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Library Pre-Test/Post-Test (Template 2)

York University Library
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Suggested Pre-Test Introduction:

The purpose of this information literacy quiz is to help the library instructor(s) learn from the outset about information literacy and library skills of students enrolled in this course. In this way instruction can be geared to help students improve in areas which need most attention.

Please take 10-15 minutes to answer the following questions. If you don’t know the answer please select the response “I don't know”, rather than guessing, as this will give us an indication of what areas to focus on in library instruction.

Your responses are entirely anonymous, and will not count for marks.

Suggested Post-Test Introduction:

The purpose of this information literacy quiz is to help the library instructors gauge the success of the library session with students enrolled in this course. Class responses will shed light on areas where instruction was successful in conveying concepts, and where there is room for improvement.

Please take 10-15 minutes to answer the following questions. If you don’t know the answer please select the response “I don't know”, rather than guessing, as this will give us an indication of what areas to focus on in library instruction.

Your responses are entirely anonymous, and will not count for marks.
1. What is the best thing to do when you need help with library research?






2. What are the major disciplines of knowledge?
Please choose all that apply.







3. A peer reviewed article is:






4. Which of these “finding tools” would be best to use where you need to find scholarly journal articles?






5. When using the Libraries’ catalogue generally the best way to start searching for books on a topic is to search by:






6. To find the following article you would begin searching by using?

Mitchell, R.K., Agle, B.R. and Wood, D.J. (1997) “Towards a theory of stakeholder identification and salience: Defining the principle of who and what really counts”. Academy of Management Review. Vol 22, no. 4, pp. 853-886






7. To retrieve all variants of the word “Canada” i.e. Canadian, Canada, which truncated form would be best?






8. Which of the following generally cannot be found using a library catalogue:






9. If you find a good article on your topic, of the options suggested below, which would prove most efficient in finding related articles?







10. You want to find journal articles on a topic and don’t know which database to use. Which of the following links on the Libraries’ home page would link you to a list of databases and other resources in your subject area?






11. Information found on the Internet (using search engines like Yahoo! or Google) may not be appropriate for scholarly research because (choose the most appropriate answer):





12. You need to get information on a major event that happened yesterday. Where are you most likely to find information about this event?
Please choose all that apply.









13. This is a citation to what kind of resource?
Maki, R.H. (1982). Categorization effects which occur in comparative judgment tasks. Memory & Cognition, 10, 252-264.






14. If you are not provided with instructions on which specific citation style e.g. APA, MLA to use, which of these strategies would be effective things to do?
Please choose all that apply.







15. You copy a short passage from an article you found. You put it in to your own words so it's different from the original. This way you don't need to use quotation marks. You carefully cite the source. Is this plagiarism?