Information Literacy and Literature Review: What's Out There

Libraries nationwide are jumping on the "Information Literacy" bandwagon and increasing library instruction in an attempt to promote information literacy and improve the quality of library research. One Wikipedia definition of Information Literacy describes it in terms of a set of competencies that an informed citizen of an information society ought to possess to participate intelligently and actively in that society. There are several other definitions of information literacy and the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) has produced a set of outcome based standards for information literacy. I'll post more about the standards and the "official definition" later beacuse the ACRL website is down.

I have mixed feelings about information literacy. I believe that library instruction is useful and librarian have skills and knowledge valuable to sorting through the mass of information available. But, is information literacy the right way to go? I attended a terrific presentation at the American Library Association Annual Conference in New Orleans this summer titled: Be it Resolved: Information Literacy is a Fad and a waste of Librarians Time and Talents. The presentation took the form of a formally structured debate. Arguments for both sides were persuasive. Going in to the debate I was a staunch supporter of information literacy. Now, I'm on the fence so to speak. As a librarian, I'm taking a risk by saying that and I may be forever known as a heretic. What are your experiences with library instruction? How do you feel about the concept of information literacy?

So, I've already stated that lots of libraries are providing lots of instruction. What is the quality of that instruction? How sound are the pedagogical principles upon which the instruction is based? How effective is the instruction? How are libraries assessing the value of the instruction and the determining if actual learning has occurred? My interest lies specifically in assessment of library instruction. An initial literature review (searching the ERIC, SSCI, Library Literature and Information Science Full Text, and Library, Information Science, and Technology Abstracts databases) I found about half a dozen peer reviewed journal articles addressing the assessment of information literacy or library instruction. While this topic interests me, I wasn't able to find enough material. I'm expanding my search to include articles about all types of learning assessment in general. I may be able to draw some conclusions about the validity and reliability of library instruction assessment and compare it to learning assessments in other fields. As I expand the search and sift through the literature I'll come back to this blog to share my thoughts.

More thoughts and discussion about information literacy and assessment will have to wait until after the football game...