portal: Libraries and the Academy

Thompson, Christen.
Information Illiterate or Lazy: How College Students Use the Web for Research
portal: Libraries and the Academy - Volume 3, Number 2, April 2003, pp. 259-268

The Johns Hopkins University Press

This article reviews several studies of student usage of the Internet to determine how they use the Web for research. Preliminary data suggest that the majority of students begin a research assignment with the Internet, most often with a commercial search engine. What is not known is whether students have adequate information literacy skills to find authoritative information and then to evaluate the information for use in their research. Evidence indicates that there is yet room for improvement in how students conduct research, as well as how library instruction is designed.