Find a Person

Library
Information Literacy Tutorial: F.I.R.S.T.

• Library Home

• Tutorial Home

• Chapter One: Preparing for Research

  • Introduction
  • Overheard...
  • Choosing the Topic
  • Background reading
  • Keywords
  • Synonyms
  • Review

• Chapter Two: Matching Information Needs with Information Tools

  • Introduction
  • Sitting...
  • Syllabus
  • Currency
  • Coverage
  • Authority
  • Matching Tools
  • Review

• Chapter Three: Searching for Information Using a Computer

  • Introduction
  • Grabbing an ice cream...
  • Computers in libraries
  • Communicating with the computer
  • Search Connectors
  • AND
  • OR
  • AND/OR Together
  • Words not to use
  • Practice
  • Reiview

• Chapter Four: Finding Books Using the Online Catalog

  • Introduction
  • Visiting...
  • Books
  • What is a Catalog?
  • What's in a Catalog
  • Accessing the Catalog
  • First Screen of the Catalog
  • Searching for an author...
  • Searching for an author...
  • Author exercise 1
  • Searching for a title...
  • Searching for a title...
  • Title exercise 1
  • Searching for a keyword...
  • Keyword exercise 1
  • Review

• Chapter Five: Finding Articles in Magazines and Journals

  • Introduction
  • Standing in line...
  • Journals
  • Journals v. Magazines
  • Periodical Databases
  • General and Subject indexes
  • EBSCO Academic Search Elite
  • Searching in EBSCO
  • Interpreting Search Results
  • Getting Fulltext
  • Printing
  • Not in Fulltext?
  • Review

• Chapter Six: Searching for and Evaluating Web Resources

  • Introduction
  • Late Night...
  • Websites
  • Challenges
  • Why search the Web?
  • Web is great
  • Directories
  • Search Engines
  • Evaluating Websites
  • Domains
  • Evaluation Criteria
  • Giudelines
  • Review

• Chapter 7: From Researching to Writing

  • Introduction
  • At a table...
  • From research to writing
  • Plagiarism defined
  • Wrap-up
  • Read
  • Taking notes
  • What is a paraphrasing
  • Paraphrasing to perfection
  • Good/Bad paraphrasing
  • Review

• Chapter Eight: Citing Your Sources

  • Introduction
  • In front of the library
  • Why cite sources?
  • When to cite sources
  • How to cite sources
  • Different citation styles
  • MLA Citation Style
  • MLA Works Cited
  • APA Citation Style
  • APA Reference List
  • Preparing to cite sources
  • Review

Currency: How up-to-date is this information?

No, we're not talking about money! We're talking about the timeliness of information in different information sources.

The information in periodicals is often highly current. Newspapers offer the most extreme example of this, where the information they contain reflects what's happening on a daily basis. Other news sources, such as the magazines Time and U.S. News and World Report, offer weekly digests of current events. Scholarly journals are full of articles that reflect the most recent experiments and research on various topics.

Books, on the other hand, may be current when they are written, but become less current even before they are published. So if you need the most current information on a topic, periodical articles are usually a better bet.

Websites can also be highly current, in some cases more current even than newspapers. Many news sites on the web now offer "raw news", that is, news reports straight from wire services with very little editing or none at all. Unfortunately some of what comes out as "raw news" turns out to be "wrong news"!

You won't always need the most current information available. Much valuable scholarship has been done over the years that is still as relevant today as it was when it was written. But if currency matters, you need to know which sources can give you the most up-to-date information.