Undergraduate Information Seeking Behavior, E-Reference and Information Literacy in the Social Sciences

As we consider the potential impact of e-reference, librarians should keep in mind another important concern that has received much attention in recent years, namely information literacy. The composition and differential usage of specialized indexes in the social sciences – resources that are not necessarily designed for undergraduate research – and of aggregated interdisciplinary databases present challenges to achieving information literacy. Users have e-reference tools at their disposal to help them navigate information found in such resources, but it is a classic problem of reference and now e-reference that these resources are underutilized. Interviews conducted with twelve undergraduates at New York University form the basis for a case study which is used to illuminate the issues discussed herein.