lauren's library blog

Jason Griffey, at Pattern Recognition, posted some interesting questions on his blog. He asks his readers, “What does the phrase [information literacy] mean to you? In what ways has the concept of “literacy” changed in the last 5 years? As a secondary question: what do you wish you had been told about research/the library when you were a freshman, that you later found useful?”

As one who is primarily interested in information literacy, I thought I’d comment. The comments grew and grew until I realized I had a longish blog entry on my hands. Here it goes:

Information literacy is the part of the field that made me realize I wanted to be a librarian. I was always scared to ask the librarians for help in college. I didn’t want it to look like I was cheating or taking the easy way out. If only I had known that they really are there to help students! Information literacy instruction helps students learn that it’s really okay to ask the librarian a question.

For me, information literacy is about how to ask a question, how to narrow a topic, how to use library and internet resources effectively, how to critically evaluate the found information, and how to correctly use and cite the information that is useful. The overarching theme, for me, is that one must know how to think critically in order to be information literate.

I think that information literacy course work, at least on the college level, needs to deal with a number of issues in order to help the students gain a critical view of information sources. For example: how the presentation (and organization) of information affects our ability to find it, how copyright and public domain affect our ability to find and use information, how we come to terms with the information we believe to be true, how information producing agencies work (universities, for-profit research labs, government statistic gathering processes), how cultural institutions affect the way one can find information (for example, libraries, museums, and phenomena like Google Print), how different types of research affect the outcome of the process (feminist research vs. cultural research, etc.), and the economics of Information and the Commodification of Information. I’ve written about this on another blog.

In very practical ways, this background can be useful for students as students. However, I’m more interested in helping people gain information literacy skills that will help them throughout their lives. Mostly, I hope that my students think a little more about the book they pick up in Borders or think a little bit about that article on Wikipedia than they did before they took my class.

Related posts:

1. shifting definitions of information literacy
2. information literacy
3. wikis in information literacy training
4. information literacy 2.0?
5. subject specific information literacy courses