Journal Article: “Academic Search Literacy in the Age of Generative AI: A Conceptual Framework For Navigating the Search-Language Ecology”

The article linked below (abstract, intro, snippets only; full-text paywalled) was recently published by The Journal of Academic Librarianship.

Title

Academic Search Literacy In The Age Of Generative Ai: A Conceptual Framework For Navigating the Search-Language Ecology

Authors

Chao Cai
Purdue University
,
Jane K. Yatcilla
Purdue University

Source

The Journal of Academic Librarianship
Volume 52, Issue 5, September 2026, 103323

DOI: 10.1016/j.acalib.2026.103323

Abstract

Today’s academic researchers navigate a heterogeneous search landscape, moving fluidly between Google Scholar, library databases, and generative AI (GenAI) tools. Despite rapid student adoption of GenAI, information literacy instruction in academic libraries remains anchored in traditional tools, with GenAI tools occupying an experimental position at the margins of formal teaching. This transitional state creates pressing questions for librarians about how to teach search when students use both databases and chatbots, what counts as competent search behavior, and how to articulate differences between convenience and rigor across disciplines. This conceptual paper pursues three objectives: to develop a framework integrating four dimensions, temporal, methodological, contextual, and cognitive/interactional, that illuminates why these tensions manifest differently across disciplines and contexts; to use this framework to interrogate whether evidence synthesis accountability standards developed in vocabulary-stable fields such as medicine can or should transfer unchanged to conceptually fuzzy disciplines where Boolean search has always been an imperfect fit; and to translate the framework into practical guidance for instruction, consultations, and policy.

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