USC librarian Cari Kaurloto has been named a recipient of the MLA–EBSCO Collaboration for Information Literacy Prize.
Kaurloto, head of USC’s Science and Engineering Library, will receive the honor alongside Helen Choi, associate professor of technical communication practice at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering, for their course Information Literacy: Navigating Digital Misinformation (EIS 103g). The course equips students with tools to evaluate sources, understand how misinformation circulates online, and grapple with the ethical implications of emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence.
The prize, awarded by the Modern Language Association of America (MLA) in partnership with EBSCO Information Services, a leading provider of academic research databases, recognizes outstanding collaboration between academic librarians and teaching faculty in literature, language, or related disciplines. It will be formally presented on January 9, 2026, during the MLA Annual Convention in Toronto.
Coinciding with the prize’s announcement is a USC Viterbi story that highlights the course as a timely response to what instructors describe as a growing crisis in information literacy, even among digitally fluent students. The article by Sammy Bovitz traces how Choi and Kaurloto developed the course after realizing that one-time library instruction sessions embedded within required undergraduate writing courses were not enough to help students understand either how misinformation is produced and amplified or why research skills matter.
As the course syllabus notes, the two instructors designed the class around a core premise: “For today’s students, these technologically complex digital landscapes are their primary sources of information, making digital and information literacy a critical and necessary life skill.”
First taught during USC’s spring 2025 semester, the discussion-based course brings together students from across disciplines and foregrounds research as a life skill, not just an academic requirement. Students interviewed for the USC Viterbi story described gaining confidence in evaluating sources, navigating academic literature through the USC Libraries, and recognizing misinformation in everyday digital environments.
Course materials for Information Literacy: Navigating Digital Misinformation are available through CORE, the MLA’s open-access repository for digital teaching resources.