Information Literacy 101
Information Literacy
In previous posts I've mentioned various types of literacies. As a librarian I'm the most familiar with Information Literacy. Well...what is it and why should we as educators care about it? Why are Librarians so passionate about it?
Various Definitions:
The Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) defines IL as: the set of skills needed to find, retrieve, analyze, and use information.
Shapiro and Hughes (1996) define Information Literacy as: "A new liberal art that extends from knowing how to use computers and access information to critical reflection on the nature of information itself its technical infrastructure and its social cultural and philosophical context and impact."
IL and Library Instruction
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, are librarians going about information literacy instruction in the most effective way?What are your experiences with library instruction and information literacy? How do you feel about the concept of information literacy? 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?
Check out the ACRL Information Literacy website:
http://www.ala.org/ala/acrl/acrlissues/acrlinfolit/informationliteracy.htm
Labels: information literacy, libraries, library instruction
posted by Mary @ 1:33 PM
4 Comments:
Library instruction and information literacy is very limited at the K-12 level at least at my school and the two previous schools that I have taught at. What constiturtes legitamate sources in the age of online searching? How can students be trained to deconstruct web addresses and decide for themselves of the legitimacy of sites? How do we train students to complete detailed library searches on topics of interest or for completing required papers?
I agree with ACRL's definition of IL: the set of skills needed to find, retrieve, analyze and use information.
I find it somewhat cumbersome to do such searches. I recently had our shcool librarian show my 9th grade honors biology students how to access scientific articles for research papers that they are completing using the UF Library homepage. Unfortunately, our librarian has little background in pedagogy and students had a difficult time following all of the steps involved in accessing information. When left to complete such searches on their own, little transfer from the librarian modeling occurred.
As with learning many skills, students need to see the practice modeled, be given time to collaborate with the modeler (teacher) and then be provided plenty of independent practice in the skill. And of course - setting the purpose for learning the skill is critical to students complying.
I too agree agree with the ACRL definition. The problem seems to be that K-12 students, especially high school students, are looking for the "quick and dirty" research. I personally have no problem with wikipedia, for example, being the jump off site to gain an overview to a topic. The problem is that it is their ONLY site and they cut and paste, at that. They lack skills to analyze source, narrow sources, and most importantly, how to mine text once they find a source.
I often think how sad it must be to be the 1,999,999th hit on a search engine search. It might be a great site, but it never gets looked at.
Mary,
This is all so important. We are talking about information literacy in the undergrad course I teach next week and I plan on using some of the resources you've referred to. If you have any other articles/resources you think are good teaching elements, please send them my way.
I hope you and your little one are doing well. We miss you over at Norman!
I have heard of people that make a living providing product searches for folks that just don't have the time to sit in front of a computer and click away doing product comparison. This is a no-brainer ,you would think, in educational instituions that we need people to sift through the "smog" and provide reliable reference material.
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