Myths and opportunities

Over the past years I have become increasingly obsessed with the importance of information literacy for all citizens. This obsession was kicked off by educating business school undergraduates in information literacy at Strathclyde University.1 There are moments of elation, mirroring the excitement of students discovering how becoming information-literate can help them perform better in their studies and at work (and even be interesting). There are moments of despair, when it becomes obvious that student X has managed to wing it so far and is still blithely unaware of his or her incompetence. There have also been many moments of frustration. These are caused by academics in other departments, by university bureaucracy, but sadly also sometimes by highly-placed librarians who seem more interested in bandwagons than long-term progress.

I can see an abundance of myths about information literacy in higher education, and I have listed a few here. Doubtless you can add to them. In fact there are a number of mine which I have left out due to lack of space, e.g. the myth that e-learning will answer all your information literacy problems; and that librarians are doing most of the information literacy education (what about all those students helping each other out, however misguidedly?)

Myth 1: finding information ought to be easy
This is the most pernicious myth of the lot, since it has put librarians on the defensive for years. It is the idea that somehow we have failed because we have not yet managed to produce an information system for finding any information we want at the touch of a button. There have been many articles chiding librarians for making information-seeking seem complex, instead of a doddle. This is compounded by hype from system providers and search engines implying that you can get all your information answers by typing a few words into a 'search' box.

Being information-literate is not easy. It involves effort. Some of us have gone through library education programmes, but everyone (librarian or not) who is truly information-literate will have actively learnt from experience. Being an effective searcher involves skill, knowledge and conscious application of one's brain to the problem in hand. We should not collude in the 'it ought to be easy' myth by feeling guilty because users who have devoted no time or effort to acquiring the relevant skills and knowledge cannot immediately find what they want in our libraries.

This does not mean ceasing to make libraries (whether physical and virtual) as helpful as possible. It just means being assertive about the fact that, if people want to become information literate, they have to be willing to learn. With the advent of good search engines like Google, information-illiterates can certainly answer some of their information needs with no searching skill. However, they cannot answer all their needs this way, and are putting themselves at a disadvantage both at university and later in the workplace by not being information-literate.

In the May Record, Kathy Ennis wrote about the 'final frontier' of information skills.2 She mentioned teaching staff's naive faith in their students' ability to find information. She rightly highlights it as a major problem: it is difficult to get people to take a subject seriously if they do not think there is a body of skills and knowledge to be mastered. Academics' lack of perception is perhaps understandable. They will usually be teaching and researching a limited range of topics, in a familiar field. They will have a personal library and bookmarked websites, and know the key sources, people and conferences. In contrast, a first-year undergraduate has to find information on a variety of subjects. The topics, and the sources, are unfamiliar, and the student's informal network will consist only of friends and other students, and teachers at other institutions who are willing to respond to frantic unsolicited emails. Academics may not appreciate what a stiff task they are setting students in finding information, and the burden they are heaping on the librarian.

Associated with this myth comes a key challenge: the grossly inadequate amount of time that gets allocated to information literacy education. If you look at the skill and knowledge areas covered in models like the American College and Research Libraries' Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education (see Box 2), it implies a detailed and lengthy curriculum, not a snatched half hour here and there.

1: Information literacy
There are many definitions of information literacy, often based on one produced in 1989 by the American Library Association '[to] recognise when information is needed and have the ability to locate, evaluate, and use effectively the needed information' (www.ala.org/acrl/nili/ilit1st.html). More definitions can be traced through the web resources listed in Box 3. My own curriculum for information literacy includes:

• models of information literacy;
• types of information behaviour (different approaches to searching, browsing etc);
• information sources;
• search formulation and strategy;
• information economy e.g. information ownership and transfer, censorship etc;
• critical thinking.

• In the USA, the Association of College and Research Libraries has produced Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education www.ala.org/acrl/ilcomstan.html). They also run an immersion programme, training academic librarians. I have heard mixed reports about the programme. Its website has a number of useful resources.
• The Council of Australian University Librarians' Information Literacy Standards (www.caul.edu.au/caul-doc/InfoLitStandards2001.doc) are based on the American ones, but have interesting amendments, e.g. more emphasis on information literacy for citizenship.
• In the UK, Sconul produced the 'seven pillars' model in 1999, described in Information Skills in Higher Education (www.sconul.ac.uk/publications/99104Rev1.doc) and the Sconul Information Skills Working Party is developing the model (see Stephen Town, 'Performance measurement of information skills education: what's important?', Sconul Newsletter, Spring 2001, pp 21-23.)
• My favourite model is still Christine Bruce's Seven Faces of Information Literacy. There is an overview on her website (www2.fit.qut.edu.au/InfoSys/bruce/inflit/faces/faces1.htm) or you can buy the book (Auslib Press, 1997, ISBN 1 875145 43 5). I have used the model with students to help them think about what information literacy means to them (getting them to choose the face that most appeals to them).

Myth 2: success = customer satisfaction
We do not give students degrees and certificates just because they say they like the course (or at least not yet). Courses of study need objectives, clearly identified learning outcomes and forms of assessment that enable you to tell whether or not the learning outcomes have been achieved. This is something that teaching quality assessors look for. Of course, this is easier said than done, but there has been a big move away from rote-learning examinations as the way to assess student progress, and a lot of research and advice is available on how to devise appropriate assessments.

Yet, where library-based information skills education is concerned, there is still a tendency to rely on students' impressions of, and feelings about, what they have learnt, and whether they thought the instructor was OK. Anyone who has had anything to do with teaching students information searching will know that students and academics are not the best judges of how good they are at finding information. Multiple-choice workbooks (online or offline) are of limited use, since you can get a reasonable result even with a minimal amount of thought. Exercises such as compiling bibliographies or searching for answers to specific questions are better, but how do you ensure that the student completes them?

As with any subject, students need feedback from experts (i.e. trained library and information professionals) on how well we think they have done, and how we think they can improve. With credit-bearing classes you now get two types of assessment: the lecturer assesses the student; and various people evaluate the class, including the students themselves. The latter assessment is important, but most would agree that the former is more significant.

Unfortunately librarians are often not in a good position to assess students' learning. They are not given enough time, within or outside the curriculum, and they do not usually get an opportunity to follow through a student's progress to assess long-term impact. Perhaps most critically, unless the information literacy education is tied in with a credit-bearing class, the students may not be obliged to undertake any form of assessment at all, and may not take their information literacy learning seriously. There are lots of good examples of librarians working with academics to embed information literacy into the curriculum but even then the assessment may not address all the desirable learning outcomes.

Although there are still academics who are rather scornful of educational jargon (including phrases like 'learning outcomes'), lecturers have come to accept this approach to developing curricula, because of quality assurance exercises. To help get recognition for information literacy as a 'real' subject, librarians need to approach and describe their learning and teaching activities in academic, educational terms, and not in library 'service' terms. Fortunately, there are more opportunities than ever to get help, because of various initiatives of the Higher Education Funding Councils (see Box 3).

Assessment involves giving negative feedback. At times you have to tell students that they have performed poorly, so that they can learn how to improve. Over the years librarians have tried to overcome the image of the battleaxe librarian, and much attention has been devoted to customer care. Librarians are skilled at helping clueless patrons tactfully. In order to learn, though, people have first to become aware that they are incompetent. This means being willing and being empowered to explain what the mismatch is between what the student should be aiming for and what they have achieved.

Myth 3: information literacy = IT literacy
This is not a myth that librarians perpetuate, but it highlights a dilemma. IT skills are acknowledged as being key for all types of student. If you are trying to get more resources for information literacy education, then jumping on the IT bandwagon may be effective. In particular, students and academics are interested in using the internet effectively. Promises of more effective web searching will lure people into information literacy sessions, when promises to help search the catalogue better would excite indifference at best. There are two problems here. First, if information literacy only appears on educators' and administrators' agendas in the context of IT, it helps to reinforce the idea that information literacy skills are just part of IT skills. It may become more difficult to take forward separate information literacy initiatives which could have more long-term impact, because it is felt that information literacy has been 'dealt with' already as part of IT training. Second, it may limit the way in which information literacy is taught and the amount of time that can be devoted to it.

3: Web starting points
The information literacy place (dis.shef.ac.uk/literacy/). Run by me and Bill Johnston of Strathclyde University. Links to resources and short texts covering various aspects of information literacy.
Drew Smith's directory of online resources for information literacy (www.cas.usf.edu/lis/il/). Despite the 1999 date on the home page, it is still being updated.
Deliberations gateway of learning and teaching links (www.lgu.ac.uk/deliberations/gateway/other-sites.html). Also includes articles and case studies on learning and teaching.
The Big Blue: information skills for students www.leeds.ac.uk/bigblue/. Jisc-funded project researching information skills training for students. When complete (April 2002), it will include case studies etc.
Institute for Learning and Teaching (www.ilt.ac.uk/).
Edulib (www.tay.ac.uk/edulib/index.html/). eLib project aiming to help library and information staff improve teaching skills.
NetLearn directory of list of resources for learning internet skills (www.rgu.ac.uk/~sim/research/netlearn/callist.htm). Not updated for a year but still useful.

Agenda
So what might the agenda be for some of the parties involved? Recent publications 3, 4 highlight some of the good things that UK academic librarians are doing in information literacy education. Sconul and Jisc initiatives are mentioned in boxes 2 and 3.

For information and library schools it means getting students to reflect on what information literacy could mean to different user groups and raising awareness of learning and teaching strategies. As an academic I know there is a challenge: how to give enough time to these topics when postgraduate library and information courses are already tightly packed. However, the educational role is emerging as important in many kinds of library, not just those in educational settings, so more room will have to be found. It is important to send out librarians who are capable in this role and confident of their abilities. LIS educators like me should also probably be doing more to identify relevant, practical approaches to educating non-LIS students about information literacy. I am acutely aware that most contributions to the literature in this area are from practitioners, not lecturers.

Academics in other disciplines could be more reflective practitioners, willing to rethink aspects of the curriculum in partnership with librarians, jointly to develop information-literate students. There are areas where this is happening already, but it is certainly not universal practice. There is an issue to do with librarians' status with academics but it's not just a librarian thing. Quite a few academics seem to have a problem believing that anyone outside their own discipline is doing anything worthwhile.

Astute librarians have exploited the library/teaching quality link to move the topic higher up the university agenda. Many of the Quality Assurance Agency subject benchmark documents describe skills and knowledge that fall within the information literacy remit. Australian librarians are leading the way: in 2000 one of the five key teaching and learning goals of the University of South Australia was to 'embed information literacy into teaching, learning and assessment as a foundation for lifelong learning'.5 When information literacy becomes a key part of a university's vision and strategy, achieving changes in academics' attitudes will become easier. How you raise information literacy's profile (Building grassroots academic support? Researching the predilections of the Vice Chancellor?) will depend a lot on an institution's internal politics.

Real progress will only be made when a critical mass of academics and administrators treat information literacy as a subject of study in its own right, not just a curriculum add-on. Before that happens, librarians and educators need to be more assertive and persuasive. It is in everyone's interest that information literacy rises on the higher education agenda. Progress is being made, but there is still a long way to go.

References

1. S. Webber and B. Johnston. 'Information literacy: new perspectives and implications.' Journal of Information Science, 2000, Vol. 26(6), pp 381-397.
2. K. Ennis. 'Information skills: the final frontier.' LA Record, May 2001. Vol. 103(5), pp 292-3.
3. S. Corrall and H. Hathaway (eds). Seven Pillars of Wisdom? Good practice in information skills... Sconul, 2000.
4. Vine, March 2001, (122). Whole issue devoted to 'Learning and teaching: the librarian's contribution'.
5. University of South Australia. Teaching and Learning Strategic Priorities for 2000 (www.unisanet.unisa.edu.au/learningconnection/talgoals/2000/talf.htm)

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Last updated: 20 August 2001