Thursday, January 24, 2013

Information Literacy and Information Skills Instruction


Thomas, Nancy P., Sherry R. Crow, and Lori L. Franklin. Information Literacy and Information Skills Instruction: Applying Research to Practice in the 21st Century School Library. 3rd ed. Westport, CT: Libraries Unlimited, 2011. ISBN: 978-1-59884-490-0

Product Description
This book provides a comprehensive review of the current research relating to the teaching of library and information literacy skills as part of effective school library media center programming.

What are the current best practices for information literacy instruction? How should one design information literacy lessons to motivate and instruct today’s tech-savvy students? What are the best ways to foster critical thinking tasks and build searching skills? Academic research provides great insights for answering these pressing questions.

As with earlier editions, this latest revision of Information Literacy and Information Skills Instruction: Applying Research to Practice in the 21st Century School Library brings together the research literature on information skills instruction with particular reference to models related to information seeking and the information search process. It presents relevant findings on what research has deemed "best practice" and what is known about how children learn, enabling school librarians to base information skills programs on substantiated data.

The sources reviewed for this book include doctoral dissertations, research reports, academic and professional journal articles in library information service and related fields, and publications by scholars and practitioners relevant to information skills curricula. A preface, newly prepared for the third edition, explains the revision process, while the epilogue examines the importance of communication between research scholars and school library practitioners.

Features
• 30 illustrations and tables are provided to supplement the text
• A bibliography includes references and sources for cited research
• Two indexes provide quick reference by author's name and subject

Highlights
• Written by authors with academic research backgrounds as well as years of experience as school librarians
• Provides an overview of the development of school libraries and the evolution of standards in a single text
• Emphasizes new AASL standards
• Includes information on the newest standards published by AASL for 21st-century learners while maintaining a historical perspective