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37 3

LISTEN AND LEARN SESSIONS

What If There Are No “Good” 
Sources of Information?
Considering a Paradigm Shift in Information 
Literacy Instruction
Kate Wimer, Research & Instruction Librarian, George Fox University

ABSTR ACT: The last decade has seen major shifts in culture, the infor-
mation landscape, and library instruction. For most of that time, librar-
ians have focused on helping students question information sources 
as a reaction to the rise in misinformation and disinformation and in 
response to specific requests from those who look to the library as a 
source of “good” information. Yet, students are still not critical enough 
of information that aligns with previous beliefs or hypercritical enough 
of information that does not, reinforcing polarized thinking. There has 
been a paradigm shift in the information environment and among 
our students: specifically, that our students’ struggle with evaluating 
authority may stem from over-critical approaches to research and 
increasing lack of trust in expertise. If this is true, continuing to teach 
heavily deconstructive approaches is not only unhelpful, but it may 
also contribute to the issue. This session ended with some thoughts 
on ways librarians might engage kindness, curiosity, and generosity 
to adapt our instruction to this new paradigm.

There is a lot of conversation around the speed of change in the 
modern era. Whether or not you are considering the exponential 
growth of the internet or the likely number of jobs a student will 
work that have yet to be invented, we are all aware that life now 
is different from what it was last year, last decade, or last century. 
Librarians in particular are aware of this rate of change (and the 
things that remain the same), and for the most part have worked 
to stay current or even anticipate it. However, I believe that one 
aspect of our work no longer reflects the environment in which we 
operate: information literacy instruction, especially the evaluation 
of information and authority. 



374    ATL A 2024 PROCEEDINGS

Let’s begin by considering a traditional undergraduate student as 
a freshman in 2022. Many of us understand intellectually that they 
are digital natives and that they grew up in a world different from 
ours, but I suspect that we don’t always fully contextualize those 
realities. For example, if our student was 18 years old in the fall of 
2022, then they were likely born in 2003 or 2004. They would have 
been three years old when the iPhone was introduced in 2007.

Let’s fast-forward to their first school “research project”, say 
around second grade. Perhaps they had to make a poster on the water 
cycle, the Olympian gods, or brachiosaurus. This would place their 
first instruction about research methods and tools around 2011, the 
year that Wikipedia celebrated its tenth anniversary. Encyclopedia 
Britannica published its last print edition the year prior in 2010 
(Bosman 2012)—they have been online since 1994. Kindle Direct 
Publishing had been launched four years prior in 2007.

I encourage you to really think about this environment for a 
moment. Wikipedia is well-established (as is the refrain to stay away 
from it for “serious” research). Ebooks are here, and the market for 
self-published works is beginning to thrive. Print reference is on the 
way out. Our student was still likely taken to a library and shown 
books, but especially when you add the ubiquity of Google and the 
smartphone (which dates to the time of their likely earliest memo-
ries), their cultural context for research is very different.

Let’s keep moving. Our hypothetical student continues to seventh 
grade—the year 2016, when misinformation, disinformation, and 
fake news hit the cultural discourse. Librarians and teachers all 
begin to offer lessons on fact checking and critical analysis. Our 
student might get their first smartphone around this time—around 
80% of their age group will have a smartphone when they start high 
school (Sandler 2021). They will be sophomores when the COVID-19 
pandemic fully lands in the U.S., with its implications for learning, 
communication, and trust in experts. They have spent the second 
half of their traditional K-12 years in an information environment 
that may feel like it offers more questions than answers, surrounded 
by warnings against false information and worries about untrust-
worthy sources.

As we consider this student and their context, I’d like to raise a 
series of observations from my reading and experiences of the past 



Listen and Learn Sessions    375

few years that lead me to believe we’re operating in a new paradigm. 
I don’t believe I have the whole picture at this time, but I see a broad 
picture taking shape. I also don’t have a fully developed response 
to the shift, but I do have some questions, reflective challenges, and 
small changes that I believe could help librarians, especially librar-
ians in faith-based institutions, better respond to this shift.

OBSERVATION 1: A NEW INFORMATION ENVIRONMENT NEEDS NEW 
RULES

In their excellent book Verified, Mike Caulfield and Sam Wineburg 
share a compelling argument for changing the way we teach infor-
mation and media literacy, specifically pointing out that many of 
our current methods and preferences speak to an information 
environment that predates the internet. They point to the infor-
mation environment of their childhoods, when there were more 
bottlenecks in information sharing, most with a standard mechanism 
for discerning authority. As they write, “The problem is that we left 
the three-channel-TV world years ago, but the skills many people 
learn today remain stuck there…. You may have been born in 2003, 
but you’ve likely been taught a media literacy approach from 1978” 
(Caulfield and Wineberg 2015, 3).

Don’t get me wrong, I believe in teaching many of those 1978 
skills to our students. Especially in areas like theology, they are 
still prevalent, and where they aren’t obvious, they often underpin 
the structures of our newer systems. The problem is neglecting to 
contextualize those older methods and to add to them newer ways 
of navigating information as it is available now. Not only is it a dis-
service to our students, but it also raises questions about our own 
authority.

OBSERVATION #2: WINNING THE BATTLE, LOSING THE WAR

One of my favorite novels is Ender’s Game, by Orson Scott Card. In it, 
Ender is sent to Battle School in space where he and his classmates 
are pitted against each other in zero-gravity war games. One of the 
many takeaways from the novel is that it is easy to over-complicate 



376    ATL A 2024 PROCEEDINGS

and over-gamify an objective. For those of us who are in regular con-
tact with student researchers, I’d like raise the following questions:

• What is the objective of education?
 ◌ According to us (educators, librarians, higher education 

professionals)?
 ◌ According to our culture (our media portrayals, 

broader cultural discourse, and conversations with our 
communities)?

 ◌ According to our students themselves?

I’m a bit of an idealist. As a librarian, I’d say that the objective of 
education is to create lifelong learners who are equipped to meet 
the challenges of our future and to use their gifts in support of their 
communities. In contrast, I’d suggest that our culture largely tells 
our students that the objective of education is to get a good job, to be 
better workers, etc. Many of our students seem to have a sense that 
the objective of education is to succeed. For many, that looks like a 
job, but there’s this almost nebulous sense of a college diploma being 
little more than one of the final stepping stones to adulthood and the 
American dream. This flattening and commodification of education 
can lead to gaming the system. In many ways, it’s exactly what we’ve 
trained our students to do in order to meet us in the hallowed halls 
of higher education. Consider once more the hypothetical freshman 
of 2022. As they prepared their college applications, they were told 
to be careful of their GPA, to build a portfolio of extracurriculars and 
interests that would get them into college. Students who are worried 
about making less than an A aren’t predisposed to ask risky ques-
tions or to engage in learning practices that might lead to failure. If 
everything is done in service of reaching the next goal, there’s not a 
lot of room for personal development and squishy questions. This is 
how we end up with students who ask things like “Can’t you just tell 
me what you want me to think?” in their general education classes.

In this context, let’s also consider another set of questions:

• What happens if students fail to meet the objectives 
of education?

 ◌ According to us?
 ◌ According to our culture?
 ◌ According to our students?



Listen and Learn Sessions    377

Again, in my idealistic space, I’d say that failure is a learning oppor-
tunity, and usually not that big of a deal. However, a student who 
fails a class or who fails to complete college is not seen favorably 
by our culture. Take a minute to think about the ways such failures 
are usually portrayed in television, books, or film—most of the 
characterizations are not nice. What about our students, who view 
the objective of education as getting to that successful life? Given 
the stakes they are holding for their education, failure in college 
suddenly feels much more fraught.

Additionally, it may be worth connecting this idea to that shift-
ing information paradigm we already identified, specifically online 
communities and identities. A third related question arises: What 
do our students think happens when they are wrong (and what 
does “wrong” even mean)? In an information-rich online society, 
our ideas become part of our identity in a new way. In the absence 
of geographical boundaries, we form communities around ideas: 
they identify the edges of our groups and those who are other. If I 
profess the wrong idea in my online community, my connection to 
it is potentially weakened. I’m now not a perfect fit for my current 
community—I might even be part of some other group entirely. For 
our students, who spent so much time during the COVID-19 blip with 
little other than an online community, this potential loss is felt very 
deeply, and I believe it contributes even further to a desire to find 
“right” answers that will help them safely navigate to that end-goal 
of diploma and success (whatever that might mean). Without inter-
vention, I think we have trained our students to “win” assignments 
and even classes, but possibly to “lose” on the overall objectives of 
a college education.

OBSERVATION #3: INFORMATION RICH AND ATTENTION POOR

There is plenty of literature out there on the importance of wonder, 
curiosity, boredom, and uncertainty (some examples include Fister 
2022; Zomorodi 2017; and Turkle 2017), and as any modern American 
likely knows, these are states of being that are easy to avoid when 
we have the internet in our back pockets. Rather than speculate 
or problem-solve our way to answer trivia questions, we ask Siri. 
If we start to feel bored or lonely, it’s easy to pull out social media 
and start scrolling. If we’re uncertain, a few quick flicks can find 



378    ATL A 2024 PROCEEDINGS

someone who is willing to confidently assert an answer. More than 
providing an easy way to avoid unpleasant affects, however, I believe 
that having quick answers in our pockets leads to two expectations 
of information that may also contribute to student behaviors in the 
classroom and library.

The first relates to the refrain to “research for yourself”. On the 
one hand, I can get behind this phrase—it’s encouraging students 
to research! On the other, there’s this pernicious assumption that 
arises around it that suggests that any lay person can not only locate 
and access answers to any given question, but can understand and 
contextualize them across any possible subject. An example of this 
playing out is the freshman student with no medical training who 
wants to read literature on a medical diagnosis or condition, but 
rejects authoritative popular resources (e.g., the Mayo Clinic, Centers 
for Disease Control and Prevention, etc.) as potentially biased or 
not primary enough in favor of medical literature in a database 
like PubMed.

The other expectation that arises is much less obvious, but I can see 
its effect across my consultations with students. If fake information 
exists—that is, information that is full of bias and unverifiable—then 
there is some sense that its opposite must also exist: information 
that is completely free of bias and fully verifiable. I don’t think that 
anyone would actually claim this exists if questioned, but the sug-
gestion of it can be seen in my consultations when students reject 
pertinent resources for a lack of this hypothetical perfection. I can 
remember one case of a student needing definitions of major tropes in 
anime series for a (relatively short) informative speech. The website 
TVtropes.com was rejected as a “bad source” because it was a ‘dot-
com’ website. In several of my one-shots, I ask students to evaluate 
a variety of unconventional sources related to Bigfoot in the Pacific 
Northwest (Wimer, 2023). No matter how I preface the assignment 
to tell them that they can use every source provided for something, 
I always end up with a string of criticisms and rejections, sometimes 
of sources that are actually extremely valuable for the prompt.

Finally, it may be worth considering cognitive load in the context 
of these expectations and the picture we’re building of the modern 
student experience. Essentially, we have a resource allocation prob-
lem. Herbert Simon wrote in 1971 that attention is a limited and 

http://TVtropes.com


Listen and Learn Sessions    379

precious resource, and it is consumed by information. He went on to 
state, “a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and a 
need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance 
of information sources that might consume it” (Simon 1971, 40–41). 
Without any training in how to allocate our attention, we’re more 
likely to default to systems that ease cognitive load. Consider the 
researcher who encounters new information. One way to check its 
veracity is to compare it to existing knowledge or experiences. If 
attention is a precious resource, information that seemingly aligns 
with our existing beliefs may not seem to merit close examination. 
By contrast, information that feels less plausible (either because it 
is contrary to existing belief or because of its association with an 
“other”) may merit extreme prejudice. Both responses allow quick 
processing of new information without too much attention needed. 
Without reflection and intention, our autopilots may reinforce our 
existing biases.

I believe that information literacy is a balance between criti-
cal and credible thinking (credible here meaning “believing”). An 
information-literate individual should ask critical questions of 
new information, but at some point, there must be some credibility 
placed in authority, especially in areas where the researcher lacks 
knowledge. For years (at least since our hypothetical student was 
in seventh grade), librarians and teachers and even the cultural dis-
course has been encouraging our students to think more critically, 
to distrust what they find on the internet, and to be careful of the 
dangers of misinformation. This makes a lot of sense, given the rise 
in polarization and misinformation that we’ve seen, but we’re still 
seeing the same “non-critical” behaviors even as our students clearly 
understand how to critically take apart a given source. Add in the 
current trend of declining trust in authority, and a new possibility 
rises. I believe that our students aren’t struggling with evaluating 
sources because they aren’t critical enough; I believe that they are 
struggling because they don’t know how to give appropriate trust 
and credibility to authority. If this is the case, continuing to push 
the critical approach (as is the trend in many information literacy 
curricula) may make the problem worse.



380    ATL A 2024 PROCEEDINGS

OBSERVATION #4: UNHELPFUL LIBRARY MYTHS

Finally, I think there are some myths (used here as “central tenets 
and ideals of a given group”) around libraries and information that 
also must be considered in relation to the issues we’re seeing. Some 
positive examples:

• “Library people are helpers.”
• “Libraries are about connections.”
• “Information creation is a process and scholarship 

is a conversation.”

Some less helpful examples:

• “Library materials are always credible/
authoritative.”

• “‘Experts’ are infallible (or think that they are).”
• “Information at the library is always better than 

information from the open web.”
• “The internet killed the library.”

Many of these examples relate back to Observation #1: that we’re 
still operating (especially according to cultural perception) under 
an old information paradigm. There was a time when the books at 
the library represented one of the highest forms of authority easily 
available to the general public. Publication in a book that had been 
collected by a library suggested that information had passed several 
thresholds for fact-checking. Besides that, where else were you going 
to find a full list of the noble gasses or the official rules of Major 
League Baseball? However, our current paradigm is such that it’s 
not only faster to find the state law on turning left when the light is 
red in Oregon.gov, it’s likely to be more authoritative than anything 
in a booklet at the library, thanks to the ease of publishing updates 
online. This is a fairly logical process, and yet, I know I’m not alone 
in working with assignments for undergraduates that encourage 
them to pick topics like “White Hat Hacking” or “Weird Ways that 
Gerbils Die,” but still require that they use peer-reviewed literature 
or books from academic collections and avoid citing websites.

http://Oregon.gov


Listen and Learn Sessions    381

CURIOUS GENEROSITY FOR OUR STUDENTS

So what do we do with each of these observations? What changes 
might help us adapt to the new paradigms and prepare students to 
engage with information as it exists now and in the future? I think 
the heart of the approach for me is one of curious generosity. I’ve 
become convinced that I need to check my defaults against each 
student who is actually in front of me and consider some of the 
following questions:

• Where are they really on information literacy?
• What has their education taught them to expect? To 

think is achievable?
• What pressures and emotions do they feel?
• What do they actually want to accomplish, and can 

we meet them in new ways to achieve those things?
• Where can we hold space and grace for them?

If we don’t stop to take stock of where our students are, or if we 
don’t offer them generosity and respect for their contexts, I believe 
our current approach will not achieve our actual objectives. I also 
think that there are some shifts we can make in our practice that 
might help us first to see the answers to these questions, and then 
to respond better.

“CRITICAL IGNORING” AS A SKILL

This is an idea proposed by a group of researchers that includes the 
previously mentioned Sam Wineberg, and they’ve published widely 
on it (Hertwig et al. 2023; Kozyreva et al. 2023). Essentially addressing 
the issue of information overload and the scarcity of attention, criti-
cal ignoring acknowledges that there is more information to receive 
than I have the capacity to process and encourages a researcher (or 
just a consumer of media) to be intentional about what they give 
their attention to. Many librarians are already talking openly about 
the demands for our attention, but I wonder if we could find ways 
to work this concept into more of our practices. One big part of this 
that we may be well-positioned to do is helping students acknowl-
edge, understand, and honor the limits of their understanding and 
access to information. We already do some of this when we talk to 
students about scoping their topics. For example, if a paper on the 



382    ATL A 2024 PROCEEDINGS

history of librarianship in the U.S. is only supposed to be ten pages 
long, one may want to focus on a particular era or region of the 
U.S. and ignore information (however excellent or interesting) that 
doesn’t connect to that facet of the topic. Can we help translate this 
skill into the broader disposition of critical ignoring and foster more 
conversation (and hopefully awareness) on the issue?

KINDNESS TOWARD STUDENTS AND TOOLS

I believe that our students are operating in a learning environment 
that feels very high stakes and even occasionally hostile. No good 
learning happens when the student feels threatened, and I believe 
our best learning happens when we engage our communities in 
kindness. In fact, some research is beginning to suggest that engaging 
kindness boosts innovation (Borton and Fratantoni 2024). There are 
two places where I think library instruction can direct kindness: first 
to our students, and then to the information we encounter together.

One of the kindest things we can offer our students is to acknowl-
edge them as people with existing knowledge, skills, and history. They 
do not come to us uneducated (even if their current understanding 
is not the one we wish they had). When met with utter dismissal 
of what I would assess as quality sources, my instinct is to double 
down and tell students that they are being overly critical, but when 
I manage to pause and acknowledge that they’ve done a good job 
spotting potential issues in the suggested resources, the conversation 
that follows can be one of continued learning rather than failure 
and frustration. They’ve done good work in finding the flaws; can 
they go a step further (welcome to collegiate-level research) and 
find the strengths?

We can also keep in mind that we are not the only voices they 
hear speaking about issues of information literacy. They are hear-
ing comments, narratives, and sometimes even instruction about 
authority in research that we don’t always have the power to alter. 
If I believe the best approach to authority is a balance between cred-
ible and critical, how can I be responsive to the strength and tenor 
of the approach they are hearing elsewhere?

Finally, we can model kindness toward our sources. One small 
shift I find useful in teaching evaluation of sources is to encourage 



Listen and Learn Sessions    383

students to avoid asking whether it is a “good” source, and to focus 
instead on what they can learn from the source. Mark Lenker 
suggests asking students to consider how a source might enhance 
their understanding of a topic (Lenker 2023, 559). Both are ways of 
removing some of the stakes from the equation and offering kind-
ness toward new information.

Another slightly larger shift to consider is to demonstrate uncer-
tainty in research practice. There are times when having clean and 
practiced searches in our demonstrations is necessary, but if students 
never see the librarian encounter an error code or get unexpected 
results for a search string, how will they know what to do when they 
inevitably encounter these themselves? How will they feel about 
the resource or their own skills when this happens? Even when I do 
encounter these things, I don’t always remember to explain what 
I’m seeing and how it’s affecting my choices to my students. I’m very 
guilty of simply declaring a search string “bad,” and trying a new set 
of keywords without sharing how even those “bad” results helped 
me to refine my strategy or suggested that I might need to try a new 
approach. I’m currently working to make these processes (and my 
feelings about them) more transparent, and hopefully normalized.

RESEARCH FOR UNDERSTANDING

We’ve established that education may have become over-gamified 
as the pressures of making the grade and being seen as “right” and 
the emphasis on “verifying” information to a degree that may not be 
possible leads students to want clean answers for research projects. 
I believe that pursuing research for understanding is one of the most 
powerful approaches we can take in this environment (Full credit for 
this line of thinking should be given to Mark Lenker, whose recent 
paper in Communications in Information Literacy expresses this 
approach and the need for it: Lenker 2023, 554–572). Helping students 
to seek understanding of complex topics (rather than researching 
to find a “right answer”) can better position all of us to do research 
as a form of exploration. If students are seeking understanding, 
it may feel safer to engage with unfamiliar information and even 
potentially incorrect information as part of the process rather than 
a threat to correct knowledge. Research for understanding can also 
help frame conversations around sources that are too advanced for 



384    ATL A 2024 PROCEEDINGS

the student; if they aren’t able to understand the source itself, how 
can it increase their understanding? Is there a different source that 
might help them better understand this one?

Not all of us have the ability to affect the assignments students 
bring to the library, but where we can, I think we should also advocate 
for research as exploration as an outcome in assignments. There is 
certainly a place for research papers and presentations with complete 
theses and persuasive rhetoric, but there is also plenty of benefit 
in assignments like annotated bibliographies, executive summaries 
of literature, and literature reviews to encourage students to seek 
understanding of complex topics and specific arguments rather 
than a particular correct answer, especially early in their academic 
careers or at the beginning of a new program of study.

I think we also need to talk more about the affective parts of 
research. It’s uncomfortable to ask uncertain questions, especially 
if the asking-and-answering is being graded or otherwise judged. 
Mulaski and Bruce wrote a piece for In the Library with the Lead Pipe 
that makes a compelling case for “embracing academic discomfort” 
(Maluski and Bruce 2022). When “research” has previously been 
connected to the quick answer from a pocket Google, we may need 
to gently explain and continually remind our students that some 
of the best academic questions are going to result in uncertainty, 
frustration, uncomfortable questions, and even confusion. Advanced 
researchers don’t stop feeling these; they simply understand them in 
context. This space of discomfort and uncertainty is also a place where 
librarians in faith-based contexts have additional tools. Whether by 
our own experiences and faith expressions or tools offered by cam-
pus religious leaders, our faiths can give us frameworks to navigate 
spaces of uncertainty and growth, and we should consider leaning 
on them as we work with our students.

CARE FOR OUR NARRATIVES

Finally, I want to offer some words of caution about the myths that 
we perpetuate in our outreach and instruction narratives. For every 
unhelpful myth we carry thanks to modern media (see also stern 
shushing), there are many that I think we may accidentally perpetu-
ate or even create ourselves. For example, many of us are familiar 



Listen and Learn Sessions    385

with discussions around information creation as a process. How 
often do we celebrate this process compared to the amount that 
we point out its flaws? I absolutely believe we need to encourage 
conversations about the limitations of our information thanks to our 
processes; but are there ways that we can encourage trust in good 
process even as we warn about the implications of those limitations? 
As part of this, I believe that librarians must continue to advocate 
for transparency and openness in scholarship and speak honestly 
with students about where we are in this process.

Frankly, I believe that in a bid to demonstrate our usefulness and 
relevance we sometimes oversell academic research. It’s important 
to advocate for our work and our tools to our campuses, and this 
sometimes means de-emphasizing their limitations in our outreach, 
but if a student only ever hears us speak about how excellent library 
databases and academic literature is, what are they to think when 
they encounter poor usability, limited access, or even errors or 
limitations in the literature? If everyone on campus touts academic 
literature as the best (or even the only acceptable option), what are 
students supposed to do when the best information really isn’t cov-
ered by our efforts, but should be supported by information from 
popular, trade sources, or non-traditional (such as primary or open 
source options) resources? Are there small tweaks we can make 
to our database pitches that contextualize their usefulness while 
acknowledging that they aren’t necessarily helpful for all things? I 
believe that in engaging these questions, we can model a scholarly 
humility that might help foster trust and dialog with our students.

CONCLUSION

We are living at a time when information literacy feels like more than 
just the foundation for excellent academic or personal research. As 
librarians, we have an opportunity not only to teach our students 
how to do excellent academic research, but also to prepare them 
to take on the questions, uncertainty, joys, and responsibilities of 
navigating information in an evolving environment. I think it’s 
time for our profession to carefully reflect on the context in which 
we’re teaching and consider whether we’re acknowledging existing 
strengths and meeting actual needs. I don’t have a complete answer 
for how we will best move forward into the future of information 



386    ATL A 2024 PROCEEDINGS

literacy, but I think our next steps will need to engage kindness, 
wonder, patience, empathy, and generosity. For those of us who are 
privileged to engage with these virtues in our faith or in our support 
of religious contexts, perhaps there is space for us to lead the way 
in developing the path forward.

REFERENCES

Borton, Lynn, and Julie Fratantoni. 2024. “Ep. #218: Curiosity & 
Brain Health, with Dr. Julie Fratantoni.” Choose to be Curious, 
February 15. Podcast, 28 min. https://lynnborton.com/2024/02/15/
curiosity-brain-health-with-dr-julie-fratantoni/.

Bosman, Julie. 2012. “After 244 Years, Encyclopaedia Britannica 
Stops the Presses.” New York Times, March 13. https://archive.
nytimes.com/mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/13/
after-244-years-encyclopaedia-britannica-stops-the-presses/.

Caulfield, Mike, and Sam Wineberg. 2015. Verified: How to Think 
Straight, Get Duped Less, and Make Better Decisions About What 
to Believe Online. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Fister, Barbara. 2022. “Principled Uncertainty: Why Learning to 
Ask Good Questions Matters More than Finding Answers.” PIL 
Provocation Series 2 (1). Project Information Literacy, February 
16. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED617553.

Hertwig, Ralph, Anastasia Kozyreva, Sam Wineburg, and Stephan 
Lewandowsky. 2023. “When Critical Thinking Isn’t Enough.” 
The Conversation, February 2. https://theconversation.com/when-
critical-thinking-isnt-enough-to-beat-information-overload-we-
need-to-learn-critical-ignoring-198549.

Kozyreva, Anastasia, Sam Wineberg, Stephan Lewandowsky, and 
Ralph Hertwig. “Critical Ignoring as a Core Competence for 
Digital Citizens.” Current Directions in Psychological Science, 32 
(1): 81–88. https://doi.org/10.1177/09637214221121570.

Lenker, Mark L., III. 2023. “Dwindling Trust in Experts: A Starting Point 
for Information Literacy.” Communications in Information Literacy, 
17 (2): 554–572. https://doi.org/10.15760/comminfolit.2023.17.2.12.

https://lynnborton.com/2024/02/15/curiosity-brain-health-with-dr-julie-fratantoni/
https://lynnborton.com/2024/02/15/curiosity-brain-health-with-dr-julie-fratantoni/
https://archive.nytimes.com/mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/13/after-244-years-encyclopaedia-britannica-stops-the-presses/
https://archive.nytimes.com/mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/13/after-244-years-encyclopaedia-britannica-stops-the-presses/
https://archive.nytimes.com/mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/13/after-244-years-encyclopaedia-britannica-stops-the-presses/
https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED617553
https://theconversation.com/when-critical-thinking-isnt-enough-to-beat-information-overload-we-need-to-learn-critical-ignoring-198549
https://theconversation.com/when-critical-thinking-isnt-enough-to-beat-information-overload-we-need-to-learn-critical-ignoring-198549
https://theconversation.com/when-critical-thinking-isnt-enough-to-beat-information-overload-we-need-to-learn-critical-ignoring-198549
https://doi.org/10.1177/09637214221121570
https://doi.org/10.15760/comminfolit.2023.17.2.12


Listen and Learn Sessions    387

Maluski, Kelleen, and Symphony Bruce. 2022. “Dispelling the Myth 
of Library Anxiety and Embracing Academic Discomfort.” In the 
Library with the Lead Pipe, August 10. https://www.inthelibrary-
withtheleadpipe.org/2022/myth-of-library-anxiety. 

Pennycook, Gordon and David. G. Rand. 2019. “Lazy, not biased: 
Susceptibility to Partisan Fake News is Better Explained by Lack 
of Reasoning than by Motivated Reasoning.” Cognition 188: 39–50. 
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2018.06.011.

Rothstein, Dan, and Luz Santana. 2011. Make Just One Change: Teach 
Students to Ask Their Own Questions. Cambridge, MA: Harvard 
Education Press.

Sandler, Piper. 2021. “Most Popular Social Networks of Teenagers 
in the United States from Fall 2012 to Fall 2023.” Chart, 
October 5. Statista. https://www-statista-com/statistics/250172/
social-network-usage-of-us-teens-and-young-adults/.

Simon, Herbert. 1971. “Designing Organizations for an Information-
rich World.” In Computers, Communications, and the Public 
Interest, ed. Martin Greenberger, 38–72. Baltimore, MD: The 
Johns Hopkins Press.

Strand, Katie, and Pamela Martin. 2023. “What about the Books? 
Valuing Students’ Past Library Experiences.” College & Research 
Libraries News, 84 (3): 115–116. https://crln.acrl.org/index.php/
crlnews/article/view/25824/33772.

Swanson, Troy A. 2023. Knowledge as a Feeling: How Neuroscience 
and Psychology Impact Human Information Behavior. Lanham, 
MD: Rowman & Littlefield.

Turkle, Sherry. 2017. Alone Together: Why We Expect More from 
Technology and Less from Each Other. New York: Basic Books.

Van Tongeren, Daryl. 2023. “The Curious Joy of Being Wrong: 
Intellectual Humility Means Being Open to New Information 
and Willing to Change Your Mind.” The Conversation, December 
26. https://theconversation.com/the-curious-joy-of-being-wrong-
intellectual-humility-means-being-open-to-new-information-and-
willing-to-change-your-mind-216126.

https://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2022/myth-of-library-anxiety
https://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2022/myth-of-library-anxiety
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2018.06.011
https://crln.acrl.org/index.php/crlnews/article/view/25824/33772
https://crln.acrl.org/index.php/crlnews/article/view/25824/33772
https://theconversation.com/the-curious-joy-of-being-wrong-intellectual-humility-means-being-open-to-new-information-and-willing-to-change-your-mind-216126
https://theconversation.com/the-curious-joy-of-being-wrong-intellectual-humility-means-being-open-to-new-information-and-willing-to-change-your-mind-216126
https://theconversation.com/the-curious-joy-of-being-wrong-intellectual-humility-means-being-open-to-new-information-and-willing-to-change-your-mind-216126


388    ATL A 2024 PROCEEDINGS

Wimer, Kate. 2023. “Ask the Better Question: Using Bigfoot to Introduce 
Constructive Approaches to Authority.” Originally presented at 
LOEX 2023, Harrisburg, PA, May 13, 2023. https://digitalcommons.
georgefox.edu/libraries_fac/39.

Zomorodi, Manoush. 2017. Bored and Brilliant: How Time Spent Doing 
Nothing Changes Everything. New York: Macmillan.

https://digitalcommons.georgefox.edu/libraries_fac/39
https://digitalcommons.georgefox.edu/libraries_fac/39

