Community college libraries in the United States and Canada are seeing a huge demand for information-literacy courses, according to a recent survey by Primary Research Group Inc. Such courses are designed to help students find, communicate, and critically evaluate online information. The average percentage increase in the number of these classes offered from the fall semester of 2006 to the fall semester of 2007 was 38.1 percent, according to the survey.
The survey also found that about 5 percent of colleges of all types required students to take a one- or two-credit information-literacy course in order to graduate. About 115 colleges were questioned for the survey, which was conducted at the end of 2007.—Andrea L. Foster
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