Reference Services to Incarcerated People, Part II: Sources and Learning Outcomes

Abstract

During the 2013/14 academic year, students taking a required general reference course in a library and information science program answered reference questions from incarcerated individuals. The assignment was designed as a service-learning project. Here we examine how well the assignment met the course and program-level learning objectives that students are expected to attain. We described the data collection and analysis, present our findings and make recommendation in ways to increase student learning outcome and ALA professional competencies from a services learning projects. Specifically we discuss the need to increase education in e-government sources since our findings indicated they are most useful for answering reference questions from incarcerated people.