Information Literacy at IFLA August 22, 2007
Posted by aernst in : Community , trackbackGreeting from Durban, South Africa. I’m attending the International Federation of Library Association’s World Library & Information Congress with librarians from 116 countries. I will be serving on the IFLA Standing Committee for Information Literacy. Thus far, most members of this committee are Higher Education librarians. I attended a program and working session focused on the committee’s recent projects. The “International Information Literacy Resources Directory”, an online database of nearly 1000 records (and growing), provides access to world wide contributions under the general headings of: Publications, IL Products for Users, Communication (conferences, weblogs, etc.), Organizations and “Training the Trainers”. Please visit this site at: www.infolitglobal.info. Most importantly, please add information!
The second major project undertaken by the IFLA Information Literacy Standing Committee is a “State of the Art” report on Information Literacy globally. The report is available and downloadable from the previously listed site. During the IFLA session, program participants broke into groups to discuss the report and make suggestions. I worked with librarians from Malaysia and Germany. Comments from all the working groups were similar. It was noted there should be more acknowledgement of Information Literacy efforts in schools and public library settings. There was also a strong call for indexing of the report, creating access points such as library type and language. The program participants agreed it is a good beginning to an ongoing process.
The group noticed that regardless of which country or what kind of library participants came from, the following concerns were fairly universal:
• How to gain institutional buy-in for information literacy standards
• Challenges of working in partnership with teachers/faculty to implement information literacy skills
Another project in process was pitched; a contest to create an international information literacy logo. The purpose is to develop a logo that can be used, free of charge, as an international symbol of information literacy around the globe. The winning designer will be awarded a prize of $2000. For details about the contest, please refer to the opening page of www.infolitglobal.info
All these efforts are supported financially by UNESCO, the United Nations Education Science and Culture Organization, in part because the mission of IFLA and librarians all over the world are in synch with UNESCO’s work, “Empowering people through the free flow of ideas by word and image, and by access to information and knowledge” (http://portal.unesco.org/ci/en/ev.php-URL_ID=1657&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html)
For further information check out:
IFLA – www.ifla.org
IFLA information Literacy - http://www.ifla.org/VII/s42/index.htm
UNESCO – www.unesco.org
Submitted by:
Alison Ernst
ISS Chair
Director of Library and Academic Resources
Northfield Mount Hermon School
alison_ernst@nmhschool.org
Comments»
This is really fascinating, Alison! Thank you for reporting on this for those of us who weren’t there. The concerns are really universal! Sara
There has been an awakening on the issue of information literacy and it is gaining ground in India. We already had a number of seminars on information literacy (IL). Some professionals are also doing research on IL. My university,Indira Gandhi National Open University, is organising a workshop on Il for Educators of the Open and Distance Learning System in the second week of February 2008. It is important that the teachers make the teaching learning Il based.
Jaideep
Associate professor
Indiran GAndhi National Open University
New Delhi