Confusion, Ignorance, and Critical Thinking: Why Librarians Matter

For those of you who don’t follow Wired magazine, there’s a really interesting commentary by Clive Thompson in this month’s issue entitled “Manufacturing Confusion” (p.38).  Thompson points out the fact that “when it comes to many contentious subjects, our usual relationship to information is reversed:  Ignorance increases.”  Robert Proctor, Historian of Science at Statford,points out [...]

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Websites and Co-Co Puffs: Using the Cereal Aisle to Teach Website Evaluation

Why is shopping for cereal like surfing the web?  I’ve been asking this question to my   “one-shot ” library instruction classes, and have been pleasantly surprised by the variety of creative answers.
Things you might want to highlight when using this example:
1. Ask your students how the two things are similar.  Today someone told me [...]

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