Abstract

This paper presents a summary of the entire body of research, 2008 to 2022, from Project Information Literacy (PIL) on the strategies students use for finding, using, and creating information for college courses, in everyday life, and the workplace while navigating a vast, ever-changing information landscape. Major findings from 12 reports and seven related research articles are presented. A computational analysis of 2,475 citations from 1,961 sources provides empirical data for interactive information visualizations about the geographic reach and impact of PIL’s research on the wider educational context. This retrospective, the final publication produced as part of more than a decade of studying college students, concludes with a discussion of PIL’s practical impact on information literacy instruction and suggestions for future research.

Part One: Inception

In 2008, Project Information Literacy (PIL) began with a seemingly straightforward question: “What’s it like to be a student in the digital age?” Founded at the University of Washington’s iSchool by Alison Head, a new media scholar, and Michael Eisenberg, co-developer of the Big6 information skills curriculum, researchers had an ambitious goal: to study the fast-growing field of information literacy through the lens of the student research experience.

From the beginning of PIL, the founders set their sights on being a large-scale, ongoing, and expansive research program. We would collect empirical data from a cross-disciplinary sample of undergraduates enrolled at four-year colleges and universities and community colleges across the U.S. In turn, we would publish open access reports for the broader academic community.

The timing was right. Students everywhere were turning to search engines and public internet sites such as Google and Wikipedia for academic research more than campus library resources. A plethora of new information technologies was raising concerns about what the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) called the “escalating complexity” of the formidable information retrieval environment.1 Despite librarians’ and educators’ efforts to sharpen students’ skills for retrieving and evaluating information, results from national testing agencies remained disappointingly low.2 There was still much more to learn about students’ research processes.

PIL distinguished itself from other information literacy studies in terms of sample size, institutional breadth, and research design. Over 14 years, we published reports of 12 studies and seven related articles in peer-reviewed journals using the same datasets. Nearly 21,000 students and recent graduates from 91 institutions across the U.S., including public and private colleges and universities, were surveyed or interviewed for this collective PIL sample. Qualitative and quantitative methods were used together to capture the student research experience and reveal strategies and workarounds they use for finding, using, and creating information.

Our findings detailed the challenges students experience when interacting with information for college courses, in everyday life, and the workplace. Our recommendations put empirical research into the hands of frontline educators who used them to inform everyday practice in teaching and learning across higher education settings. In 2016, Barbara Fister, writing for Inside Higher Education, called PIL “hands-down the most important long-term, multi-institutional research project ever launched on how students use information for school and beyond.”3

This retrospective is the first summary of PIL’s entire body of research. In these pages, we highlight our major research findings and present new results from a computational citation analysis of PIL’s work over the life of the project. Moreover, we discuss societal contexts and surrounding events shaping our research as well as a variety of methods used in gathering data. Throughout, we describe the evolution of a collaborative research model that defines the PIL approach.

Part Two: The Research

Though academic institutions have long promoted the development of inquiry and research skills as an important outcome for college graduates, the term information literacy did not gain salience in the academic literature until the 1980s as concerns grew about the need to adapt education to meet the challenges of the “information age.”

Academic librarians, in particular, took on responsibility for advancing the importance of being able to find, evaluate, and use information at a time when published knowledge was growing ever more available in a variety of formats. As the web became a popular conduit for new forms of expression, the need for student instruction became even more pressing. But, while the number of publications describing how to teach information literacy grew, less was known about the student perspective: How did students actually find, evaluate, learn about and interact with information?

Even though information-seeking behavior was a subject of study among some information scientists and librarians, and a few studies focusing on student experiences were widely-read and influential,4 most of the burgeoning literature depended on small-scale research projects led by librarians that began and ended with students enrolled at the librarians’ institutions. A contributing factor was that many librarians had limited research training, and few had the mandate or resources to conduct large-scale studies.

To address this gap, we launched PIL. For more than a decade, the research team published reports from the front lines focusing on students’ encounters with information as captured in their own words. This corpus of research not only provided insight into how students use information for academic work, but also moved beyond this common focus for information literacy research by widening the lens to see how students conduct research in everyday life.

Filling a gap in the literature and making recommendations for teaching practice, PIL has explored what happens after graduation, as students move from the classroom to the workplace. When questions arose around the rise of disinformation, PIL conducted a large study of how college students consume and engage with news, and as concerns grew around the prominence of algorithmic systems in our lives, PIL again asked students about their awareness and experiences.

With its large-scale design emphasizing students’ experiences rather than instructors’ observations, PIL’s research has provided a unique snapshot of how young adults find and use information for school and beyond.5 An overview of each of these reports appears in Table 1.

Taken together, PIL’s reports provide a study of students’ experiences with information throughout their college education and beyond. In addition to our findings, each of the dozen studies offers recommendations for improving information literacy instruction. We have challenged long-held assumptions about students’ information skills as practitioners rethink both their teaching practices and aspirations for learners during the complex and rapidly evolving digital age.

Part Three: Impact

Many authors have cited PIL’s large-scale work, demonstrating its lasting influence on research, practice, teaching, and policy within and well beyond libraries. As part of this retrospective, we measured this impact by asking: How has PIL’s work informed the wider contexts of education during one of the most rapidly changing times for the internet?

In this section, we report on our computational analysis of an extensive dataset of citations to PIL publications. We began by identifying 2,127 sources that appeared from January 1, 2008 to June 30, 2022, and ended up with a total of 2,772 citations to one or more of all PIL publications — research reports, peer-reviewed articles, and Provocation Series essays. We then coded each for the country where the research was conducted and its disciplinary focus.6 As a second step, we took a subset of 1,961 sources with a total of 2,475 citations specifically referencing one or more of the reports and journal articles directly related to PIL’s 12 studies to produce three interactive data visualizations. Together, these visuals provide evidence that PIL’s influence crosses boundaries of time, discipline, and geography.

PIL’s impact on the wider contexts of education becomes even more evident in our analysis of the citation dataset shown in Figure 1, where we looked at the distribution of citations to reports from our major studies over time. Each report is listed in a row and the blue circles represent the total quantity of works that cited that PIL publication year by year.

For instance, citations to “Truth Be Told,” our 2010 landmark study on how students evaluate information, and PIL’s most-cited work, show both rapid uptake of the research, and its continuing relevance to the field. In some cases, PIL’s work is used to provide a baseline for aspects of information use that have changed, but more often, studies that cite our work rely on our findings about student behaviors and challenges, such as getting started with research and evaluating information. Both findings have remained fairly constant across our own research reports as well as in studies conducted by other scholars, validating our original research.

By far, the majority of citations to PIL’s work come from venues intended for a readership by library and information science professionals, or even more narrowly, those concerned with information literacy. Our citation analysis, however, indicates that PIL’s work also transcends disciplinary boundaries. For instance, the report “How Students Engage with News” has informed work across a wide array of academic fields, such as anthropology, criminology, and political science.

To extend the reach and relevance of our findings, PIL has also published articles in peer-reviewed open access journals. These articles allowed us to focus on particular study data, and the journals, especially First Monday, enabled us to reach broader audiences interested in new media and the impact of the internet. As shown in Figure 2, while “Truth be Told” is the most frequently cited report, the journal article “How College Students Use Wikipedia” was cited by authors writing in a wider array of disciplines. Other articles showed more similar citation patterns to the reports, although with fewer citations.

Not surprisingly, many of the disciplinary journals and theses where PIL’s work has been cited have a distinctly educational theme. PIL reports and articles have been incorporated in general works on education, Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) research, and resources for teaching in a wide variety of disciplines, such as the Journal of Veterinary Medical Education, Revista Eureka sobre Enseñanza y Divulgación de las Ciencias and Journal of Music History Pedagogy.

Geographic Reach

As well as crossing disciplinary boundaries, PIL’s influence transcends international borders. The data shown in Figure 3 illustrate where PIL’s reports and related research articles have been used to support the global expansion of information literacy research in the last decade.

While it is not surprising that PIL citations tend to concentrate on work in North America, the United Kingdom, and Australia, there is considerable activity in other regions of the world. Both in the United States and internationally, PIL’s work is frequently used to provide context to the results of smaller local studies, many of which adapted PIL survey questions.

In works citing PIL research, there are frequent allusions to a change in information literacy instruction from concrete interventions to idealistic aspirations. However, the story of PIL’s instructional impact is not always as visible as its reach and is often far more direct. In countless conversations between conference sessions and in the corridors of our institutions, we have heard how PIL reports have provided librarians with the data they needed to develop information literacy instruction that aligns more closely with student needs.

For example, as Thomas Mackey, Professor of Arts and Media at SUNY Empire State College explains, “As faculty, we often think that we need to create absolutely everything for our courses from scratch but that’s not the case; PIL’s report on algorithms, trust, and personal privacy provided an invaluable Open Educational Resource (OER) for teaching and learning for developing informed and collaborative participants for today’s evolving information environment.”7

There is further direct evidence that illustrates these practical applications of PIL work, such as the introduction of algorithmic literacy into existing credit courses,8 the development of online tutorials based on PIL resources,9 and planning materials that draw on PIL research and recommendations to advocate for changes in policy.10 A scan for links to PIL’s work at higher education and other sites quickly turned up over 100 references to various PIL works across a number of countries. Many of those links appear on library sites meant to help faculty develop more effective research assignments or are offered directly to students through resource guides and assignments. PIL’s research is also referenced in reports on local initiatives, planning processes, and program evaluations.

As a whole, our early reports present empirical data and include broad recommendations for practice to address the concerns expressed by students. These recommendations became increasingly direct and detailed in our later work as PIL evolved as a research institute. For instance, “Across the Great Divide” (2019) uses findings from the “News” study to provide a blueprint for incorporating critical understandings of the news in college classroom instruction across disciplines.

At the same time, “Covid-19: The First 100 Days of U.S. News Coverage” (2020) builds on findings from the “News” and “Algorithm” reports to develop an OER, complete with discussion questions and presentation slides. The discussion questions served as a model for resources released with the Provocation Series of essays, designed explicitly for use in teaching and learning. Our research has not only supported learning in a variety of ways; PIL itself was a learning organization, continually building on its past experience as new questions were identified for the next research effort.

Overall, PIL’s contributions to pedagogy rest on the explicit and accessible connections we have made between research results and teaching practice. As Steven Bell concludes in a 2013 Library Journal column: “We are all in the debt of PIL for exposing so many new insights into our students’ research behavior — as well as recommendations and techniques we can put into our practice.”11

Part Four: How We Did It

Research Design and Methodology

Grounded in the study of information-seeking behavior, PIL has drawn on rigorous social science methods to investigate how young adults learn, adapt, and devise problem-solving skills for finding and evaluating information. From online surveys and focus groups to content analysis and interviews, we applied a mixed methods approach to systematically collect and analyze both qualitative and quantitative data about students’ information habits and preferences for course and everyday life research.

Throughout our work, we have defined course research in broad terms: from the moment students receive a research assignment through collecting materials until turning in the final assignment to an instructor. Everyday life research has included the information problems students solve in their daily lives: staying current on news and events, purchasing a product or a service, researching health and wellness questions, or retooling the skills they learned in college to meet new workplace challenges.

As the internet has changed and networked information infrastructures have become more complex, PIL expanded its investigations in recent years, exploring the challenges students encounter as they engage with news and negotiate an uncertain and deeply polarizing information landscape riddled with algorithms.

More than 250 U.S. four-year private and public colleges and universities have been part of PIL’s Volunteer Sample. As funding became available, individual samples for studies were drawn from this pool. Students (and in some studies, faculty) were randomly selected from the larger population at each site to voluntarily participate in studies. Consistently, we have found the demographics of our survey samples reflect the broader student population as far as gender, majors, political affiliations, and grade point averages.

Collaborative Approach

Behind the scenes, hands-on teamwork and communication have always been essential components of the PIL research process and work culture. The geographically distributed PIL team meets frequently and virtually to analyze, debate, and discuss the most significant takeaways at all stages. Teams participate in crafting and refining research questions. Data collection instruments are piloted, practice runs give our new team members the opportunity to grow comfortable with the interview process, and later they train others new to PIL.

When it comes time to analyzing results, we sift through the data together, weighing the evidence and looking for patterns. We use reliability testing to ensure consistent coding as team members analyze qualitative material and meaning emerges. Statistical tests are applied to account for uncertainty and error in the results.

Those who have followed PIL’s research over the years are often surprised to learn that, unlike many research institutes, PIL doesn’t have a parent institution, a physical headquarters, a large operating budget, or permanent staff. Instead, PIL is a nonprofit research institute,12 made up of a shifting constellation of relationships, intentionally developed and nurtured by those working on the project. These collaborative relationships are rooted in a common culture that takes seriously the belief that knowledge construction is social and scholarship is a conversation. The attention to building strong, diverse relationships is also evident in our selection of research sites and our work with librarians in these institutions to expand and contextualize understanding of students’ information seeking strategies.

For individual studies, a team of five to six members was assembled from various disciplines and experiences to bring a range of perspectives to bear on the project. Though practicing librarians were a mainstay, these teams also included researchers from other fields, including media studies, information science, statistics, journalism, data visualization, information design, and computer science. Our teams deliberately included members from a variety of geographic regions, disciplinary backgrounds, and institutional affiliations.

The teamwork begins with refining questions and developing instruments and continues through gathering and analyzing data to drafting and revising reports. In the later stages we seek feedback from external reviewers and in the case of the “News” and “Algorithm” reports, panels of experts to strengthen the work.

Finally, this collaborative process extends to reception and dissemination. Because the research is both open access and intellectually accessible, the results find a wide audience beyond libraries and the educational circles where the phrase “information literacy” is commonly used. The extensive use of explanatory videos, infographics, and most recently interactive visualizations have all served to make PIL’s work accessible and appealing to a broader audience.

For a lean research institute with a primarily virtual workspace, the bonds that have developed over the years are remarkably rich, strong, genuine, and long lasting. Working collaboratively and over time from one study to the next, we have been able to widen the definition of information literacy to include post-graduation experiences, news consumption patterns, algorithmic awareness, and news analysis practices. In this context, PIL has continually expanded the boundaries of information literacy as a concept as well as its potential stakeholders.

Reflecting on what PIL has learned since its launch in 2008, we share some parting wisdom in Table 2 , findings and takeaways that surfaced repeatedly in the research findings.

So much in the world of information has changed since PIL published its first report. In 2008, academic libraries were worried about the seeming simplicity of web search compared to their growing hodgepodge of electronic resources.13 University faculty wondered what the heck to do about Wikipedia.14 Google had just begun to track individual’s searches to serve targeted ads,15 Facebook struggled to turn a profit,16 and YouTube won a media award for promoting democracy.17 Though the world of information has undergone a transformation since PIL’s founding, students tell us education for information literacy, for the most part, has not. Students continue to search for shortcuts, easy solutions, and familiar paths to meet the arcane demands of school assignments while taking a deep interest in the news but keeping a skeptical eye on the uses of algorithms to shape the information they encounter.

Yet clearly there’s an appetite for reimagining information literacy in the academy in light of widespread concern about misinformation, fake news, and conspiracy theories. As our impact analysis has shown, that appetite is especially strong in the library community, but it reaches out across disciplines. And, while our research drew on the experiences of undergraduates in the U.S., it has found a global audience. This interdisciplinary and international engagement with PIL’s research demonstrates that these reports have provided a solid foundation for both new research and innovative teaching practices; ones that are clearly needed. Given this interest, as our information environment grows ever more complex, we have confidence that educators and practitioners will continue to raise essential questions and propose creative approaches to information literacy awareness and education in a rapidly changing and challenging future. ∎

This report is dedicated in memory of Mark S. Pollock, Project Information Literacy’s legal counsel, 2013 – 2021. ❋

Preferred citation format: Alison J. Head, Barbara Fister, Steven Geofrey, and Margy MacMillan, The Project Information Literacy Retrospective: Insights from more than a decade of information literacy research, 2008-2022 (12 October 2022), Project Information Research Institute, https://projectinfolit.org/publications/retrospective

The Project Information Literacy Retrospective has a Creative Commons (CC) license of “CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.” This license allows others to share, copy, adapt, and build upon the work non-commercially, as long as the source — Project Information Literacy — is credited and users license their new creations under the identical terms.

Supplementary Resources

There is a landing page with additional resources from the PIL Retrospective. All of these materials are open access and can be used without permission from PIL; to learn more, see https://projectinfolit.org/publications/retrospective.

Acknowledgments

PIL Retrospective Team

• Alison J. Head, Ph.D.
  Founder and Executive Director
• Barbara Fister
  Inaugural Scholar-in-Residence, PIL
  Emerita Professor, Gustavus Adolphus College, Minnesota
• Steven Geofrey
  Senior Researcher in Information Design, PIL
  Front-end software developer, Growth Lab, Harvard Kennedy School
• Margy MacMillan
  Senior Researcher, PIL
  Professor Emerita, Mount Royal University, Canada

Contributors

• Alaina Bull
  Research Analyst, PIL
  Manager of Public Services, The University of Washington Tacoma
• Kirsten Hostetler, Ph.D.
  Research Analyst, PIL
  Instruction and Outreach Librarian, Central Oregon Community College

Editing

• Jena Gaines
• Meg McConahey

Cover Photo

• Photo by Dilok Klaisataporn on iStock

PIL Board Members: Past and Present

• Meredith D. Clark, Northeastern University
• Sue Gilroy, Harvard University
• Kei Kawashima-Ginsburg, Tufts University
• R. David Lankes, University of Texas at Austin
• Peter Morville, Semantic Studios
• David Nasatir, U.C. Berkeley (Emeritus)
• Lee Rainie, Pew’s Internet & American Life Project
• Karen Schneider, Sonoma State University
• John Wihbey, Northeastern University

PIL Team Members: Past and Present

• Elizabeth Berman, Tufts University
• Elizabeth Black, The Ohio State University
• Alaina Bull, University of Washington
• Jonah Bull, University of Washington
• Laureen Cantwell, University of Memphis
• Melody Clark, University of Washington
• Erica DeFrain, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
• Michael Eisenberg, University of Washington
• Jordan Eschler, University of Washington
• Sarah Evans, University of Washington iSchool
• Kate Faoro, University of Washington
• Michelle Fellows, University of Washington
• Barbara Fister, Gustavus Adolphus College
• Sean Fullerton, University of Washington
• Jena Gaines, Editing and review
• Steven Geofrey, Harvard University
• Sue Gilroy, Harvard College
• Alison Head, Executive Director
• Merinda Kaye Hensley, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
• Kirsten Hostetler, Central Oregon Community College
• Kenny Joseph, Northeastern University
• Christine Lee, University of Washington
• Kristine Lu, Columbia University
• Margy MacMillan, Mount Royal University
• Chris Malinowski, University of Washington
• Meg McConahey, Editing and review
• Patty Northman, University of Washington
• Bridget Peery, Northeastern University
• Sara Prahl, Colby College
• Ann Roselle, Phoenix College
• Carolyn Salvi, Tufts University
• Neeley Silberman, Saint Mary’s College of California
• Michele Van Hoeck, California State University Maritime Academy
• Sarah Vital, Saint Mary’s College of California
• Sarah Wachter, University of Washington
• Jessica Yurkofsky, Harvard University

Institutional Sites and Research Liaisons: 2008 – 2019

• Augustana College Rock Island, Carla Tracy
• Belmont University, Jenny Mills
• Boise State University, Sara Seely
• Brandeis University, Laura Hibbler
• Butler Community College, Gene George
• California State University Maritime Academy, Michele Van Hoeck
• California State University, Northridge, Lynn Lampert
• Chaffey College, Marie Boyd
• City College of San Francisco, Wendy Owens
• City University of Seattle, Mary Mara
• Colby College, Sara Prahl
• Colgate University, Clarence Maybee
• The College at Brockport, State University of New York, Mary Jo Orzech
• College of William & Mary, Paul Showalter
• Colorado Mesa University, Sylvia Rael
• Colorado State University, Cathy Cranston
• Columbus State Community College, Steve Mallett
• Corban College, Garrett Trott
• Dartmouth College, Laura Barrett
• DePaul University, Terry Taylor, Scott Walter
• Diablo Valley Community, Andy Kivel
• Eastern Michigan University, Suzanne Gray
• Emporia State University, Terri Summey
• Felician University, Paul Glassman
• Foothill College, Will Baty (library consultant)
• Frederick Community College, Colleen McKnight
• Fulton-Montgomery Community College, Michael Daly
• Gettysburg College, Kerri Odess-Harnish
• Gonzaga University, Theresa Kappus
• Grinnell College, Phil Jones
• Gustavus Adolphus College, Barbara Fister
• Harvard College, Deborah Garson, Sue Gilroy, Karen Heath, Alex Hodges
• Holy Names University, Karen Schneider
• Illinois State University, Dane Ward
• Indiana University, Kokomo, Polly Boruff-Jones
• John Tyler Community College, Sharon Weiner, Miles Keller
• Keene State College, Celia Rabinowitz
• Linfield College, Jean Caspers
• Mesa Community College, Marjorie Leta
• Mills College, Carol Jarvis
• Mount Royal University, Margy MacMillan
• New Mexico State University, Theresa Westbrock
• Northeastern University, Patrick Yott
• Northern Kentucky University, Stephanie Henderson, Mary Chestnut
• Northern Michigan University, Mollie Freier
• The Ohio State University, Nancy O’Hanlon, Beth Black, Susan Scott
• Oklahoma State University, Matt Upson
• Oregon State University, Anne-Marie Deitering
• Ozarks Technical Community College, Sarah Fancher
• Portland Community College, Donna Reed
• Purdue University, Sharon Weiner, Clarence Maybee
• Ryerson University, Madeleine Lefebvre
• Saint Mary’s College of California, Sarah Vital
• Saint Mary’s College of Maryland, Celia Rabinowitz
• Salisbury University, Beatriz Hardy
• San Francisco State University, Ned Fielden
• Santa Barbara City College, Kenley Neufeld
• Santa Clara University, Jennifer Nutefall, Nicole Branch
• Santa Rosa Junior College, Nancy Persons, Will Baty
• Shoreline Community College, Clair Lev Murata
• Southern Nazarene University, Arlita Harris
• State College of Florida Manatee-Sarasota, Mark Marino
• Stonehill College, Cheryl McGrath
• Temple University, Krystal Lewis
• Tri-County Technical College, Mary Orem
• Trinity University, Anne Jumonville
• Tufts University, Laura Walters
• University of California, Santa Cruz , Greg Careaga
• University of Central Florida, Corinne Bishop
• University of Miami, Kelly Miller
• University of Michigan Doreen Bradley
• University of Minnesota, Kate Peterson
• University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Patricia Iannuzzi
• University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Alison Bradley
• University of North Florida, Lisandra Carmichael
• University of Puget Sound, Jane Carlin
• University of Redlands, Shana Higgins
• Volunteer State Community College, Louise Kelly
• West Valley Community College, Maryanne Mills
• West Virginia University, Carroll Wilkinson
• Winston-Salem State University, Julie Dornberger
• University of Alaska Anchorage, Deb Mole
• University at Albany, Trudi Jacobson
• The University of Arizona, Jill Newby
• University of Arkansas-Fayetteville, Necia-Parker Gibson
• University of California Irvine, Cathy Palmer
• University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Lisa Janicke Hinchliffe
• University of Kansas, Erin Ellis
• The University of Texas at Austin, Michele Ostrow
• University of Washington, Deb Raftus, Betsy Wilson, Jill McKinstry, Heather Gillman
• Wake Forest University, Rosalind Tedford
• Wellesley College, P. Takis Metaxas, Pamela Taylor

We thank the following organizations for their generous support

• Association of College and Research Libraries
• Berkman-Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard
• Harvard Graduate School of Education
• The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS)
• John S. and James L. Knight Foundation
• John S. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
• The Ohio State University Libraries
• Rothman Family Foundation
• School of Library and Information Sciences, University of South Carolina
• University of Arizona School of Information
• The University of Illinois Libraries
• University of Washington iSchool
• Cengage Learning
• Cable in the Classroom
• Electronic Resources and Libraries (ER&L)
• ProQuest

Endnotes

1. “Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education,” 2000, Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL), https://alair.ala.org/handle/11213/7668
2. When Educational Testing Services tested 6,300 students from U.S. campuses in 2007, “only 13 percent could be considered information literate.” For further reading, see Irvin R. Katz, “ETS research finds college students fall short in demonstrating ICT literacy,” C&RL News, January 2007, 35-37, https://crln.acrl.org/index.php/crlnews/article/viewFile/7737/7737
3. Barbara Fister, “Information literacy and recent graduates: New from PIL,” Inside Higher Education, January 7, 2016, https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/library-babel-fish/in
4. See, for example, Carole Kuhlthau’s 1991 article, “Inside the search process: Information seeking from the user’s perspective,” Journal of the American Society for Information Science 42(5): 361-371, and subsequent publications. Her initial study outlining an influential six-stage model of the search process had a study sample of 26 students enrolled at the same high school.
5. As a point of reference, nine out of 10 of the students participating in PIL research projects, where college students were subjects, were between the ages of 18-25 and only one in 10 were 25 or older.
6. This dataset is publicly available and may be of use to researchers both as a model for research on impact and for studies on long term trends in information literacy research. For more information, see https://projectinfolit.org/publications/retrospective.
7. Personal communication, August 5, 2022.
8. See for example this syllabus by Phil Sheail and Michael Gallagher at the University of Edinburgh for Information Literacies in Digital Education, https://digital.education.ed.ac.uk/course/information-literacies-digital-education
9. See for example Oklahoma State University’s Information Literacy Skills in the Workplace, https://library.okstate.edu/tutorials/help-me-find-sources/information-literacy-skills-in-the-workplace
10. See for example Understanding the Research Needs of Reed College Students, https://www.reed.edu/e2s/goals/needs-assessment-report.html
11. “What’s next for Project Information Literacy: Interview with Alison Head,” Steven Bell: From the Bell Tower, Library Journal, Dec. 4, 2013, https://www.libraryjournal.com/story/whats-next-for-project-information-literacy-interview-with-alison-head-from-the-bell-tower
12. PIL initially had an association with the University of Washington’s iSchool, and in 2013 incorporated as an independent nonprofit research institute, registered as a 501(c)(3), shortly after Dr. Alison Head, PIL’s Director, became a Research Fellow at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University. In 2015, Head joined the metaLAB (at) Harvard as a Senior Researcher, a position she still holds along with running PIL.
13. Jenny S. Bossaller and Heather Moulaison Sandy, “Documenting the conversation: A systematic review of library discovery layers,” College and Research Libraries 78(5), 2017: 602-619, https://crl.acrl.org/index.php/crl/article/view/16714
14. Barbara Fister, “Wikipedia and the challenge of read/write culture,” Library Issues 27(3), Jan. 2007, http://homepages.gac.edu/%7Efister/LIWikipedia.pdf
15. Saul Hansel, “Behavioral targeting: Google puts cookies to work,” The New York Times, June 28, 2008, https://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/29/business/worldbusiness/29iht-ad30.1.14068922.html
16. Roger McNamee, “Sheryl Sandberg made Facebook into a giant - but at a cost to the world.” Time, June 2, 2022, https://time.com/6183520/sheryl-sandberg-facebook-legacy/
17. “YouTube,” Peabody Awards, 2008, https://peabodyawards.com/award-profile/youtube-com/