This lesson helps students recognize that they need to use different types of searching language in order to retrieve relevant results and to emphasize that research is an iterative process. Use when students have already formulated a research question and are about to begin searching for information on their topic.

In this lesson, students will create evaluation criteria that they can use to determine the quality of a source.

Use this lesson to help students distinguish between primary and secondary sources and use them in them in the appropriate context.

These presentation materials were used to create an online tutorial for undergraduate students about how to evaluate the authority of an information source. It includes a PowerPoint presentation and lecture notes on an event-driven publication cycle and uses the death of pop star Michael Jackson as its primary example. This resource was designed with the Association of College & Research Libraries' Framework for Information Literacy (2015) in mind and addresses two of the threshold concepts that the Framework identifies: 1) "Authority is Constructed and Contextual," and 2) "Information Creation as a Process." These materials can be easily adapted for lower-level and upper-level students, for in-person or online instruction, to support learning outcomes related to identifying information types and/or evaluating information.

According to Project Information Literacy, defining and narrowing a topic is the most difficult step for beginning undergraduate researchers. This concept mapping lesson is designed to reinforce the idea that when students are writing academic papers or creating class projects they are engaging in a scholarly conversation.

This activity shows students how to match their information needs and search strategies to appropriate search tools. In this case, students are learning how to find and use academic databases in order to locate resources that are relevant to their academic research assignment.

This activity helps students evaluate their own authority on a particular subject so that they can begin to understand how authority is created and effectively evaluate the authority of other sources they encounter. Additional evaluation criteria is also introduced.