Information literacy is more than computer literacy 

Originally printed April 16, 1998

Joyce Kasman Valenza

  In today's organization you have to take responsibility for information because it is your main tool  But you must know how to use it. Few are information literate.  - Peter Drucker, Management expert

Today's students are flooded with information options. They are dazzled by a spectrum of communication choices.

Computers are their turf: it seems those little hands have always been attached to keyboards.

They pound away with confidence, but often this confidence does not extend to the process that must accompany the pounding.  Can they distinguish treasure from trash?  Can they make sense of the information they retrieve? Can they communicate their conclusions?

Student Internet explorations often are premature; their expectations of instant gratification unreasonable.  In fact, they may grossly underestimate the research process, often forgetting the human side of the information picture: the planning, the processing, the thinking, the skills that we label information literacy.  And computer literacy is not information literacy.

"We are putting a great investment into technology, thinking it will solve problems," says Patricia Breivik, dean of libraries at Wayne State University in Detroit and chair of the National Forum on Information Literacy  "But technology has never solved our educational or social problems.  What educators and parents need to understand is that we have to empower our young people to make use of that information.  A lot is available through technology and a lot is not.  How do we position our children to know how to ask the questions they need to ask? How do we ensure they are information-literate?"

Information literacy is the ability to access, evaluate and use information from multiple formats - books, newspapers, videos, CD-ROMs, or the Web.  When we discuss information literacy, we are discussing the application of problem-solving skills in situations students face in all their subject areas.

Information literacy is a set of competencies, skills that will grow with students, even when current operating systems, search engines or platforms are obsolete.

Christina Doyle described what it means to be information-literate in her 1992 Final Report to the National Forum on Information Literacy.

    "An information literate person is one who:

• recognizes that accurate and complete information is the basis for intelligent decision making;
• recognizes the need for information;
• formulates questions based on information needs;
• identifies potential sources of information;
• develops successful search strategies;
• accesses sources of information including computer-based and other technologies;
• evaluates information'
• organizes information for practical applications;
• integrates new information into an existing body of knowledge;
• uses information in critical thinking and problem solving."

Well after they leave our classrooms, students will be making information decisions.  Which car should I buy and how much should I pay for it?  Which political candidate will best represent me? How can I convince the school board our children need a special program? How do I persuade the corporate board to accept my proposal?

Developing good strategies for accessing and evaluating information and skills for communicating our conclusions can save us money, earn us the respect of our colleagues, and ensure us business success.  Indeed, businesses continue to tell us they want workers who know how to manage information.

The 1992 SCANS Report, from the U.S. Secretary of Labor's Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills, included information competency among its five essential workplace competencies.

School research projects are training grounds for real-life information explorations and the development of these essential competencies.

Unfortunately, in many schools information literacy is not approached systematically.

"We are constantly referring to lifelong learning, learning to learn, the problems of transitioning through five careers," says Julie Walker, president of the American Association of School Librarians.  "But the skills are scattered through curricular areas.  No one has really defined them in concrete terms...That's what the new information literacy standards do." They bring together one model of problem-solving skills through all the content areas, she says.

Walker is referring to Information Power, standards for information literacy, published 1998.  An excerpt of the document is available on the Web at http://www.ala.org/aasl/ip_toc.html.

Information literacy has long been a banner waved by librarians. But the standards are meant to be woven throughout the school curriculum.  They won't be mastered until assignments require deeper thinking.  Teachers must understand the need to develop questions that require students to think, analyze, compare and communicate.

"The missing link is people's understanding that these are skills and abilities that need to be learned," says Breivik.  "Until we have teachers who work in collaborative ways with library information specialists, we're not going to see teaching and learning change."

Information literacy can be encouraged at home. "As parents, we often try to help our children by teaching or doing, not by coaching or helping, says Mike Eisenberg, author of Helping With Homework: A Parent's Guide to information Problem-Solving (Eric Clearinghouse on Information) and professor at the School of Information Studies at Syracuse University "Kids don't want us to teach them.  They want us to help them out when they get into homework or assignment trouble.  Most homework and assignment problems are information literacy problems - defining the task, searching for information, understanding information, putting it all together.  So ... parents can really help by learning to guide their children by asking questions to help with the information side of homework and assignments."

Back to Neverending Search

Back to Virtual Library