Finding Information Studies

These studies examine students’ information seeking practices through the lens of their experiences—their needs, strategies, and workarounds—as they navigate complex networked spaces using rapidly changing technologies. The research broke new ground by establishing baseline information about students’ approaches to online and print information: how they found, evaluated, and used a variety of sources to complete coursework and solve information problems in their everyday lives.

• 1Finding Context: What Today’s College Students Say about Conducting Research in the Digital AgeFebruary 4, 2009
• 2Lessons Learned: How College Students Seek Information in the Digital AgeDecember 1, 2009
• 3Assigning Inquiry: How Handouts for Research Assignments Guide Today’s College StudentsJuly 13, 2010
• 4Truth Be Told: How College Students Evaluate and Use Information in the Digital AgeNovember 1, 2010
• 5Balancing Act: How College Students Manage Technology while in the Library during Crunch TimeOctober 12, 2011

Passage Studies

These studies investigate how early adults navigate major information transitions in their lives as they move from high school to college, from college to the workplace, and from college students to lifelong learners. The research delves into how students experience profound changes in life at the intersection of evolving technologies, pedagogies, and expectations within the contexts of academic libraries, workspaces, and everyday life.

• 6Learning Curve: How College Graduates Solve Information Problems Once They Join the WorkplaceOctober 15, 2012
• 7Learning the Ropes: How Freshmen Conduct Course Research Once They Enter CollegeDecember 4, 2013
• 8Staying Smart: How Today’s Graduates Continue to Learn Once They Complete CollegeJanuary 5, 2016
• 9Planning and Designing Academic Library Learning Spaces: Expert Perspectives of Architects, Librarians, and Library ConsultantsDecember 6, 2016

Zeitgeist Studies

These studies widen the scope of information literacy research by exploring key questions of our time, especially for early adults: how they engage with news they trust in light of “fake news,” how algorithms shape their beliefs about the world around them, and how their information worlds inform their understanding of Covid-19 and climate change. Ultimately, this research investigates how students can develop information agency when confronting complex, polarizing issues with lasting implications.

• 10How Students Engage with News: Five Takeaways for Educators, Journalists, and LibrariansOctober 16, 2018
• 11Information Literacy in the Age of Algorithms: Student Experiences with News and Information, and the Need for ChangeJanuary 15, 2020
• 12Covid-19: The First 100 Days of U.S. News Coverage: Lessons about the Media Ecosystem for Librarians, Educators, Students, and JournalistsSeptember 15, 2020
• 13The Project Information Literacy Retrospective: Insights from More than a Decade of Information Literacy Research, 2008-2022October 12, 2022
• 14How Information Worlds Shape Our Response to Climate ChangeJuly 9, 2024

Provocation Series

The Provocation Series was an occasional series featuring timely essays about what “literacy” means in all its manifestations. Released at a time when finding reliable news and information was more difficult than ever, we published a new long-form essay every two months to spark discussions about pressing issues, ideas, and concerns between 2021 – 2022.

Smart Talk Interviews

Smart Talks were informal email-based conversations with leading thinkers about new media, information-seeking behavior, and the use of technology for teaching and learning in the digital age. The interviews were a long-running occasional series produced by Project Information Literacy (PIL) between 2010 – 2024.