The recent de-emphasis, even disappearance, of curriculated information enskilling in primary and secondary schools in South Africa is resulting in thousands of students entering higher education without the information finding and evaluating skills that are required to succeed academically. Furthermore, the lack of school and public libraries in many areas of South Africa, together with the popular, but uncritical view that simple downloading of information from the Internet is the complete and sufficient solution to every possible information barrier and need further exacerbates the problem.

The problem presents itself in the university library daily, where huge numbers of students are often helpless amids the rich variety of information resources and services. They experience bewilderment and lack confidence because of a lack of conceptual understanding and of basic skills to find, evaluate and utilise information correctly, rapidly and appropriately.

This information literacy course was developed to help students directly, and to provide librarians and teachers with a tool that would improve their effectiveness in overcoming the information problems of the students. It proceeds from the point of view of the learner, rather than presenting it as library orientation and enskilling. Because information literacy is a life skill the course introduces information services and resources beyond the library and beyond the typically academic publications.

Following workshops with librarians and academic developers, the course was designed so that it could be used:

• primarily as a self-directed learning resource to which students that had a need for structured "from the basics" enskilling could be referred - i.e. a complete course, modularised to reflect the main generic research phases necessary for doing assignments;
• correctively, to help students overcome specific difficulties, by referring them to the appropriate module/step;
• as a basis for mainstreaming by lecturers by providing a generic, structured, core course on which lecturers could superimpose authentic, subject-specific, assignments that had the co-objective of leading the student towards mastering information skills.