Some Questions to Ask About that Information on the Internet

Through Walt Crawford's latest edition of Cites and Insights (March 2006 edition PDF file), I got this tip for "Information Literacy: Food for Thought" written by Marylaine Block. Ms. Block writes the well regarded e-zine Ex Libris. Ms. Block provides some very interesting questions to ask students during an instruction session. These are questions related to information found on the Internet with tools like Google, and the questions are made to make students evaluate their own assumptions about the information they find and their search processes. A couple of sample questions from her article:

• Who puts information onto the net? Who else? (See if they can come up with organizations, government agencies, publishers, commercial enterprises, etc., as well as individuals).
• Go find out five things your library provide for you that is not available on the net at all.

Readers can find the rest of the questions at the link provided. This is definitely worthy reading for any librarian who participates in library instruction. And by the way, the current issue of Cites and Insights is a good read as well, so go on over.