Catching Their Attention! Using Nonformal Information Sources to Captivate and Motivate Undergraduates During Library Sessions

Students at the University of the West Indies in Jamaica are required to complete a course on research and writing for academic purposes. Students are scheduled to visit the library for a hands-on session in the library’s computer laboratory. How can we motivate them to acquire the research skills required in academia? We must first capture their immediate attention and then encourage their academic curiosity. How can we stimulate them to become information detectives? What are the nonacademic sources of information that have impacted the lives of Caribbean students prior to arrival at university? It wasn’t the journals or scholarly books. It was other less formal sources of information.