THE DEVELOPMENT OF INFORMATION SEARCH SKILLS BY MEANS OF BIBLIOGRAPHIC DATABASES FOR FIRST-TIME HIGHER EDUCATION STUDENTS (Atena Editora)

Abstract

With the emergence of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and the Internet, the production of information has increased exponentially and its management and organization has become more difficult. One way of organizing scientific information has been through bibliographic databases, which allow quick access to it. The objective of this work was to show the importance of developing skills in the search for information in bibliographic databases by higher education students. The methodology used was of a mixed type, applied to a first semester group consisting of 30 students of the Educational Administration course for the period 2022-2, after having taught them how to use the following databases: Scielo, Redalyc, Google Scholar, Dialnet, and UPN Catalog. The technique of participant observation was applied to verify their learning, the data collection was done virtually through Google Forms. 100% of the students surveyed considered these databases as important for their academic future due to their veracity and reliability, with 73.3% leaning towards Redalyc and Scielo, 50% mentioning that they would use them for their degree work, while 26.6% would use them for research work and school assignments. It can be said that developing students' skills in the search for information in various bibliographic databases can have a positive impact on their academic future and that it is necessary that all higher education institutions provide students with these skills, which should be applied from the first semesters of their professional training for their best use.