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Information overload interferes with our abilities to use information effectively. It represents a challenge in searching print as well as online collections. Academic librarians have developed strategies to help their patrons reduce the effects of information overload. This article provides best practices employed by academic librarians to reduce their users’ information overload. Five themes emerged in a review of the literature: information presentation, library instruction, user strategies, librarian roles, and software technologies. Information literacy instruction remains particularly important in combating information overload since the promotion of users’ research skills facilitates their search competencies. Research on information problem solving that focuses on metacognitive strategies may help decrease information overload among users searching digital libraries. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Most libraries have fully integrated cadres of student assistants into their daily operations, including helping at points of service. As libraries rely more and more on student assistants, we must maintain exceptional customer service to our users. This requires our student assistants to possess information literacy skills that exceed those of our users. This assessment investigates the information literacy skills of first-year library student assistants when compared to the general first-year student population, and it examines if first-year library student assistants’ information literacy skills increase more than those of their peers during their first semester at college. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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]