Awareness, Types and Contribution of IL Programsto Students at the College Of Business Education, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

Abstract

This study was an attempt to reveal the awareness, types and contribution of Information literacy (IL) program at the College of Business Education (CBE) in Dar es Salaam. Data were collected using questionnaires and in-depth interviews. Findings revealed that the majority of the students were aware of the IL program and the main types of information literacy program were in-library orientation, individual instruction, seminar presentation and class lecture. Moreover, findingsrevealed that the contributions of ILto students were:knowledge of information sources, skills for lifelong learning, look beyond Google search engine and Wikipedia, understand the ethical use of information, academic integrity, understand the economic and legal issues,determination of the extent of information needed, evaluation of information for relevance and validity, knowledge on information retrieval and access to relevant and reliable information.The study concludes that, the high level of awareness of the IL training was largely contributed by librarians’ efforts of conducting individual training to clients.The study recommends that the CBE management should take more efforts and where possible the library should be funded to enhance the use of least cited types of IL program such as departmental orientations and open tours.