Hello all

 

I think this discussion points to an interesting dilemma, certainly for HE librarians, that strikes at the heart of our dual roles as service providers and, increasingly, educators. As service providers we want our electronic services to be as simple to use as possible, minimising the barriers between users and information. As educators, we want students (and academics!) to be able to distinguish critically between different types of information.

 

What I’m getting at is that we can make the search interfaces as simple as possible, but the information being found through that simple interface is often of a far more complex nature. We know our users think information is “just stuff”, but to what extent should we just accept that as opposed to encouraging our users to recognise the very real (for now, at least) distinctions between different types of information? So a search engine finds content from ejournals, ebooks, organisational websites, and all the rest – if a student has no concept of the differences between those things (indeed, the report suggests they can’t even distinguish between the information and the search engine itself), how are they going to evaluate them properly, use them correctly, or cite them properly in their work (that latter might sound like a pedantic librarian thing, but is actually a major concern amongst the academics with whom I liaise).

 

When it comes to academic information resources (and no, I’m not going to attempt a definition of that term!), it seems to me that information resources can only be simplified so far. In terms of information literacy, we need to focus even more on the evaluative side of things, and, I believe, to hammer home the point that it’s not all “just stuff”.

 

What do others think?

 

Martin

 

Tel: 01517942684

 

In response to Max’s email re CIBER report on the Google Generation.

From the work we have done, would certainly agree that “little time is spent in evaluating information, either for relevance, accuracy or authority” However although this is generally the case there are some examples of good practice out there.

In response to the report suggested that information skills needed to be developed during “formative school years” and called for them to be “really [put] on the agenda”

The Scottish Information Literacy Project is working in precisely these and other related areas in Scotland. We have petitioned the Scottish Parliament “to ensure that the national school curriculum recognises the importance of information literacy as a key lifelong learning skill' have had discussions with the Curriculum for Excellence team who are working on a new 3 – 18 years curriculum and are working with Learning and Teaching Scotland, the lead organisation for curriculum development in Scotland, who offer support and guidance to teachers, early years practitioners, schools and education authorities to help improve achievement for all.

We have developed a draft information literacy framework, with cross-sector partners linking primary, secondary and tertiary education to lifelong learning including workplace and adult literacies agendas. The aim is to produce secondary school leavers with a skill set which further and higher education can recognise and develop or which can be applied to the world of work directly. The draft is currently being piloted and we plan to collect exemplars of good practice to demonstrate and inform all sectors of education and lifelong learning from practitioners to officials of the work that is and can be done and can be replicated and built upon.

Re Debra Hiom’s Intute Blog – she comments that

This sort of search behaviour has implications for libraries and online information services. They need to get to grips with building simpler, more intuitive systems, presenting users directly with the information and as the report rightly suggests, move away from “counting hits to watching users” in order to be able to improve the services offered.

Would agree with Debra that systems need to be intuitive but would caution “presenting users directly with the information” if this means spoon feeding people, as people need to be able to find information for themselves. A lot of the present problems of pupils and students not evaluating information, either for relevance, accuracy or authority is a result of pupils being spoon fed information either through teachers feeling under pressure or teachers not having these skills themselves to reinforce any information literacy session pupils may have had with a school librarian or integrate information literacy with their subject.  

Our voices all need to be heard on the importance of information literacy and we need to collaborate on a cross sector basis and with other professionals and officials in education and lifelong learning.