The Research Process and the Library: First-Generation College Seniors vs. Freshmen

Elizabeth Pickard is Liaison, College of Education, and Assistant Professor, Reference Department; and Firouzeh Logan is Head, Reference Department, and Assistant Professor in Richard J. Daley Library at University of Illinois at Chicago; e-mail: [email protected], [email protected]. © 2013 Elizabeth Pickard and Firouzeh Logan, Attribution-NonCommercial (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) CC BY-NC In a follow-up study to the ERIAL (Ethnographic Research in Illinois Academic Libraries) Project, librarians at UIC compared the responses of first-generation college freshmen from the original study to those of seniors. The study’s aim was to determine whether student information literacy increases as a result of undergraduate education and to further explore the student research process with respect to the particular factors that inform and effect change in it. The findings showed that information literacy increased among these students, and they developed a more complex approach to the research process and the library.