Information Literacy

Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten.
B. F. Skinner (1904 - 1990), New Scientist, May 21, 1964

Why information literacy?

Our students are surrounded by information: information from textbooks, television, radio, parents, friends, spouses, newspapers, monographs, novels, letters, the internet in its many guises, and more. We want our students to realize the range of information we have access to, and to teach our students how to navigate around these mountains of material, sorting the useful from the irrelevant, the good from the bad. An information literate student will write better term papers, carry out better research, and carry information skills with him/her into post-college life.

Information literacy is a set of skills that enable us to identify an information need, locate information efficiently, evaluate that information and use information effectively and ethically. These skills are vital both in academia and in everyday life.

By the time students graduate, they should be familiar with the literature of their discipline area, and how it is produced and disseminated. They should be able to carry out a literature review, analyze the resources found and use them to draw conclusions and develop new ideas. They should be familiar with the investigative methods in their discipline – e.g. lab work, fieldwork, etc, and the unique information resources available – e.g. case studies, datasets. These are all information literacy skills ( taken from A checklist of information competencies for college students developed by California State University and California community college librarians http://www.topsy.org/ChecklistLoUp05.pdf ).