Project investigators from the University of Washington iSchool choose Purdue University to release the results of the 2010 Project Information Literacy (PIL) study. Dr. Alison Head led a day-long symposium on October 27. Forty invited members who attended included representatives of the PIL Board, Board of Directors of the National Forum on Information Literacy, members of the Libraries Information Literacy Council and Operations Committee, Libraries faculty and Purdue faculty.
Dr. Head presented findings from her study, “How college students evaluate and use information in the digital age.” Purdue undergraduate students participated in this phase of her study. Dr. Head reports, “Overall, the findings suggest students use an information-seeking and research strategy driven by efficiency and predictability for managing and controlling all of the information available to them on college campuses, though conducting comprehensive research and learning something new is important to most, along with passing the course and the grade received.(http://projectinfolit.org/pdfs/PIL_Fall2010_Survey_FullReport1.pdf)
A panel of experts responded to the results, and Susan Gilroy, Head of Reference and Instruction Services at Harvard College Library, gave a presentation on how her library incorporated findings from previous phases of PIL to improve services to undergraduate students. Then, Dr. Head discussed issues related to the design of a large-scale multi-phase research study.
The PIL website has the full report of these findings, past reports, short video clips of the results, and interviews with industry leaders about information literacy: http://projectinfolit.org/.
