As online education grows, so does the need for institutional support for online students. Information literacy support is one support that is infrequently addressed. Though students are familiar with the Internet, they often do not have the information literacy skills necessary for research. A collaborative effort involving program faculty and librarians was undertaken to address the information literacy needs of students in an online doctoral program. This chapter provides an overview of the first step of this project – an assessment of incoming students' information literacy skills. The results of the assessment indicate a need for comprehensive instruction to familiarize students with online library resources at the university, access to relevant scholarly databases, quality assessment of such resources, and the use of bibliographic management software. Recommendations are made for higher education institutions and online programs wishing to integrate information literacy support for incoming students.

Embedded librarians in online courses provide a wealth of service and information to students. Though students indicate that these services are valuable, the librarians providing embedded services frequently note that these projects are very time consuming. This study examines the provision of a less time-intensive model of embedded librarianship and its impact on students' performance on research-related assignments in their course. A librarian was embedded in four sections of a course for either two weeks or the full semester. Data indicated that there was no significant difference in student performance in any of the sections, which indicates that a limited-duration embedded librarian can be as successful as a full-semester embedded librarian.

As online education grows, so does the need for institutional support for online students. Information literacy support is one support that is infrequently addressed. Though students are familiar with the Internet, they often do not have the information literacy skills necessary for research. A collaborative effort involving program faculty and librarians was undertaken to address the information literacy needs of students in an online doctoral program. This chapter provides an overview of the first step of this project – an assessment of incoming students’ information literacy skills. The results of the assessment indicate a need for comprehensive instruction to familiarize students with online library resources at the university, access to relevant scholarly databases, quality assessment of such resources, and the use of bibliographic management software. Recommendations are made for higher education institutions and online programs wishing to integrate information literacy support for incoming students.