Purpose This paper argues that information containers provide valuable context clues that can help students make choices about how to engage with information content. The authors present a strategic approach to source evaluation rooted in format and authority threshold concepts. Design/methodology/approach The authors developed a source evaluation strategy with the objective of deciding whether to trust an information source. This strategy involves a set of cues to help readers mindfully engage with both the container and content of a given source. Findings When conducting research, non-experts are asked to evaluate content in the absence of relevant subject expertise. The cues presented in this paper offer practical tactics informed by the concepts of authority (to help make an accessible judgment of intellectual trust) and format (to help make more informed decisions about the content they find in a browser). Originality/value While librarians have produced many evaluative models and checklists to help students evaluate information, this paper contributes a unique strategic approach grounded in two information literacy threshold concepts – format and authority – and enacted through a series of actions drawn from website evaluation models, fact-checking, and metacognitive exercises.

The University Libraries at the University of New Mexico reconfigured their established library instruction program for biology as part of a broader grant-funded essential skills workshop series for STEM students. This initiative standardized supplementary instruction through seven in-person and online workshops delivered to students through the Biology Department’s four core undergraduate laboratory courses. Post-workshop feedback data were gathered from students throughout the two-year grant period. The present study analyzes this data set—including 3,797 completed student surveys from both library and non-library workshops over the course of four semesters—with the goal of understanding STEM student perceptions of the value of information literacy skills as compared to the general and disciplinary value of other essential intellectual and practical skills. The findings suggest that undergraduate biology students generally perceive information literacy to be among the most valuable and relevant skills introduced through the workshop series. The results have the potential to inform information literacy instruction practices and collaborative efforts with broader essential skills education programs.

Dons described several new ciliates on the gribble Limnoria lignorum in Norway, including Platycola circularis Dons, 1941. My samples of wood borers on Murmansk coast of Barents sea, in White and Black seas and in NW Pacific from Vladivostok to Bering island had only Lagenophrys on pleopods. L. circularis (Dons, 1941) comb. nov. is redescribed using samples made on Murmansk coast not far from its type locality (Trondheimsfjord). Previous descriptions of this species under 3 different names are analysed.

Freshwater ostracods, even in seasonally drying and freezing ditches, are inhabited by a variety of ciliates, possibly with rapid encysting. Loricates are represented by the genus Lagenophrys, stalked peritrichs, by solitary and colonial species of both Vorticellida and Operculariida; no suctorians have been found so far. The epifauna near St Petersburg and Irkutsk is the same, except for the common occurence of a small tokophryid suctorian on the shell surface of Herpetocypris incongruens along the Angara River and along Listvenka – Irkutsk road; this species may be a regional endemic. A similar but not the same tokophryid inhabits the few examined Baikalian ostracods. This new species, Tokophrya sibirica sp. nov., associated with H. incongruens, is very similar but not identical to T. cyclopum.

It can be difficult to find time and motivation to effectively address collection management for materials in specialized areas that fall outside the primary scope of one’s usual responsibilities. The pressure of crowded shelves in the authors’ largest library and the associated difficulties of helping users locate materials led a team of faculty librarians and staff to evaluate and consolidate an “orphaned collection” of books in health and medicine call numbers. The authors describe how a project team established a data-informed evaluation and weeding process that minimized affective decision-making and considered the nuances of collection management between disciplines.