Project Information Literacy

What is PIL? >

What is PIL? A short video about our ongoing research study, including our research questions and what we have discovered about how today's college students find information and conduct research for coursework and in their everyday lives.

• Watch a webcast about PIL with Lead Researcher Alison Head at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet & Society on Jan. 10th, 2012 (1:15 hrs.)


• Watch a webcast about the PIL's 2011 multitasking study with Co-Director Mike Eisenberg at the University of British Columbia, Nov. 2, 2011 (1:23 hrs.)


• Read an interview with Lead Researcher Alison Head and the Journalist's Resource's John Wihbey about why the "R" - research - needs to be in the traditional core of reading, writing and math, Jan. 26, 2012 (164K).

New Technology Study >

How do college students manage and use technology while they are in the library during the final weeks of the term? Read PIL's 2011 research report with findings from 560 undergraduate interviews conducted at 10 U.S. campuses during spring 2011 (72 pages, 6.1 MB). Watch the preview video.

• Featured as Atlantic.com's "Study of
  the Day."


• Listen to the podcast about the study at Harvard's Library Innovation Lab (26 mins.)

Smart Talks >

In our latest "Smart Talks" interview, we talked about the future design of libraries with Jeffrey Schnapp, a Harvard professor, culture historian, and pioneer in digital humanities. In PIL's interview, Jeffrey says, "...designing libraries for the digital millennium is less a matter of updating a building type with tens of centuries of history and tradition than an endeavor that cuts right to the heart of some of the most pressing challenges confronting contemporary architecture: how to devise new typologies of public space, new kinds of furnishings and appliances, new places for research, teaching, learning, and of interaction and play around/with knowledge, new citadels of expertise that “speak the language” of the era of mobile devices, ubiquitous networks, and the World Wide Web. What is a *public* space in an era in which a majority of individuals walk around in bubbles containing information and social networks?" more >

Recent Research >

• Read PIL's research paper about how today's college students conduct everyday life research, published in First Monday (April 2011).


• Read PIL's 2010 survey report (72 pages, 5.8 MB) with findings about how college students evaluate and use information, based on a survey of 8,353 college students from 25 colleges and universities in the U.S. Watch the preview video (3:05)

Tune in: PIL's Video Series >

Tune into PIL's Information Literacy Dialogs (ILD), a series of short videos about finding context for research tasks, the strategies students use for finding information, their frustrations with research, their use of Wikipedia, and procrastination. You can also subscribe to the PIL ILD channel for our future releases. (See the PIL video page for compressed WMV formats; no permission needed for re-use.)

Who's in the Sample, so far? >

See which community colleges, public colleges and universities, and private colleges and universities in the U.S. have already joined the volunteer sample. Want to join? Drop us a line.