A few weeks ago, while listening to audio conference sponsored by the Urban Library Council on OCLC’s Perceptions of Libraries and Information Resources Report, I scratched quite a few scribbles in the margins of my powerpoint printout including this one …
“It’s as much today about the channels as it is about the information.”
Although some people may think that this statement is a bit over the top, what I meant by it is that it seems to me the notion of information literacy has moved beyond merely knowing, accessing and evaluating the usefulness of information. Today's it's also about having a comfort level with the preferred channels (& formats) that our users expect to be able to find and retrieve information in. These channels include among others, RSS feeds, Instant Messenger, SMS/Text Messaging, podcasts, videocasts, wikis, remixes, mashups etc.
From my view the Perceptions report backs this idea in many ways:
... IM is the third most popular electronic information resource used by library customers (yes, all libraries, including ours, needs to be doing IM)
..."friends" were identified as the #1 source users would use to learn about electronic resources (remember that post I did a few weeks ago about Social Searching -- I can see some great opportunities for libraries here that are smart about it. Just think of the library as a "friend")
...cross referencing with other web sites was the top way users validate information for themselves (perhaps we need to look at ways of improving our sites and resources to make them easier to use -- even allowing users to mash it up themselves. What about opening APIs to catalog to our users -- I know, I know for some us where still waiting for this from the vendors ourselves.)
... "Content has left the container" -- information is no longer contained by physical boundaries. As as information professionals we need to be able to access and communciate information in whatever channels it happens to use. ... etc.
All these thoughts pulled together make me think that this notion of Library 2.0 has a practical point to it that includes information study as well. Perhaps it could be called Information Literacy 2.0 (if we haven't beaten this meme already to death).
Anyway, along with this thought process, I'm looking for a few good articles (or blog posts) that speak to this idea of Information Literacy 2.0. Does anyone have some good sources bookmarked or tagged in their Del.icio.us account?
BTW: The presentation was titled Fresh Eyes on the Business of Libraries: Customer, Service Models and Brand. Sorry, it looks like there's no archive of the presentation yet.
Technorati Tags: Info Lit, Information Literacy, Library 2.0
2 comments:
It's great to get your perspective on this audio conference. I listened too and found it eye opening from a front line perspective. What does "opening APIs to catalog to our users" mean in this post? I know it has something to do with JAVA.
Helene, really like your blog article. So much so, I was moved to writing a wikipedia entry on social searching. Anyhow, please change it if you think this needs changing.
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