Incoming Graduate Students in the Social Sciences: How Much Do They Really Know About Library Research?

Academic librarians provide information literacy instruction and research services to graduate students. To develop evidence-based library instruction and research services for incoming graduate students, the authors interviewed fifteen incoming graduate students in the social sciences and analyzed the interviews using the Association of College & Research Libraries Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education (ACRL Standards). This article discusses the findings, including the authors' assumptions of student information illiteracy, trends noted during the interview analysis, and implications for delivering information literacy training to graduate students in a group discussion modality.