The Gould library has taken a lead role in a MITC / NITLE grant to create a web-based assessment tool to measure the information literacy of incoming students, before they\u27ve had any college library instruction. This grant-funded project was originally called the First Year Information Literacy in the Liberal Arts Assessment (FYILLAA), and has since become a nationally administered survey called the Research Practices Survey.
The first full implementation of the survey happened in late summer and early fall 2005. Five of the schools, Carleton, University of Chicago, Grinnell, Macalester, and St. Olaf, had high enough response rates to allow for inter-institutional comparisons. A presentation of the project was given at the AAC&U conference in March 2006. Another presentation was given at the 2007 ACRL conference