Library research skills: A study of first-year undergraduates at the University of Victoria

Abstract

We live in a world where there is an abundance of information, available in various formats (e.g. print, electronic, spatial, sound, etc.), easily accessible, the quality, accuracy and currency of which often seeming indeterminate. Computer technologies have certainly made retrieval of information easier and faster on the one hand, but on the other, it has made the evaluation process more problematic. Anthony Comper, president of the Bank of Montreal, in his address to the 1999 graduating class at the University of Toronto, said that in today’s knowledge industries we need “people who know how to absorb and analyze and integrate and create and effectively convey information – and who know how to use information to bring real value to everything they undertake” (Anonymous, Jun 14, 1999).