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Undergraduate students are increasingly being asked to con- duct higher-level research in their areas of study. In order to address under-graduate needs, many academic librarians, especially those charged with crafting instruction, take critical thinking as a given in the teaching of information literacy skills. However, this review of the literature has revealed that, though there was some discussion of critical thinking in a library context in the mid 1980s, the concept did not really take hold until the 1990s, when higher education reform began to appear on many campuses. Additionally, the literature regarding critical thinking skills during this period exhibits four themes: (I) a lack of agreement among librarians and others on what critical thinking is and how it can be defined, (2) the importance of subject and course integration in the teaching of critical thinking skills in libraries, (3) the necessity of reaching undergraduate students, and (4) the special challenges of teaching critical thinking skills in an age when technology is changing so rapidly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research consultations can be an integral layer of instruction for an information literacy program. One-on-one instruction provides an ideal situation for librarian teachers to reinforce and deliver personalized information literacy instruction in a confusing, information-glutted environment. However, reference departments must consciously move away from a service model of source provision to one of instruction provision in order to develop and provide this much needed supplement to an information literacy program. This article discusses the implementation of a research consultation service at Missouri State University's Meyer Library, as well as the results and analysis of user satisfaction surveys administered to both the patrons and the librarian providers of the new service. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]