It is often said that the library is to a law student what the laboratory is to the scientist. 1 Are we teaching students not only to find their way around this "laboratory", both physical and virtual, but to evaluate what they find and use it effectively? Skills of research, analysis, synthesis and presentation are fundamental to the successful study of law and beyond. How can we ensure that students develop these skills without sacrificing substantive content in an already crowded curriculum? This paper discusses the concept of "information literacy" and how Cardiff Law School used the concept to integrate legal research, IT and other legal skills training into a coherent module with an English Legal System focus. Information literacy-the concept Information literacy is most commonly defined as the skills needed for a person to "be able to recognize when information is needed and have the ability to locate, evaluate, and use effectively the needed information". 2 The term is relatively recent to the UK, having first come into regular usage around 1999. At that time, SCONUL, the society representing UK university libraries, produced its own "Seve n Pillars" model 3 of information literacy, referring back to the already well-established information literacy guidelines produced by the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL), part of the American Library Association. The ACRL listed five competency standards for an information literate student (Figure 1), detailing, for each standard, example performance indicators and, most usefully, learning outcomes.
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