Summary: Commercial Software for Information Literacy assessment

[Susan Wheeler]

There does not seem to be any commercial software for assessing 
information literacy as opposed to assesing technical skills.

The only actual package I was told about was the TekXam and my informant 
stated;" Please understand that this is NOT and endorsement for either of 
these products. We tested them and for a variety of reasons chose not to 
pursue them. We used Ziff-Davis online Computer Based Training and 
assessment tools as well as the TekXam administered by the Virginia 
Foundation of Independant Colleges. " - Ziff-Davis Education is apparently 
now Element K. When I spoke to Element K's customer service, I was told 
that they trained people on various computer pakages and was referred to a 
computer store.

Some reading that was suggested:

Young, Rosemary M. & Harmony, Stephena. (1999). Working with Faculty to 
Design Undergraduate Information Literacy Programs. Neal-Schuman.

January 2001 issue of  College and Research Libraries entitled "Assessing 
Information Literacy Among Undergradutes" (pp.71-85). This article 
describes a survey developed by California-Berkeley, and two survey 
instruments served as the basis for developing the UC Berekley survey. 
These are cited in that article as:

The Wisconsin Association of Academic Librarians' Education and Library 
Use Committee's Test of Minimum Library Use Skills.
see ERIC document ED 263-926. Jo Ann Carr, ed. Minimum Library Use Skills: 
Standards, Test, and Bibliography.

Jill Coupe. (Fall 1993). Undergraduate Library Skills: Two Surveys at 
Johns Hopkins University. Research Strategies, 11, p. 188.

Following are institutions that have developed assessment surveys.

CUNY
http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/library/regalado/cunytutorial/questionnaire.htm.

 College of St. Rose 
http://www.strose.edu/Library/bi/infolitres.htm

And these websites were suggested:


http://www.infolit.org/related_sites/index.html

http://www.fiu.edu/~library/ili/iliprop.html

http://www.lmcsource.com/tech/davepro.html



Susan Wheeler, Reference Librarian
Langsdale Library
University of Baltimore
1420 Maryland Ave
Baltimore, MD 21210
swheeler at ubmail.ubalt.edu