Shaunna Mireau on Canadian Legal Research

Tips on Canadian legal research from the Library at Field LLP.
Postings are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the firm.

August 10, 2012

BIALL Legal Information Literacy Statement

The Field library team revamped our student and lateral hire research training program to incorporate learning objectives into our training plan.  I talked about this at a Slaw post and stated "At present our in house learning objectives for legal research are specific to the tools we offer."

The British and Irish Association of Law Libraries has developed and produced standards for legal information literacy that are not tool specific.  They break it down into learning outcomes and provide example indicators to measure success. 

An example: Research skill 3: The learner will demonstrate the ability to analyse initial findings effectively.
One Learning outcome component of this skill is:


3.3 Demonstrate the ability to choose the right method of searching online and critically evaluate the information found

The knowledge, understanding & skills with examples of appropriate assessment criteria for this skill is:
3.3 Employ suitable search techniques and evaluate the results


Example indicators of ability

Citically evaluate the information found, its authority, currency and relevance to the task at hand

 
I encourage you to read The Information Literacy Statement at

Background on the statement is at biall-legal-information-literacy-statement.html

Many thanks to BIALL for providing these tools!