SLMS Information Seeking Skills

As a school library media specialist one of the most basic skills I would like to instill in my second grade students is there is a world of learning beyond the internet that can be found through good information seeking skills in books and other resources. Of course, by this time I would think these students would be very familiar with searching the internet for information needed in most of their assignments for school or for personal interest. Their information seeking skills have started to develop and that will help with the positive transfer of their information seeking skills in a book I would help them to understand the same critical thinking skills they initialize in a “google” search can also be effective in a search of a dictionary or an encyclopedia. If I am able to show them the non-virtual equivalency of the internet in how research is done in a book, newspaper or through a card catalogue, it is possible to use their preexisting skills to be successful in this “new” manner of information seeking. It is through this same function I can address the issue of far transfer. The structure of a book is significantly different than that of a computer, but being able to show them the different parts of the reference book they should be able to start formulating the similarities between this archaic manner of conducting research and that of a simple internet subject search. Near transfer can be encouraged by waiting a week or so after the first lesson and giving the students a new topic of research to be conducted in a new type of reference material. That way it is possible to see if they are able to apply what they have learned in a different setting. The possibility of negative transfer will always there because these students have grown up in a world of immediate access to a huge amount of information. It may be they expect to find exactly what they are looking for by perusing an index and assuming their topic of research will jump out at them. They need to be taught to reassess their search query and be able to overcome the possible failure of a first attempt.