The Importance of Search as Intertextual Practice for Undergraduate Research

Brett B. Bodemer is Humanities and Social Sciences Librarian and Head of Reference and General Education Instruction in Kennedy Library at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo; e-mail: [email protected]. © 2012 Brett B. Bodemer Attribution-NonCommercial (http://creativecommons. org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/) CC BY-NC By first reassessing the role of search in the literacy event of the lower division undergraduate paper, this article argues that searching is not a lower-order mental activity but a concurrent, integral component of the research-writing process. This conclusion has large implications for information literacy instructional design, and several practical applications to further support undergraduate research-writing are outlined.