Still a mixed bag: A study of first-year composition students' internet citations at the University of Mississippi

Purpose - This study seeks to gauge student use of open internet sources for the purpose of refining instruction and information literacy pedagogy in the library. Design/methodology/approach - The authors obtained citations from seven spring 2009 freshman composition classes at the University of Mississippi. From this pool of roughly 230 students, 437 citations to the open web were isolated, examined, and coded for analysis. Findings - Examination of the individual web sites, their URLs, and relevant codes revealed heavy student use of online reference and how-to materials, many of which were less than ideal as academic sources, but not openly inappropriate as such. Research limitations/implications - The citations were stripped of all personal information at the department's request; therefore the research does not and cannot comment on student topics and individual assignments. The findings suggest that University of Mississippi students may be able to identify and avoid low quality sources but struggle with mediocre ones, and that use of online reference works represents low student awareness of library reference collections. Practical implications - The results suggest that a greater emphasis on open web sources, possibly as supplemental tutorials or videos, may be useful in the context of first-year composition library instruction. Originality/value - This study provides statistical data about college freshmen and their citations in a first-year writing class in addition to a thorough literature review of similar studies, both of which will be of interest to instruction librarians and writing program liaisons.