MIRI: Curtin University Malaysia held a hands-on workshop to help young students sharpen their skills in navigating the modern information maze.
Hosted by its campus library recently, the opportunity gave secondary school students a rare glimpse into the power and complexity of managing knowledge in the digital age.
Fifty-nine student librarians and four teachers from SMK Merbau took part in the half-day session, which was designed to teach two essential but often overlooked skills: how to judge the quality of information, and how to manage it within a library system.
“Students today are surrounded by information, but not all of it is reliable,” said Nora Hii Siaw Fong, the reference librarian who co-led the workshop.
“We want them to think critically, to question what they see and read, and to use information in ethical and effective ways.”
The workshop combined practical exercises with real-world scenarios, introducing students to the CRAAP test, a simple but powerful tool to assess the credibility of sources based on five criteria: Currency, Relevance, Authority, Accuracy, and Purpose.
Alongside Hii was senior librarian, Sorina Ramli, who led a session on the mechanics of library operations, offering a behind-the-scenes look at how books are catalogued, preserved and accessed in modern libraries.
“The Dewey Decimal System may seem old-school, but it’s still the backbone of how we organise knowledge,” Sorina explained.
“We even taught them how to create MARC records and basic metadata, which are crucial for information retrieval in any library system. Libraries aren’t just about books on shelves anymore.
“They’re active, evolving centres of knowledge, and we wanted these young learners to see that for themselves.”
The initiative is part of a wider outreach effort by the Curtin Malaysia Library, which in recent years has broadened access to over 1.1 million eBooks, more than 230,000 academic journals, and hundreds of digital databases.
