Improving student information search: A metacognitive approach (Chandos information professional series)

Information literacy is a very important field, but it can be a challenging area, especially for postgraduate students who need to be effective in evaluating the usefulness of information resources during their search for information from various places of collection. This book is a useful contribution to research that investigates ways of improving graduate students’ information-searching behaviour. The research reported in this book considers metacognitive approaches and strategies as effective means to improve the education of graduate students in information search. The book was written by Barbara Blummer, a reference librarian for the Center for Computing Science in Bowie, Maryland, and Jeffrey M. Kenton, assistant dean for the College of Education at Towson University. The research in this book is an expansion of Blummer’s unpublished doctoral dissertation. The presentation follows a structure similar to a dissertation. The book begins by describing the background to metacognition in information search and moves on to the problem, research questions, a literature review, a description of the methodology, discussion of findings and conclusion, which are all nicely detailed in 19 chapters. The book has a lot of jargon. Readers will have to determine contextual meanings of most of the keywords used in the framework of the research. Although the book was published in 2014, most of the literature materials it refers date back to the 1960s–1990s, with no clear justification for this. Readers will need to refer to more current information literacy materials to corroborate some of the information in this book. While a mixed-method approach of qualitative and quantitative methods is described, how these methods were actually applied in the research is not made clear in the book. For instance, description of the qualitative aspect as a ‘think-aloud protocol to capture participants’ mouse movement during problem solving in Ebsco[host] database’, can be complicated for some readers. Some readers may find it difficult to comprehend how the researchers can achieve in-depth understanding of students’ searching behaviour by observing their mouse movements. But the authors do acknowledge some of the serious limitations of the research; for instance, using just eight participants from the same institution and programme for a mixed-method study makes it hard to generalise the findings. They also acknowledge the fact that participants were compensated with a $25 gift certificate, which raises questions about the originality of the findings. This book is useful as a starting point for ideas about metacognitive process in problem solving and students’ information-searching behaviour. Its rich reference base can lead readers to further understanding of key concepts in information searching.