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Overview
I first looked closely at the Big6(TM) model five years ago when preparing a presentation for the Treasure Mountain VIII Research Retreat in Portland. The Big6(TM) is about fifteen years old, and revisiting it now reminds me of seeing a teenage niece or nephew after five years and saying, "My, how you have grown!" In these past five years, the Big6(TM) website has moved from a dot-edu to a dot-com with a broad range of resources and services, and a new kid's section; commercial tie-ins have been announced with NewsBank and COMPanion's Alexandria automation system; a video and five books on application of the Big6(TM) have been released; an e-newsletter and online discussion groups are available; and an international network of Big6(TM) users exists at state, district, and school levels.
I will not use space in this article to describe further the Big6(TM) model; rather, readers not familiar with the model are referred to the "Overview" tab on the Big6(TM) website (http://wwwBig6.com) where the "Big6(TM) Skills Overview" and "Big6(TM) History" links provide a summary of the model and an introduction to Michael Eisenberg and Robert Berkowitz who conceptualized and popularized the model. Part of the Big6(TM) popularity is due to entrepreneurial efforts by Eisenberg and Berkowitz, but popularity also is due to their model of information problem solving being what a model should be. The model has face validity; that is, it makes good common sense and matches our experience with reality The model is elegant in the mathematical sense of being a clear, simple, efficient path through the process that it represents, and it can be generalized to a variety of situational applications. The very elegant simplicity that makes a model attractive, however, also can delude inexperienced users into naive applications of the model that ignore the complexity that lies within each stage, but more about that pitfall later.
Review
My review of the Big6(TM) model is organized around the questions listed by Daniel Barron in his introduction to this information literacy series in the September 2002 issue of SLMAM, but not in the exact order and form in which the questions were originally posed.
Is the model based on theories of instruction and the developmental levels of learners?
Eisenberg and Berkowitz provided...