The Representation of Law Student Information Literacy Definitions in Legal Research Textbooks: A Comparative Content Analysis

Abstract

This study traces the development of the American Association of Law Libraries' (AALL) Law Student Information Literacy (LSIL) 2011 Standards, and tests how the Standards might be incorporated into legal research textbooks. In 2009, an informally organized group of law school legal research educators began developing information literacy principles in response to calls for more robust assessment mechanisms across legal education. The group soon submitted a draft of their Law Student Information Literacy (LSIL) Standards to the American Association of Law Libraries' (AALL) Executive Board, which agreed that the publication of such standards would help advance discussions concerning legal research pedagogy. The Board then appointed a Law Student Research Competency Standards Task Force, which completed another draft of the LSIL Standards and solicited feedback from stakeholders in the legal academy and members of the National Conference of Bar Examiners. After further revision, the Standards were adopted by the AALL Executive Board in March 2011. This study employed a quantitative content analysis methodology to compare the content of law student legal research textbooks to the AALL LSIL Standards. The research strategy portion of the LSIL Standards was compared to the strategy portions of two well-regarded legal research textbooks. Intercoder reliability was, unfortunately, not high enough to draw statistically significant conclusions. For several categories, however, coder agreement was above eighty percent, and intercoder reliability for the "analysis" category suggests that the traditional distinction between process-oriented and bibliographic textbooks may be valid.

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