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Social network applications and services such as blogs, Facebook, Flickr, IM services, Linkedin, MySpace, RSS feeds, Twitter, YouTube are responsible for information overload in the digital universe. According to the online encyclopedia Wikipedia, ‘‘The information explosion is the rapid increase in the amount of published information and the effects of this abundance of data. As the amount of available data grows, the problem of managing the information becomes more difficult, which can lead to information overload’’ (Wikipedia, 2013).

The rapid development of information technologies has greatly promoted information overload, which is the direct cause of the information explosion. The information explosion and information overload will have many implications for information retrieval in the digital age. The explosive growth of information in the digital universe will challenge the experience, knowledge, and skill of college and university students whenever they access and search for information in cyberspace. Real World Example 1 Information passed between the beacon towers of the Great Wall of China The Great Wall of China was built at different times to resist attacks launched by nomadic groups who lived in the north of China.

In the modern information age, students must understand the advantages and limits of robust web search engines for full text information sources. The leading web search engines face a challenge from a lot of independent information brokers and publishers who are collecting scholarly information in their own academic databases. They then sell their products to different academic libraries and library consortia. General web search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Wikipedia have no access to them. 42 Information literacy in the networked academic learning environment Information needs An information-literate student should have a general idea about the academic information literature available in topics related to his courses and majors.