Initial thoughts about Information Literacy

Although this is titled "initial thoughts", it isn't true that I haven't been thinking about information literacy before this topic.  In fact, it was several weeks ago, when the term started coming up more and more  that I  went on a search to try and nail down exactly what it meant. Which is when I discovered that it was complicated, and everyone seemed to have their own idea about what it might be.  It felt like trying to hold a handful of sand without spilling any.  Everytime I thought I was getting somewhere with my understanding, I'd read something else that would disagree, or flat out contradict what I'd thought.  I remember deciding at one point that my mind was too mundane to understand.

And then I started reading through the topic four readings, and Herring and Langford both stated outright, that Information Literacy is hard to define, because everyone seems to have a slightly different idea about what it might mean.  Yeah, no kidding.

I quite like Herring's list of what Information Literate students can do.  That was helpful.  Information literacy seems to be the ability to think about what you need to know, make decisions about where you might find it, and if it is a source with authority, how you might present it, how it fits with what you already know.  Lots of metacognitive stuff.  I wonder if I am information literate?  I think I'm still developing.

Incidentally, I love that I have a dictionary widget on my desktop.  I use it every day.  More than once.  I know a LOT of words, my vocabulary is reasonably extensive, but I need that dictionary.  It's awesome.

And I really like the PLUS model.  It makes a lot of sense to me.  Although Eisenberg had me converted to the Big 6 model when I read that too.  I like that it isn't necessarily a linear process, that you can go back and forth as needed.  It makes the way I work seem more purposeful.  Sort of.

Eisenberg also said that information literacy isn't just about knowing what we do need, and getting it.  It's also about understanding what we don't need, and filtering that out.  I'm not good at that bit.  I want to hoard all my information, I'm not good at letting go of the things I don't need, because I might need them in the future.  If my computer was made of books, it would look like this:

I would prefer it to look like this:

without the plants, because I would just kill them.

This is because I have all these stupid files with notes on things I've read that I Might Need One Day.  And I don't really understand how the trash can on the mac works, sometimes it does, other times, it doesn't.

But, I digress, although I'm very pleased that I can insert pictures into my blog with so little bother.   you learn something new every day.

I have something to say about the Langford article, or book chapter or whatever it was.  And I'm not going to be very nice about it.  I didn't like it.  I thought it was badly written, and boring.  She spent over half the article waffling about how difficult it was to define information literacy (yes it is).  Compared to Eisenberg and Herring, I got nothing out of it.  Thats probably all I have to say about that.  Sorry Langford.


I'm still waiting for a really pithy description of what information literacy is.