WikiInfoLit Unit 3 Page 6
Wrapping Up Unit 3
Librarians often tell students to look for signs of cognitive authority, such as academic degrees and credentials, and publication by reputable publishers or journals in the field. We balance that by telling them to look to the content itself - its internal consistency and its consistency with what is reported in other sources or commonly known. A third check is its reception by the rest of the scholarly community. No one of these checks is infallible, and that is the hardest part to teach. Our students are time-pressed and anxious to "get it right". It is often necessary to reassure learners that it is more important that you can make a good argument for this source's authority, with evidence and clear reasoning, than it is to have a source whose authority only looks good on paper. Of course, looking good on paper is still important within academia. But whether in academia or outside of it, the ability to judge for oneself is crucial.
Supplemental Reading
For a succinct summary of how cognitive authority can be taught to college underclassmen, read the following article. It provides a solid theoretical underpinning as well as practical ideas. Patrick Wilson's Bibliographic Instruction and Cognitive Authority, originally published in 1991 in Library Trends vol. 31 no. 3.