Information Literacy: Where do we fit in?

By Peter Genco, IASL President

Information Literacy is a life long process.  It begins at birth and continues until death.  One never stops processing information and learning.  From the moment a new born baby hears his or her first sound, then opens his or her eyes to see the first sight, that baby has begun the process.  One needs to be information literate to function in society, whether it is learning how to read, going to school or college, or taking a training course, or learning about an illness in old age.  We never stop learning and we will always need to process information.

What are some reasons we need to be information literate in life?

• Quality of life
• Making educated decisions
• Empowerment
• To keep citizens informed
• To keep workers informed

If this triangle represents your school community, where do you, the school librarian, fit in?

It is interesting to see how different groups of school librarians answer this activity.  Some place themselves solidly on the bottom (ground work, foundation); others place themselves in the center (center of learning, center of school); others place themselves at the top (taking an active leadership role in the school).  Regardless of where one places oneself, it is imperative for the school librarian to be an integral part of the school community.

Looking at information literacy on a global level, there is much work that has been done to better understand how information is used and how the use of information is taught.  ATLC (Association for Teacher Librarians in Canada) developed guidelines many years ago to help focus the role of the teacher librarians in information literacy.   Dr. Penny Moore, from New Zealand, prepared a paper for UNESCO on research she has done in information literacy.  Two Australian developed schemes that were originally published in Australia and have now also been published by ALA (American Library Association) in the USA.  One could also look to the SMART school system developed in Malaysia.  There is much good work in the field.

I recently attended a meeting in Amsterdam.  It was a group of interested school librarians who wanted to examine the role of the school librarian in the school, especially related to information literacy.   They came up with a list of issues that would need to be explored and developed including:

• Tools for lifelong learning
• Professional development of school librarian
• Professional development on the educational role of the school librarian
• Status of the SL
• Multidisciplinary approach to learning
• Student achievement
• Information vs. knowledge
• Independent learners
• Literacy
• Critical thinking skills
• Advocacy
• Social responsibility

But one must be cautioned with such a pro-active list.  These issues must be dealt with effectively; otherwise there is no meaning to them.  Such issues can lead to excellent collaboration with teachers and with the entire school community.  We must also remember, we, as school librarians, are only part of the lifelong process of information literacy.  We are a very important part of the process.  It is a part where formal learning takes place and we have the ability to guide students of how information can become knowledge.

The teaching role of the school librarian is critical.  How do we get students to transform information into knowledge?  But there are also different ways of looking at knowledge.  The electronic age has also allowed for easy knowledge reproduction.  It is very easy to cut, copy, and paste. But how do we go to the next step of knowledge building; where the student or the individual takes ownership of the information?  How do we teach critical thinking skills, or how to use just-in-time information, or to work collaboratively?

In my school, I teach an Internet unit to 9^th graders.  It is part of their ComputerApplications course.  They receive 270 minutes of instruction over nine school days from me.  The unit allows every student the opportunity to better understand the Internet, how one can use it in the curriculum, Online Services, and the investigative research process.

(Samples of some of the worksheets were handed out at Seminar.)

Links to others materials in this unit:

Fairview School District Website, FSDiNET, at http://www.iu5.org/fsd

Click on Libraries, then click on FHS (under Fairview Libraries), scroll to the bottom.

There are PowerPoint presentations which can be downloaded or run from my school district website.  The ones I use for this Internet unit are Internet Basics and Critical Evaluation Skills for the WWW.

Back in the 1960’s and 1970’s, school librarians began working more closely with classroom teachers.  The concept of curriculum generalist and curriculum specialist was introduced into the field of school librarianship.  The classroom teacher was indeed the expert in his or her field.  They were trained in the specifics of the content they were trained to teach.  The school librarians looked at all the fields in a school’s curriculum and developed ways to work with teachers to find appropriate materials.

Dr. Joy McGregor, a Canadian who worked at Texas Women’s University and is now a Lecturer at Charles Sturt University in Wagga Wagga, Australia, has recently done a study of pre-service teachers to determine what training they have in information literacy skills.  She found that little or no training was provided to pre-service teachers.  This makes it extremely difficult for school librarians to collaborate with teachers who may not understand or be able to teach information literacy skills.  The school librarian has the ability to step in and become a partner with the teacher.

This diagram shows how the role of the school librarian and the classroom teacher can complement each other and lead to a more information literate educational setting.

As Mrs. Benson stated earlier, if we do our job we can transform society, and I truly believe that!