Having just read the CIBER report, I was pleased to see Ian Rowlands was our second keynote speaker. Ian emphasised that not all of the “Google generation” are addicted to technology, in fact only 20% are “very wired”, 60% are “fluent” and 20% are “digital dissidents”, turning thier backs on technology. He cited the Ofcom report which states that silver surfers use the internet at least 4hrs a week more than GGs (certainly true in my house!). Ian also talked about power browsing – people viewing rather than reading and buzzing around rather than settling on websites. he feels that abstracts are becoming increasingly important and that maybe in the future full text will become redundant for most people.
One of the issues Ian touched upon was that young people no longer have a mental map of the library as an interconnected holistic organism and no sense of the interconnectedness of the internet. He didn’t link this to their information literacy though and to me that’s part of what being information literate is all about, understanding your information environment. In fact, I was disappointed that in the discussion afterwards, many of the perceptions of information literacy which were expressed seemed to demonstrate an information skills perception (and most of the people there were university librarians or deputies, so this is a bit worrying!)
Edinburgh Castle peeping through buildings
Email received:
I’m responsible for developing information literacy in the Scottish Government and your blog helps keep me up to date with what’s happening in the field.
I have a query about a recent post (16 June) on Ian Rowlands presentation at the SCONUL Conference, specifically:
One of the issues Ian touched upon was that young people no longer have a mental map of the library as an interconnected holistic organism and no sense of the interconnectedness of the internet. He didn’t link this to their information literacy though and to me that’s part of what being information literate is all about, understanding your information environment. In fact, I was disappointed that in the discussion afterwards, many of the perceptions of information literacy which were expressed seemed to demonstrate an information skills perception (and most of the people there were university librarians or deputies, so this is a bit worrying!)
Can you clarify what you mean by “information skills perception” here as surely this is what information literacy is?
I look forward to hearing from you.
Lesley
Lesley Thomson
Assistant Librarian
Scottish Government Library Services
Reply to email
What I meant in the post you are referring to is that my own understanding of what it means to be information literate is much broader than just skills, although information skills are an important part of being an information literate person. It’s about people actually having an understanding of the information landscape which surrounds them and knowing about all the ethical issues involved, so that they can make informed choices about how they interact with information. The definition below is one I’ve used in an article – I’ve improved on it but can’t lay my hands on my latest version just now, but this may explain it better:
Information literacy is about an individual’s attitude to their learning and research such that they are explicitly thinking about how they “use, manage, synthesise and create information, in a wise and ethical manner, to the benefit of society”, as part of their learning life. In this view, information literacy is central to learning and research and is about changing people’s learning attitudes and habits so that they understand how information fits into their learning lives.
My irritation at the conference was that so many people were talking about “training” and “skills” as if all we have to do is teach monkey to press the right keys and all will be well. To me the skills part is vital, people have to have skills to enable them to find and use resources effectively but then the IL overlay is their approach and attitude to how they deal with it, so they are not the same. One of the problems we have as IL educators is helping our colleagues to understand the differences.
Moira