Ten lucky students each won a free flash drive from the Libraries earlier this month in a drawing held at the Douglass Library. They received the prizes for participating in a new measure of student success - Project SAILS.

Project SAILS (Standardized Assessment of Information Literacy Skills) examines students' effectiveness in obtaining, evaluating and integrating information into their studies - a set of skills designated as "information literacy" by national education organizations. Developed by librarians at Kent State University in Ohio, the Rutgers University Libraries are participating in the final validation phase of the test along with universities across the United States and Canada. SAILS will allow educators to substantiate the claim that their students are information literate.

Project SAILS gathers data through an online test, which addresses the following questions: What are students' entry skills upon admission to the university, and is there a significant change in skill levels from the first year to graduation? If there are significant changes in students' information literacy skills, do those skills then have any correlation to student's academic success and retention?