Web sites are a unified collection of pages that run the gamut from educating to informing to selling to persuading, and may combine purposes. The content generally originates from the Web site owner, be it an individual, organization, company, or government entity; however, RSS feeds may introduce imported content.
This project of The Annenberg Public Policy Center is a reliable source of information when trying to determine if assertions in the news are factual or not. This source was mentioned frequently in connection with the 2016 US presidential election. You are able to send in news to be checked if you don’t see it on the site. They have a companion political literacy site, FlackCheck.org, to help determine the credibility of political and general ads.
Other useful sites for fact checking include: Politifact | Snopes
Learn more about the role of books in research and how to find library books.
This National Public Radio podcast tells the story of a mogul of fake news in the suburbs of Los Angeles and why he does what he does. Follow the hunt for the creator of a news story entitled “FBI Agent Suspected in Hillary Email Leaks Found Dead In Apparent Murder-Suicide.” Listen to the interview and consider the goals he espouses. And what about the money he earns?
In this activity from the Metaliteracy Badging site, you will explore the attributes of different information formats for your needs, so you will be well informed in your choices. Contact Trudi Jacobson for details on how to take full advantage of the interactive features of this site.
While it may seem like a simple task, picking a topic is an important first step in the research process that deserves careful consideration. Here are some tips for generating ideas for an appropriate and engaging topic that you will actually want to work on.
The resources and information in this guide will help you think about what academic integrity is for and the role generative AI plays in its practice or violation.
If your students are just getting started with college research, this video lesson will teach them some of the key characteristics of this type of research as well as demonstrate how to search for peer-reviewed sources in a library database.
Why is it important to acknowledge the work of others in your own research? Why is it necessary to know how and when to cite? Find out more in this introductory activity.
Help fight plagiarism goblins out to destroy academic integrity in this online game from Snowden Library at Lycoming College.
Help fight plagiarism goblins out to destroy academic integrity in this online game from Snowden Library at Lycoming College.
Fake information doesn’t just take the form of text. In this very short video, learn one way to check the accuracy of claims about images.
So what information literacy abilities are needed in the workplace? Take a look at this employability overlay on the Seven Pillars of Information Literacy. You can find what you will need to understand and what you will need to be able to do in these categories:
This news article from The Conversation provides an overview of issues involved in fake news. The piece argues that metaliterate individuals, who are aware of four critical domains of learning, are better equipped to determine when to question sources of information. Perhaps surprisingly, being aware of how you feel about a piece of news is particularly important. A second piece in The Conversation highlights why we fall for fake news.
As children, creativity tends to come more naturally. As adults, sparking our inherent creativity can take practice. If you are feeling stuck, watch this video to get your creative juices flowing.
This tutorial is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license. This quick tutorial explains the basics of a scholarly paper: what, how and why. If you are new to academic literature you will appreciate the simple and effective explanation in this tutorial. It will be helpful when your professor sends you on a journey to look for scientific literature.
This article from FactCheck.org suggests that fake news is better considered as part of a larger phenomenon, bad news. News stories might only be partially fabricated, or might be unresearched, deliberately misleading, or satire. Read this piece to learn the questions to ask and to find linked resources such as a list of known fake news websites.
Take this quiz to test your knowledge of information formats and the reasoning behind the selection of particular ways to convey a message. If you have some questions as you go through the quiz, be certain to click on the link for explanations of the answers. You will see this at the end of the quiz.
Earn course credit and increaes your confidence as a user and creator of information by signing up for a course through the University Libraries!
The Information Literacy Department of the University Libraries empowers students to be confident users and creators of information in a dynamic and continually evolving information landscape.
Request librarian-led instruction for your class using this convenient instruction form.
This self-paced video introduces students to the scholarly conversation, explains the common components of scholarly articles, and provides strategies for identifying and evaluating scholarly articles for their research. It accompanies the Scholarly Party worksheet.
When searching for information in the library catalog or a library database, it helps to strategize your search by choosing keywords for your topic. This tutorial will guide you through the process of choosing (and revising) your keywords.