What Do High School Students Know About Information Literacy? A Case Study of One University’s Feeder Schools

Abstract

This article describes a local study that seeks to illuminate first-year college students’ prior experiences with research and information literacy (IL) during high school. A small, suburban university surveyed and conducted interviews with librarians at the university’s feeder schools. The high school librarians rated students’ levels of proficiency in IL skills and described their school’s IL programs. Overall, librarians rated students’ IL levels as less than proficient and described several challenges to helping students improve these competencies, including teacher resistance, assignment design, and students’ habits around information. Opportunities exist for academic and school librarians to collaborate to improve IL instruction as well as to emphasize IL in teacher education programs.