ABSTRACT
This chapter draws on a broad range of research to describe readers' strategic processing with multiple sources. Strategic processing plays a central role in successfully accessing, comprehending, and using a variety of different sources in online environments. Research has documented that strategic readers are active in locating information, cross-textual linking, source evaluation, and self-monitoring. Multisource reading strategies may be categorized in relation to each strategy's complexity and sophistication, the depth of the underlying thinking, and the ways in which strategies interact. Strategic multisource reading is constructive and integrative in nature. This view is supported by Kintsch's perspective on mental representations of written text and also by research on comprehending multiple documents. Strategic readers intentionally reflect on their thinking processes during reading, which helps them to detect processing problems and difficulties and be ready to address the problems with alternative strategic actions.
