"Finding the Right Information for College Assignments," Kunzler

Information Journey Image.png 

In the first section, Information Literacy, you learned what it means to be information literate and why it is important to become an information literate person in our current information society. In the next section, you learned and practiced some information literacy skills that will help you SIFT through news and social media information that keeps you informed on what is happening in the world.

In this section, you will learn about the following:

  • Information Searching Pathways
  • where to find the best academic information as a college student.

In college, you will be asked by most of your professors to go beyond the news, beyond social media, and even beyond internet websites to find information on specific topics for presentations, papers, and general assignments. You will most likely begin your search for information on the internet for your college assignments, but, with so much information on the internet clamoring for your attention, you may find yourself experiencing information overload and information searching frustration.  In this chapter, you will learn some important steps needed to help you define your information searching pathway in both your personal life and for your college assignments.  Knowing and using these information searching steps will help you avoid information overload, save you time and decrease any information searching frustration you may encounter.

Information Searching Pathways

We all need information. Some information we need might be trivial, such as where is the Science Building on campus. Some information needs have high importance in our daily lives, such as what the weather is going to be since you are planning an outside event or activity. Other information, especially in college, is needed for our learning and to complete assignments. The internet has made our information searching pathways more simple since we can usually find general information just by talking into our smartphone or typing a question into a web browser. But, even on the internet, our information searching pathways are going to be different depending on what our information need is.

You may not have previously considered how you regularly search for information or thought about information-seeking pathways. But, everyone has information-seeking pathways. Some pathways are created for you, such as in academic assignments or work-related tasks, and some pathways you might create on your own. The type, quality, and quantity of information needed always directs your information-seeking pathway and determines how much time you need to devote to locating the information.

Consider the four scenarios below that have very different information needs and thus have different information-seeking pathways.

Scenario 1:

You are bragging to your friends about a beloved family recipe and you want to share it, but, you can't remember a key ingredient in the recipe. Your first choice to find the missing ingredient would most likely be to go to family members that have the recipe. In this scenario, your information searching pathway is to talk to other people about your information need. The quality and quantity of information are both minimal and do not require a lot of time to locate.

Scenario 2:

You need to find out when a class is offered next semester. You might seek this information by visiting or calling the registrar’s office. In our technology world, you also have the option to seek this information through email or a website. The quality of this information has high stakes because knowing if the class is available next semester could mean that you can graduate earlier through prior planning. The quantity of information needed is minimal and doesn't require too much time to discover. 

Scenario 3:

As a college student, you have an assignment to use the Snow College Library databases to locate five academic articles related to the potential of expanding the use of solar energy to decrease fossil fuel consumption. In this academic situation, you know that your information-seeking pathway is going to be to use the Snow College Library and you know the quantity of information needed is five articles. Also, when you use the Library, you can be guaranteed that the information in the library databases meets the high-quality, academic information standard you need for your assignment. But, since you might not be familiar with the Library Databases, you know that this pathway might require more time than finding that family recipe or calling the registrar about a class offering next semester.  You will first need to learn how to use the library databases, then, apply what you learned to find the articles you need.

Scenario 4:

In your healthy living class, you have an assignment to visit a grocery store to find and price ten items that you can use to create a healthy, weekly meal plan. This scenario is going to involve a few information-seeking pathways - one is going to be to learn what foods are healthy and what foods can go together to make a meal plan.  Then, you will go to the grocery store and learn where all the food is located and how it is arranged. As part of your information-seeking pathway for this scenario, you might use the internet or your textbook to learn about the foods. When you go to the grocery store, your information-seeking might involve a self-directed tour of the grocery store or asking a grocery store clerk to help you find the items you need.

Create Your Own Scenario

Now it is your turn.  Consider an information-seeking situation you have now or have had recently. What type, quality and quantity of information did you or do you need for your situation. What method will you or did you use to retrieve the information?

Finding Academic Information

As a college student, you will be required to find, evaluate, use and even create academic information. Academic information is usually disseminated in academic journals both online, in library databases, and in physical printed materials. There are many pathways to finding academic information and there are different degrees of quality and quantity of academic information. As you progress in your college experience you will learn more about academic information, so, don't worry, you don't need to know about it all at once. 

But, what you do need to know is that most academic information is not found on the world wide web. Instead, much of the academic information available is only available by paying for a subscription or paying per article to view. As a college student paying for every academic article you need would really start to take food money out of your budget.  Fortunately, at colleges and universities, students have free access through library databases to millions of academic articles, print and electronic books, audiobooks, streaming videos, images, and even music!

Use the Snow College Library and Library Website

Using the Snow College library to find academic information will save you money and time and is an essential information-seeking pathway as you embark on your college adventure. But, no need to worry if you don't know how to use the library or the library databases. The library has created guides and tutorials (Links to an external site.) and we also have skilled, professional information seeking specialists, also known as Librarians, who can help you with your academic information seeking needs.  Librarians are professionally trained in information-seeking skills and are required to have advanced degrees. So, you can be confident when you use the library and ask librarians for help that you will find the information you need to help you be a successful college student.

A Quick Note About The Internet and College Assignments

The internet can be a good information-seeking pathway for college assignments to find background information on a topic you are researching. But, you should use caution when using the internet for your college assignment information-seeking needs. Always evaluate the quality of information needed for your college assignment and the depth of information needed. This will become more apparent to you as you begin to dive more deeply into academic literature as a college student.

When you do use the internet for academic assignments keep in mind these tips:

 

Bibliography

Yabandeh, Maysam (2019). Image of Road. From Pixnio (Links to an external site.)

Butler, Walter D. Aloha Sargent, & Kelsey Smith. (2020). Introduction to College Research (Links to an external site.) is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (Links to an external site.),