Service Response Discussion: Information Literacy
This post is part of a series designed to further discussion of the PLA Results service responses, designed in 1998 to describe “what a library does for, or offers to, the public in an effort to meet a set of well-defined community needs.”
The bulleted comments below were gathered in conference sessions by the PLA Results team, in an effort to update the current service responses, which were originally written almost ten years ago. The PLA Results group is looking to the community for feedback on how to update these service responses to better reflect current public library methods and standards.
“A library that provides Information Literacy service helps address the need for skills related to finding, evaluating, and using information effectively.” (definition care of the PLA Results site). The current version of the Information Literacy service response, is available for review on the PLA Results web site (the file is an Adobe .pdf file, and requires Adobe Reader to view).
Share your feedback on the Information Literacy service response, as well as the starter comments listed below, by leaving a comment on this post page. You can help PLA Results bring public library service responses into the 21st century!
Information Literacy Discussion Group Comments
Should this service response be renamed?
- The word literacy is confusing to some people.
Is this a means to an end not a service response?
- This was important in 1997, but the time for it may have passed.
- Is training a means to an end or a service response?
- This isn’t a separate service response; it’s an activity.
What does/should this service response include?
- This should include training and instruction in computer skills.
- This is a teaching or training function.
- This is about technology literacy.
- Teaching people to evaluate information is a non-starter. They don’t want to learn it.
Go back to the Service Response Discussion Index.
There are 5 Comments to "Service Response Discussion: Information Literacy"
I’d like to know how “Information Literacy” and the new service response “Technology” relate. I do agree that Information Literacy is not an intuitive terminology but Technology is so vague…
Another observation is that Libraries are offering a number of on-line resources (databases, blogs, on-line book-reading groups, kids and teens on-line story-time) and classes for folks to use these – the first set are resources and the classes are directed towards helping people use those resources. So far we have been using Information Literacy to cover both. Sometimes it can get confusing.
Information Literacy continues to be, and I believe, will continue to be, an important function for public libraries. We will always have new users of varying ages and backgrounds, who need to be taught how to gather information, whether by traditional means, or online. How many years ago did libraries begin to allow patron access to their catalogs online, yet we still have patrons who need to be shown how to use this very basic service.
In this day and age when patrons want their information immediately, more and more students (and others), are turning to the Internet for answers. I believe it is not only our role, but our responsibility, to continue to teach people who to evaluate these and other sources.
In my experience, this service response is considered one of the most important by community members. Many committees feel its the library’s responsibility to assist the public in finding, evaluating and helping people use the information.
[...] Information Literacy (3 comments) [...]
But librarians and library staff are _already_ “information literate.” The only difference is that they are literate in analog information, and they need to add digital information into the mix. The evaluation, recommendation, and other skills they have used for years transfer directly from analog to digital information, and library staff have always respected intellectual property rights (e.g., the Xerox machine).
I find that treating digital information as “just an additional format” helps break down the traditional barriers and encourages learning — especially from those who would rather not engage the changes that our professions and institutions are presently experiencing — and will continue to for some time to come.