Many Paths, One Journey: Mapping the Routes to
Information Literacy
Margy MacMillan
Students arrive at functional information literacy
from myriad directions: some learn in formal settings, others
from peers and parents; some gain experience in finding
information through hobbies, others through work. Their
paths wind through a variety of information environments,
some user-friendly, some hostile, all evolving rapidly even
as the students pass through. The trail often circles back on
itself, showing the same landmarks from different angles, and
often there are obstacles, barriers to access or understanding.
Despite all this, or because of it, most students develop an
understanding of how to find what they need. This paper uses
information from the I-SKILLS Résumé project to map some
of the paths students take so that we can be better guides
along the way.
The I-SKILLS Résumé project was originally
intended to observe student learning through a required
semi-structured reflection assignment administered at
several points in the journalism program (MacMillan 2005,
MacMillan 2008). I thought that the tool would show what
students were learning and how their information skills grew
over time. Seeing where they learned information skills,
and how they integrated learning from academic and nonacademic experiences was an unexpected bonus. LOEX 2009
presented an opportunity not only to share these results with
participants, but also to review with them the materials and
process that led to my insights. The participants contributed
valuable feedback and insights, and I thank them for their
hard work in the session.

MacMillan (Instruction Librarian)
Mount Royal College [Calgary, AB]

-Many Paths, One Journey: Mapping the Routes to...-

Literature Review
In the vast sea of publications and presentations on
information literacy (IL), comparatively little work has been
done on where, outside of the library classroom, students
obtain skills and knowledge in this domain. Much of the
literature treats students entering postsecondary education as
blank slates and assumes no prior knowledge or experience.
While there is some material on IL in the workplace (Lloyd,
2007), little connects it back to the classroom. And while there
have been great strides and initiatives to incorporate IL into
school curricula, there is surprisingly little documentation
of the effects of that instruction when the students graduate
to college or university. A notable exception to this is Gross
and Latham’s recent work on prior learning experience
which asked students to identify how they learned what they
knew about finding information. Their work has contributed
significant insights to the field, highlighting that students
learn beyond the library classroom, and that most indicate a
substantial degree of self-teaching (Gross & Latham, 2008,
Latham & Gross 2008). Neely’s work corroborates this, as
in her study, “nearly 30 % of students indicated they had
learned how to use the library on their own” (2002, p. 85).
Geffert and Bruce (1997) in a more detailed study asked
students where they learned each individual skill, and also
saw a high percentage reporting self-teaching alone or in
combination with IL instruction.
This self-teaching aspect may be linked to searching
that students do outside of their academic needs. Given, in
2002 noted that in mature students “everyday experiences
also informed their academic work” (p. 25), and that those
experiences were connected to rich lives, including hobbies,
personal interests and volunteer work. In a paper that bridges
user studies with practical suggestions for instruction, Ellis
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and Salisbury describe a large study that asked students about
prior formal instruction, but did not inquire about informal
learning, although the data revealed a strong preference for
Internet searching which may be linked to self-teaching and
everyday satisfying of information needs. They observed
that students were able to transfer IL skills from course to
course, and urge librarians to teach students in a way that
acknowledges and extends their experience.

Methodology
The I-SKILLS Résumé project is a long-term study,
now extended to ten years, of the information skills and
knowledge of journalism students. The I-SKILLS Résumé
tool was designed to encourage students to reflect on and
articulate their information skills, both as to foster metalearning, and to help them prepare for interviews, develop
portfolios, etc.
Beginning in 2003, journalism students were
asked to fill out an initial I-SKILLS Résumé in November
of their first year, after they had received some information
literacy instruction integrated into several courses.
These were emailed back to the student in subsequent
years for updating. In 2008, I took a six-month leave to
process and analyze the data. To do this, I adapted the
phenomenographic approach Christine Bruce used in
her landmark study, The Seven Faces of Information
Literacy (1997). I highly recommend her work to anyone
interested in qualitative research. The analysis involved
reading through the résumés, iteratively developing and
coding categories of statements, and looking for patterns,
convergences, differences and other interesting bits that
jumped out. This form of study allowed me to recognize
and track both the individual experiences of students and
trends that occurred over time. The data included in the
current paper come from a single cohort, 44 students who
began the program in 2005.
In a session at the LOEX conference, participants
worked to develop categories and note trends using sample
data. I mocked up I-SKILLS Résumés from actual student
statements stripped of identifying details and mixed to create
hybrid samples. Issues raised by the group were those faced

by the author – how far to go in interpreting data, what
students actually meant by some of the statements, and a lack
of articulation of where learning occurred.

Limitations and Advantages of
the Methodology
An advantage of the phenomenographic approach is
that it honors the subject, letting data emerge from the source.
This advantage is countered by a certain level of chaos in
the data. The very broadly structured résumé format elicited
statements resistant to narrow categorization and definitive
results. What I can say with confidence is that students learn
information skills in a variety of ways throughout their
academic careers. Most have some background knowledge of
finding information before they arrive, and most develop more
skills in response to a variety of factors as they progress.
Workshop participants noted that it would have been
useful to have another researcher coding data or a rubric to
improve inter-rater reliability, and I agree that the research
suffers from potential biases in my interpretation. However,
it may be that my familiarity with the students’ courses and
required professional work made it easier to distinguish
work-based influences from course-based ones. It was
interesting that those participants who left their marked-up
sample data behind after the workshop coded the statements
almost identically to how I had marked up the originals –
i.e., where I had identified a self-taught skill or one learned
at work, the participant appeared to have come to a similar
conclusion.

Results
For this paper, I examined I-SKILLS Résumés from
a single cohort of 44 students who enrolled in the journalism
program in 2005. There were clear trends on where and how
students gained information literacy skills: library classes
were noted by the highest number of students, followed by
experience from searching for personal interest, experience
from work, and self-teaching. Relatively few noted learning
from people other than the researcher, and only three students
in this cohort noted high-school experience.

Where/how they learned

Number of students reporting

Library classes in journalism/communications courses

41

Library classes in other courses

30

Searching experience related to personal interest

26

Self-teaching

13

Searching experience related to work in news settings

12

Learning from people other than the librarian

4

Searching experience related to other work

3

High school experience

3

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Discussion
Library classes in journalism/communications courses
While some students merely listed the numbers
of courses where they felt they had learned IL skills, most
provided descriptions of what they had learned that generally
corresponded to goals for the sessions, such as finding news
sources, evaluating web sites, learning about specific tools
like statistical sources or techniques such as using limiters
in Google searching. Some comments also noted transfer of
skills from journalism classes to other courses. Many of the
comments are very similar to those from a study of students in
a stand-alone course reported by Lebbin; they too noted that
instruction increased familiarity and comfort with a range of
resources, and the transferability of skills from one course
to others (2006). The high rate of response in this category
may be taken as an indication of the benefits of programintegrated instruction; students were able to describe what
they learned and many added statements that indicated they
valued the experience:
•

“I’ve done library sessions in acom 2207, acom
2211, acom 2231 and all were helpful. I will admit I
only used google(and the like) before these sessions
but now I have a broader knowledge of what there is
to search on the internet”

•

“I have done library sessions on finding the validity
of websites, on finding information on writing and
other works of communication scholars and have
learned about the world of blogs.”

•

“[I] have been able to find articles for psych and
polisci classes this semester because of what you
have taught me.”

Other courses
For non-journalism courses most students just noted
the course number, e.g., ENGL 2201. This was a more difficult
category to pars, as students did not always indicate whether
they had had a library session, or just had an assignment that
required research, however most of the classes they recorded
would have had a library session, based on our library’s
annual reports. Some students were more explicit about what
they gained from these sessions:
•

“admn 1150, anth 2201, astr 2205, engl 1112, engl
2201”

•

“Specific library sessions which introduced the
skills of general searching in the specific field. Eg
Biol 2231 introduced published experimental data
and scientific studies”

Searching experience related to personal interest
This category of the data was the most surprising
to me and raised the most discussion from the workshop
-Many Paths, One Journey: Mapping the Routes to...-

participants. The results confirm Given’s work on the
overlap between information seeking for personal needs and
searching to satisfy academic or professional requirements
(2002). Students articulated knowing how to search for
various kinds of non-academic information like sports,
music, and popular culture. Many explicitly linked interest
in the subject to proficiency, but none in this cohort linked
‘leisure’ searching to academic skills. The statements came
mainly from the “Special Expertise section of the résumés
(see example below), where there were comparatively few
statements related to information gathering for professional
or academic purposes. This category is distinguished from
self-teaching in that no student articulated where they
learned these skills — they apparently just ’knew’ them —
this may indicate that students felt no perceptible effort in
learning how to do this kind of searching, which was almost
exclusively web-based.
•

“sports, hockey, music …good at finding these
because they interest me…can find most sports info
using basic internet searching”

•

“mildly illegal copies of media, programs ... deep
searching required”

Self-teaching
In coding this category, only statements that
explicitly referred to self-teaching were included, although
it is likely that much of the ‘personal interest’ searching was
self taught. Thirteen students out of a cohort of 44 included
a statement related to self-teaching, results very close to the
30% reported by Neely (2002), but much lower than those
reported by Latham and Gross (2008). In their three studies
however, “taught myself” was choice in a list of possible
answers. The 26 students in this study who noted experience
in searching for personal interests might have chosen that
option. As with searching for personal interest, most selfteaching referred to Internet searching:
•

“self-teaching on search engines such as google,
yahoo etc”

•

“acom 2207,, acom 2211, 2231 and then I just each
myself”

Searching experience related to work in news settings.
Included in this category were statements related to
journalism work that took place in professional settings during
practica, or in the production of The Journal, a newspaper
integrated into a number of courses in the journalism program.
This paper covers events in the community, takes paid
advertising and is distributed throughout southwest Calgary.
The work involved in publishing it is at a professional level
so I categorized statements relating to that as ‘work’ rather
than ‘classes’.
•

“the experience of being an active working journalist
for the Journal has taught me about searching for
LOEX-2009 195

•

press releases and important contact info”

Conclusions

“my work at Global [a television station] helped me
develop my research skills through additional news
systems and databases”

The I-SKILLS Résumés provide a glimpse into what
the students consider to be sources of information literacy
knowledge. Some knowledge apparently grows organically
within them as they pursue their interests, but they see value
in formal IL instruction that they can relate to both academic
and work contexts. The information gained through the
résumés continues to inform my teaching and I am looking
forward to using new strategies to build connections between
searching for personal interest and information seeking for
academic and professional purposes.

Searching experience related to other work
While only three students responded in this category,
their statements highlight an understanding of which aspects
of work had a bearing on IL skills. One student had worked
at the public library while others noted work in informationintensive environments.
•

“researched travel destinations and exotic locations
to compile vacation packages for a travel agency I
used to work for”

Learning from people other than the librarian
In this cohort there were very few statements
explicitly linking learning with a person other than me.
Unlike the populations studied by Latham and Gross (2008),
no student in this cohort noted peers or friends as sources of
information. Like the self-teaching category, peer teaching
may be hidden within the statements on searching for
‘personal interest’.
•

“I already had some research skills…mainly taught
me by my cousin, a computer technician.”

•

“My instructor refreshed my knowledge on how to
find articles in acom 3383.”

High school experience
Unlike the students in other studies (Ellis &
Salisbury, 2004; Neely, 2002, Latham & Gross, 2008) very
few students mentioned high school as a source of IL skills.
That may be a result of the current environment in Alberta
where students in many schools do not have access to a fulltime librarian, still less to programs of IL instruction.

Implications for Teaching
From the data we can see that students develop
information literacy skills in response to a number of stimuli,
classes, work, and, most notably perhaps, personal interest.
This is one aspect of students’ prior experience that we
need to be more intentional about leveraging in teaching –
if students can learn to navigate complex interfaces to find
obscure information about sports and music, we can help them
transfer those skills to searching catalogues and databases
to find books and articles. Other implications for teaching
stem from the transfer of skills between work and academic
practice, and among courses. As Ellis and Salisbury note, it
would help student build on existing knowledge if they can
be made more the related skills they have already learned in
various contexts (2004).

196

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References
Bruce, C. (1997). The seven faces of information literacy.
Adelaide: Auslib Press.
Ellis, J., & Salisbury, F. (2004). Information literacy milestones:
Building upon the prior knowledge of first-year
students. Australian Library Journal, 53(4), 383.
Geffert, B., & Bruce, R. (1997). Whither BI? assessing
perceptions of research skills over an undergraduate
career. RQ, 36(3), 409.
Given, L. M. (2002). The academic and the everyday:
Investigating the overlap in mature undergraduates’
information–seeking behaviors. Library & Information
Science Research, 24(1), 17-29.
Gross, M., & Latham, D. (2008). Self-views of information
seeking skills: Undergraduates’ understanding of what
it means to be information literate. Paper presented at
the Proceedings of the 36th Annual Conference of the
Canadian Association for Information Science (CAIS),
Vancouver, B.C. Retrieved from http://www.cais-acsi.
ca/proceedings/2008/gross_2008.pdf
Latham, D., & Gross, M. (2008). Broken links: Undergraduates
look back on their experiences with information
literacy in K–12 education. School Media Research,
11 Retrieved from http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/
divs/aasl/aaslpubsandjournals/slmrb/slmrcontents/
volume11/lathamgross.cfm
Lebbin, V. K. (2005). Students perceptions on the long-range
value of information literacy instruction through a
learning community. Research Strategies, 20(3), 204218. DOI: 10.1016/j.resstr.2006.06.001
Lloyd, A. (2007). Recasting information literacy as sociocultural
practice: Implications for library and information
science researchers. Information Research, 12, 1-13.
MacMillan, M. (2005). Open resume: Magic words for
assessment. College & Research Libraries News,
66(7), 516-520.
MacMillan, M. (2009). Watching learning happen: Results of a
longitudinal study of journalism students. The Journal
of Academic Librarianship, 35(2), 132-142. DOI:
10.1016/j.acalib.2009.01.002
Neely, T. Y. (2002). Sociological and psychological aspects
of information literacy in higher education. Toronto:
Scarecrow Press.

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LOEX-2009 197

Appendix 1: Sample I-Skills Résumé
(1) = first résumé, (2)= added in second résumé, (3)=added in third

Personal: Lois Lane

Special Expertise: (What kinds of info or topics are you especially adept at finding/evaluating/using)
•

(1) I am an avid hockey fan, therefore, finding information such as hockey stats and any info on favourite teams and
players, I’ve become pretty good at. I know what to look for regarding this specific subject.

•

(2) The research classes have only helped me define those skills. I am also very good at finding information on
companies, and statistics regarding the stories I am working on. I was okay at doing all of this before last year, but
have definitely improved since taking the classes.

•

(3) The information I am especially adept at finding is sports information as that is what I look for most often. I have
also been able to find articles and information for my feature, as well as my political science and psychology classes
this semester because of what you have taught me. Many research sources I learned about were also helpful on my
first practicum.

Education: (What library sessions, classes, training, reading, self teaching etc. have you done in the area of information
skills - e.g. ACOM 2207, ENGL 2201)
•

(1) I’ve done library sessions in ACOM 2207, ACOM 2211, ACOM 2231 and ENGL 2201 in my first year. All
were very helpful. I will admit I only used google (and the like) before these sessions. But now I have a broader
knowledge of what there is to use to search on the internet.

•

(3) You refreshed my memory in ACOM 3345 last year and ACOM 4425 this year. I have also had sessions in my
PLSC 2201 class this year. I have trained myself to use Google extremely efficiently and I have used the Mount
Royal Library website to access resources – especially StatsCan.

Experience: (what types of information can you find and what tools can you use – e.g. article databases, library catalogues,
deep web sites, laws, addresses, etc)
•

(1) I’ve used the Public Library’s website a lot. I’ve also used the Mount Royal library’s website, in the library
sessions and outside them.

•

(2) I use search engines a lot – Google a lot of course. I use article databases and library catalogues as well. Mount
Royal’s as well as the public library

•

(2) I found info on joint replacements for a story I’m working on in article databases and on the Statistics Canada
site.

•

(3) I found a lot of useful information while on my DFS about the health of people in the region as well as
information about residential fires.

Other: (Anything else pertaining to your information finding/evaluating/usage skills you’d like an employer to know, e.g.
citing/analysing/bias checking)
•

198

(2) Passionate about research and the quest for knowledge

LOEX-2009

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