To put this discussion (which started last week) into context, I am enrolled in a course this summer that deals with IL, specifically in the context of the library profession in corporate, educational and legal settings. The approach is to explore the pedagogical approaches to IL in these different settings, and learning how to develop appropriate programs in your future places of employment. Perhaps I do have my “smart person blinders” on, as Jon suggested in his comment on the last post, but bear with me.

My reflections on information literacy is in three folds:

Information Literacy is targeted to those that don’t have the ability to discern credibility and reliability of information online, or even where to begin looking for such things. Yet, precisely because there is such an overwhelming amount of online sources and delivery systems that are out there, the pedagogical approach does not always reflect this reality. Most IL programs are designed to be targeted to a certain group based on their needs, and while what you learn is often transferable, you become completely lost when you switch fields (As I am discovering, as I ‘switch’ into the library field, with some overlaps with archives and museum) and you start at ground zero. To equate teaching people how to use a certain search vendor as to have improved their information literacy is not incorrect, but it’s a pretty narrow qualification compared to what media literacy means. Media literacy means you understand the value in different forms of media outlet such as newspaper, television programming, press releases, radio shows, and the inherent bias they all carry. My experience so far is that IL workshops I have attended so far didn’t seem to have time to address those broader issues, and instead pre-occupied with knowing where the search function is, and what a particular vendor’s capabilities are. I blame this in part to just bad design, but I digress.

It is arguable that one cannot survive with some basic form of information literacy if you have access to any kind of Information Communication Technology (ICT), and the more you engage with it, the more you become ‘literate’ in discerning the the quality of information you are seeking. For example, coffee house banter now appears on the same page as newspaper articles online, and often more fun and interesting to read than the actual article. To dismiss it as just noise and irrelevant ignores the potential of hearing alternative voices that are not often available in a public forum, and yet to take them too seriously without being able to assess the source and added-value to the information is equally dangerous. Information literacy in that sense is the cultivation of an intuition that is rooted in a bit of sociology, ethnography, healthy skepticism, and lots of common sense. It is not a completely foreign concept that we have to learn, but simply using what we already exercise every day in a different context. The point is, engagement does not always equate literacy. Just as someone who watches MTV all day may not be the person you consult to learn more about media literacy. You might consult them about MTV literacy, but that is not the same thing.

Now, how do you look at Information literacy in the context of the digital divide? (Part 2)