[relatively long post]
 
Dear all,
 
I have been following the recent discussion about literacy even though
I haven’t carefully scrutinized each posting. My take on the gist of the
discussion tells me that what is being discussed is closely related to
an area within the discipline that I feel at home in, i.e. Library and
information science (LIS). The area I am thinking of is commonly known
as information literacy (IL) research, which I briefly would like to try
to describe by pointing towards a couple of passages in a paper that I
recently submitted to a journal in my field (Pilerot & Lindberg, 2011).

 
I and my co-author “conceive of learning information literacy as
developing an understanding of the discursive practice in which the
learner is active. Information literacy thus comprises an understanding
of, and a familiarity with, how information is sought and used in a
certain social context”.
 
This line of reasoning indicates that there ought to be more than one
“version” of IL since there are many social contexts.
 
This is why we, towards the end of our article, propose “[a] more
humble and careful approach to IL [which] is to somewhat rephrase the
concept, and instead talk about information literacies. By using the
plural form the concept is opened up and thereby invites more than one
exclusive interpretation of what it means to be information literate.
Information literacies are not activities; they cannot only be
understood as what people do […]. Information literacies must be seen as
closely connected to the social practices in which they take place, and
with regard not only to the historically developed norms and values that
imbue them, but also in regard to the material and intellectual tools
that are used in order to be information literate. If we want to
identify and understand information literacies we also need to address
the questions of where people do what they do, and what tools they use
when they do these things, and for what purposes and with what interests
they seek for and use information”.
 
The ideas expressed in the passages above are not new. More than
twenty-five years ago, the LIS researcher Patrick Wilson suggested that
“[w]hat one needs to know also depends in part on what others expect
one to know. /---/ What can be ignored and what must not be ignored are
matters settled by collective agreements (tacit or overt) as much as, or
more than, by the actual indispensability or dispensability of knowledge
to performance (Wilson, 1983, p. 150).
 
To develop an information literacy which is in accordance with a
specific practice, such as a specific research field, can also be
described with the words of Charles Bazerman, who states that "[e]ach
person entering the discursive complexes of a scientific field must
learn to cope with those communicative means and processes that mediate
participation with others. /---/ Though each participant in a discursive
field need not think alike - indeed the discursive activities of
disciplines largely rely on people not thinking precisely alike - each
must draw on a common body of resources, cope with the same body of
material and symbolic artefacts, master the same tools... (Bazerman,
1997, p. 305). 
 
In a small-scale empirical study about design scholars’ information
sharing activities that I and another co-author of mine carried out a
while ago, it is also possible to trace this clear social – but also a
material – dimension of information seeking and use. Once again I am
taking the liberty to quote myself:
 
“When an informant is asked if there are any particular journals that
she is following a bare handful of titles are mentioned. As to how the
journals are followed, the reply is:
 
It is actually on a totally random basis that I go in there [in the
bibliographic database] to look at articles, and if I remember to do
that, it's mainly because someone has mentioned that there is a new and
good article there; but it is ma
inly these four [journals]. They are
important to me because they are considered important here; it might be
so that I miss more relevant journals since they don't belong to the
walls of this building in which I am acting […] (P4, emphasis added).
 
The quote underpins the idea of knowledge as a social entity; a
collectively created construction that is negotiated in an
institutionalized context. In this particular case the knowledge
concerns what information is considered important and valuable at this
site. Information is seen as tightly associated with the site of the
social; here this association is even given a physical dimension when
the informant talks about journals belonging “to the walls of this
building”” (Pilerot & Limberg, 2011, p. 326).
 
The main point I want to make by presenting this compilation of quotes
is that the matter of (information) literacy/ies involves several
dimensions (including both the social and the material) that are crucial
to look at in order to understand what it is that matters when we are
talking about the skills of mapping and appropriating a literature. Of
course it is necessary to be able to handle and master the appropriate
(physical) tools for information seeking and use (i.e. the plumbing
part), but it is also – and probably even more – necessary to be able to
identify ones field’s "cognitive authorities" (to once again use one of
Patrick Wilson’s concepts), not only in the shape of authors and key
texts, but also in the shape of (supposedly) relevant research
questions, theoretical frameworks and methods.
 
Best wishes
Ola 
 
References
 
Bazerman, C. (1997). Discursively structured activities. Mind, Culture
and Activity, 4(4), 296-308
 
Pilerot, O. & Limberg, L. (2011). Information sharing as a means to
reach collective understanding: A study of design scholars’ information
practices, Journal of Documentation, 67(2), pp. 312-333.
 
Pilerot, O. & Lindberg, J. (2011). The concept of information literacy
in policy-making texts: An imperialistic project?. [to appear in]
Library Trends. 60(2), pp.
 
Wilson, P. (1983). Second-hand knowledge: an inquiry into cognitive
authority. Westport, Conn. : Greenwood P.
 

 
 
Adjunkt och doktorand / Lecturer & PhD candidate
Institutionen biblioteks- och informationsvetenskap/Bibliotekshögskolan
/Swedish School of Library and Information Science
Högskolan i Borås / University of Borås
SE-501 90 BORÅS
SWEDEN
Tfn.: 033-435 43 29
http://www.adm.hb.se/~opi/index.html
http://lincs.gu.se/members/ola_pilerot/
 


>>> Victor Margolin <[log in to unmask]> 2011-06-30 04:52 >>>
Dear colleagues;
Much has been written on this list since my initial post a few days ago
about literature and literacy. Ken amplified some of my points by
discussing a field's need for a literature and the importance of knowing
the literature and building on it. The discussion has moved to websites
and programs to keep track of high volumes of reading material. The
point I wish to return to is the function of core reading material in a
field's development. In that spirit, I would like to distinguish between
a list of resources and an intellectual history that locates texts in a
framework of when they were written, what they responded to, how they
addressed what came before them, what effect they had on what came after
them, what other texts they relate to, when and where were these other
texts produced. It is this intellectual history of design studies and
design research that a good PhD program should provide so that a student
can locate her or his own thinking within a trajectory, as I mentioned
in my initial post. As to the gendering of texts, by first locating them
within an intellectual history, one can expose the gender implications
and patterns within which they exist. There are particular moments when
women began to publish texts on design history or design and these
moments have increased as many more women have entered the fields of
design and design research. I am not a
 big fan of lists if the material
on the lists has no context, no relation between the texts. The basic
point of my initial post was to argue for a mapping of texts and issues
as a way to orient old and new researchers so that  thought in the
design research field can develop as it has in other fields where such
mapping has occurred. The point is not to collect resources but rather
to know where and when they originated and why.


Victor Margolin
Professsor Emeritus of Design History
University of Illinois, Chicago
Department of Art History