on primary research.
Both can be highly reliable or unreliable, depending upon subject specific criteria, as well as the general criteria just discussed above.

4.) Select, organize and use relevant information
Using the above evaluative criteria, as well as subject specific criteria, the researcher should be able to select and organize the information gathered. The selection of information will involve the use of both general and subject specific criteria. The organization of this inforamtion will usually involve abstraction and thoughtful integration. (See sample assignments link below.) (It is recommended that the faculty member provide a course specific sample for students to view.)

5.) Use information ethically and legally
The researcher should be able to quote, paraphrase, and cite sources properly. (See Plagiarism Tutorial.)

ASSIGNMENTS
Faculty Guidelines for Successful Assignments
1. Have clear objectives (clear Student Learning Outcomes or SLO’s)
2. Make it realistic
3. Have students generate a product
4. Make it challenging—Something to be proud of!
5. Provide clear instructions
6. Give lots of guidance and feedback
7. Make it a graded assignment

(See sample assignments.)

Credits:
Created by Douglas Low and Melissa Finley Gonzalez using materials submitted to Information Literacy: A Workshop For the Faculty at the University of West Florida, May 4-6, 2004. Materials were submitted by Workshop presenters Dr. Michael Stoloff and Lynn Cameron, from James Madison University, and by Workshop participants Dr. Tim Royappa and Dr. Claudia Stanny from University of West Florida. Tutorial materials from John C. Pace Library at UWF were also used. Created December 2007.