I always enjoy listening to Sheila Webber and Bill Johnston talk about their work on information literate universities – it’s a term I have started using whenever I talk to senior managers in my own institution and I find it very helpful. Their talk highlighted an issue I am struggling with at present – the conflict between embedding IL into the curriculum so that it is part of the subject being taught, whilst at the same time articulating it as a graduate attribute. I used to think that if I could sneak some IL into a course, without students realising, then that was fine, but I’ve realised that because becoming information literate is so important, students need to be able to add it to their CVs and talk about it to prospective employers. Being aware that you are information literate is part of the bigger picture.

Sheffield Information Commons (photo from Flickr)