What to read?

When I was researching the various search engines for lesson 3, I got a bit sidetracked and was struck by a number of search tools I’d never heard of before. I spend all this time on the web sometimes looking for things in frustration, when 15 minutes making sense of the search engine could increase my efficiency and effectiveness considerably.  I think it’s about me wanting instant gratification. My father in law reads the entire manual of any new purchase before use, while I just plug and experiment. While that is effective in many ways, I miss out on things because of it. 

I wonder if part of the issue here is about the sheer volume of information and new things to learn we face today. If I took my father in law's approach for everything new, all I'd be doing is reading manuals. I came a across a 300 page book that tells you how to use your IPOD touch (which I just purchased). I'm sure I could learn things from it but is it worth the time invested? This question is a critical one we need to consider as teachers of information literacy. Weeding through all the information and deciding which is worth our valuable time is an essential aspect of information literacy. In fact, I think this is one of the greatest struggles for our students. Which criteria should they use to decide whether to read website A vs website B for their research project? The two key ones that come to mind are relevance and credibility but even they need to be unpacked. The Critical Thinking Consortium resource Tools for Thought lists indicators of care, sources of ideas, authorship and sponsorship as the key criteria to consider when assessing credibility of a source. Criteria for relevance include importance to the topic and significance tot he research question (Tools for Thought can be found at http://www.tc2.ca/wp/t4t/ ). I think developing habits of making these kinds of decisions based on criteria when doing research is an essential part of the TL's job and some thing I look forward to. Developing a comprehensive (yet simple) set of information literacy competencies  and finding ways to systematically teach the in Grades 8-12 will be one of my first priorities when I become a TL.