AARL

Growing the community of the informed: information literacy - a global issue

Alan Bundy

Abstract: The more people have improved access to information, the more education in the recognition of the need for information and the development of the skills to use it needs to be at the core of the educational process. Librarianship is the only profession which is really alert to an information literate citizenry as the prerequisite for personal and democratic empowerment, lifelong learning and societal and economic development. Library professionals, and their associations, therefore need to use evidence based advocacy to governments and educators that the information literacy divide, not the digital divide is the critical issue of the information age.

Of the responses to the many challenges facing the planet and humankind in the 21st century, none is more important than growing the global community of the informed as rapidly as possible. Whether these challenges are environmental, health, political, democratic, economic or cultural, the one thing they have in common is that their solution can only be advanced by people of goodwill and broad vision. People who recognise their own need for good information, and who have the skills to identify, access, evaluate, synthesise and apply the needed information are thus information literate. The critical part of this definition of information literacy - sometimes overlooked - is recognition of the information need. As the 19th century British prime minister and novelist Benjamin Disraeli[1] put it 'To be conscious that you are ignorant is a great step to knowledge'.

Part of this century's information challenge is already well understood by that minority of the world's population which is educated and privileged. We are all well aware of the growth in data, and analogue and digital information facilitated by information technology, although the perception that there is a vast growth in data and information every year is now starting to be described as an 'information hallucination'. Yet the 'infoglut', 'datasmog', or even information fatigue experienced by the global minority is another reason for librarians to lead society, governments, and the other professions - in particular the teaching and academic professions - by evidence based advocacy that it is information literacy, not the tool of information technology, which is the key issue of the so-called information age.

To persuade politicians, educational administrators and media that high investment in information and communications technology (ICT) is not an educational or informational panacea requires some tenacity. Similarly, dissuading some from the notion of an information intertopia, and that the internet is a substitute for a library, requires persistence in refutation. [2]

Information literacy

At the same time, librarians in raising the issue of information literacy face the reality that it may be perceived and sidelined as a 'library' issue, when it is a profound whole-of-society and global educational issue. Librarians do, however, have to be on their guard about slipping into equating information literacy with library literacy, or defining it as library user education in another guise. Information literacy is certainly an issue for librarians. It is not, however, a library issue. Little will be achieved if librarians attempt, or even suggest, ownership of it.

Information literacy is a dynamic concept but as Curran[3] points out, the term itself is comprised of two common words, which most educated people would understand. To most people information means interpreted data, news or facts. Literacy is conventionally the ability to read, but increasingly has become also associated with the ability to understand or to interpret specific phenomena. Examples are visual literacy, numerical literacy and cultural literacy. Combined, the two words information and literacy are appropriate to describe the understandings and capacities which are essential global 'thrival' abilities in a 21st century where information will be the pervasive commodity.

The information literacy divide

In a world so dominated by information needs, issues and considerations, acceptance that information literacy is required for a person to function effectively as an individual in an increasingly global society seems axiomatic. Information literacy has been described as the umbrella literacy, and thus it seems logical that all international, national and local governments should have formalised information policies and strategies with information literacy at their core. It also seems axiomatic that teachers, academics and educational administrators should by now accord information literacy the highest pedagogical and resource investment priority. The reality is, of course, still far removed from the potential. This is despite promising information literacy developments in a number of countries in not much more than the last decade. [4]

Where national information strategies, or part thereof, exist - with the possible exception of New Zealand - they are driven by bureaucrats wearing ICT blinkers. There tends to be a focus on inputs in the tools, rather than an assessment of their outcomes. Thus governments and their bureaucrats worldwide will readily assert that a nation's commitment to ICT will drive economic development and reduce the information divide in the population, when they really mean it may reduce the digital divide. They make the fundamental mistake of assuming that the information and digital divides are synonymous and rendered inconsequential simply by investment in ICT. The issue of the information divide at the local and global levels is much more complex than to be susceptible to one, technological, solution. The real issue is the information literacy divide.

That tendency to seek a single technological solution as a panacea has also been much in evidence in educational systems, particularly in Anglo Saxon countries, but less so - wisely - in European countries. There are an increasing number of critics in the US and elsewhere of this rush to technologise school education at the expense of investment in the development of information literate students. The views of those critics need to be well-understood by politicians, bureaucrats and educators in developing countries lest they make the same mistakes and similarly waste much money or technology better invested in educational fundamentals. These investment areas include teacher training and development, information literacy integrated into the curriculum, school, public and academic libraries well-resourced with analogue and digital resources, and professional librarians able to be proactive information navigators, as well as the map makers of the information universe.

The nature of globalised societies

A distinction, for expedience, has been drawn above between developed and developing countries. However, in considering the global context, Dr Colin Butler from the Australian National University's Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health[5] plausibly argues that labelling countries is becoming obsolete in the era of globalisation. This is because a global class system is evolving which cuts across national boundaries. To this evolving system he applies the term 'claste', because it is a class system which has elements of the Hindu caste system. Dr Butler asserts that

In the claste system the top group is made up of an unholy coalition between the very powerful and wealthy in both developed and developing countries. The second claste is a globalised but insecure network of professionals, administrators and activists. The third are an exploited, low-paid group that are comparatively unskilled and who have little freedom. While the fourth claste are a reserve army of a billion or more undernourished people, whose existence keeps wages low for the third claste.

Of this fourth claste he observes that economic discrimination and 'invisibilation' of its voice means that it is almost as powerless as the voice of the Indian untouchables, except that it now applies globally.

This suggests that growing the global community of the informed - the raison d'etre of all librarians and their associations - is a huge challenge which can only be tackled by identifying priorities and partners. The conundrum is that in identifying these priorities, the outcomes may reinforce the positions of Butler's top two educated and literate clastes, and do nothing for the bottom two. A point for debate and concern is the fact that librarians are part of Butler's second claste and thus of a globalised but insecure network. Librarians are certainly globalised, but to what extent are our networks insecure, and how can they be made more secure?

The importance of Professional Associations

The answer to that last question, and how to progress information literacy as a global issue, depends to a great extent on the strength of belief, resources and voice of local, national, and international library associations.

A scan of the websites of a number of library associations reveals very uneven approaches to the issue identification and importance of information literacy. Few have a policy statement as such, although some refer to the issue in the context of lifelong learning and the information society. The International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) has no statement and it appears that none of the European, including the British associations, yet have one. The Canadian Library Association has no statement, but the American Library Association has of course much material including its 2001 'A library advocate's guide to building information literate communities'. [6]

In Africa, no association appears to have a specific statement on information literacy, although the Library and Information Association of South Africa (LIASA)[7] under its laudable aim to 'Ensure that, by the year 2004, every community and school in South Africa has access to a well-stocked library or information resource centre' notes that it is the duty of government and LIASA to

promote continuous, lifelong learning for all people through library and information services of all types. This includes assisting children and adults to seek and effectively utilize information (information literacy).

The only library association which seems to have addressed information literacy in a national information policy context is the Library and Information Association of New Zealand Aotearoa (LIANZA). It has also, significantly, addressed it in an indigenous Maori context, Maori representing about 16 per cent of the now multicultural New Zealand population. What LIANZA[8] has achieved through identification of the issues, the explication of a library-led national information strategy and political connections and adroitness, is something of a model for other library associations. The Australian Library and Information Association is certainly looking to the New Zealand achievement in developing its library-led national information strategy during 2002.

The New Zealand national information strategy[9] identifies three Ks:

• Knowledge access: the infrastructure with which to access knowledge
• Knowledge content: the actual content to be made available and accessible, and
• Knowledge equity: the skills needed to turn information into knowledge.

The use of the 3 Ks concept has an indigenous origin, in that in Maori belief Tane Mahuta or Tawhaki obtained the three baskets of knowledge from the 12th heaven, putting in place a template for use by and for the well being of the people. Those three K elements approximate with the model proposed in the UK of connectivity, content and capability, and that in the US of universal access, quality information and an information literate citizenry.

The LIANZA position paper on information literacy[10] which informs the knowledge equity element of the national information strategy notes that

Information literacy - the ability to access, process and use information effectively is a key enabler for New Zealand society as a whole. Information literacy provides the foundation for and underpins

• effective participation in democracy
• achievement in all areas and levels of formal education and lifelong learning
• the development of an innovative, knowledge based economy and the production of new knowledge
• social and cultural inclusion
• community and individual empowerment, and
• individual capability to manage the challenges of information complexity and information overload.

In an information intensive society, the most critical divide will be between those who have the understanding, skills and knowledge to operate effectively in that society and those who do not. This constitutes the information literacy divide.

Australia

Although the Australian Library and Information Association (ALIA) is somewhat behind LIANZA in leading the development of a national information strategy, it has been concerned with the issue of information literacy since at least 1992, when it co-sponsored the first Australian national information literacy conference initiated and organised by the University of South Australia Library. There have now been five of these conferences, the most recent in November 2001, aimed at broadening an awareness of the concept and issues to politicians, bureaucrats, educators, trade unions, social action groups and other professions. Those conferences have featured international contributions. Their proceedings[11] are a significant addition to the burgeoning literature and research on information literacy worldwide.

More recently, facilitated by its comprehensive renewal and restructuring, ALIA has established an Information Literacy Group. Through this group a national information literacy roundtable involving librarians, educators and community representatives was held in February 2001, an outcome of which was a decision to attempt the establishment of a permanent outcomes-focused national forum. The consultancy for this is in progress, jointly funded by the Australian government's National Office for the Information Economy, ALIA and the National Library of Australia. The involvement of the National Office for the Information Economy in this was not easily achieved due to its focus on progressing more tangible and easily comprehended ICT outcomes.

Apart from the progressive but erratic infusion of information literacy into teaching and learning in schools and most recently universities, Australia has made at least four other contributions of note:

• the publication of Christine Bruce's US award winning seminal book The Seven Faces of Information Literacy[12]
• the publication of Information Literacy Around the World edited by Candy and Bruce[13]
• the development, as an initiative of the University of South Australia Library, of comprehensive information literacy standards, an improvement on the US standards of 2000 on which they are based. The Council of Australian University Librarians (CAUL) Information Literacy Standards[14] are being used in a wide range of Australian educational contexts, and have been translated for use in Spanish-speaking countries. The standards are particularly useful in establishing information technology 'fluency' as a subset of information literacy
• the very recent establishment of the Australian and New Zealand Institute for Information Literacy (ANZIIL) to conduct intensive programs for librarians and other educators[15]
• funded research aimed at developing a methodology for self-assessment by students of their information literacy. [16]

A final Australian contribution of note is ALIA's 2001 'Statement on Information Literacy for all Australians'[17] which has the great merit of meaningful one-page conciseness, and which thus bears consideration as a model by other international and national library associations.

Statement on Information Literacy for all Australians
The first object of the Australian Library and Information Association is 'To promote the free flow of information and ideas in the interest of all Australians and a thriving culture, economy and democracy'.

A thriving national and global culture, economy and democracy will be advanced best by people able to recognise their need for information, and identify, locate, access, evaluate and apply the needed information.

Information literacy is a prerequisite for

• participative citizenship
• social inclusion
• the creation of new knowledge
• personal empowerment
• learning for life

Library and information services professionals therefore embrace a responsibility to develop the information literacy of their clients.

They will support governments at all levels, and the corporate, community, professional and trade union sectors, in promoting and facilitating the development of information literacy for all Australians as a high priority.

From rhetoric to substance

Turning the rhetoric of the ALIA statement into substance is a challenge, the response to which librarians will have to continue to lead. The leadership will not commonly come from other educators or academics, who often seem to have difficulty in grasping the issue, or worse perceive it as a threat to their professional autonomy. Nor will it come from other professionals who may have a financial interest in restricting the information literacy of potential clients. Nor, typically, will that leadership come from the multinational corporate sector, politicians, bureaucrats and governments because all of those may have more to lose than gain from truly information literate citizens '... able to spot and expose chicanery, disinformation and lies'[18] - witness the constraints on Freedom of Information legislation and access, consumer information, journalists, librarians, books and the internet in many countries.

Among the specific barriers to information literacy identified in New Zealand by the LIANZA Information Literacy Taskforce[19] are those which resonate with the library profession worldwide:

• a lack of understanding and awareness of the concept of information literacy and its implication
• fragmentation of initiatives and interests at all levels nationally
• underestimation and underutilisation of the contribution of libraries
• absence of policy and strategy frameworks
• lack of research, documentation, assessment and evaluation tools
• lack of clarity regarding roles and responsibilities
• weakness of the overall skills base of the population.

Clearly, progressing information literacy as a fundamental whole-of-society issue during the 21st century is no easy responsibility for the library profession. It should, however, take heart from what has already been achieved nationally and globally in little more than only ten years, an achievement helped along by what Professor Phil Candy has described as recognition that 'Information literacy is the zeitgeist of our times - a concept whose time has come'. [20]

Additionally there are things that the library profession can do to provide a stronger base for information literacy leadership globally:

• All national and international library associations could agree to use the same term and definition. Information literacy is by far the most widely used term and, as discussed earlier, its two elements are well understood. There is little point in proposing alternatives, any more than experience has shown that proposing 'sexy' alternatives for 'Library' or 'Librarian' has any real impact or value (a point well-made by the Library Association of Ireland[21] in its statement on Libraries and the information society where it rejects renaming public libraries as knowledge resource centres). People will continue to call libraries, libraries. Renaming them is short-sighted: better that the effort goes into marketing the reality of the modern library and librarian.
• IFLA needs a statement on information literacy, particularly now that UNESCO has entered the information literacy arena by co-sponsoring the first international leadership conference[22] on information literacy in Prague in 2002.
• Whilst we still have nation states - for good or for ill - information literacy can be promoted as integral to a national information strategy or policy, as in New Zealand. Left to their own devices the bureaucrats of national governments are likely to focus any such strategies or policies narrowly on ICT, to which the library community will be left to react in frustration at their narrowness of vision and understanding. It could well be better for library associations to be proactive and identify issues, strategies and policies and then seek endorsement and ownership by governments and others.
• The global library community needs to be informed and assertive about educational and technological waste - every dollar wasted on technology is a dollar which could have been better invested in libraries and librarians.
• The global library community needs to play an assertive role in the agenda for the World Summit on the Information Society in Geneva in 2003. [23] The World Summit on the Information Society in Tunis in 2005 will have as one of its themes the issue of universal and equitable access to the information society.
• Advocacy should be based on researched evidence of outcomes of investment in developing information literacy - the Colorado studies in the USA are a good example. [24]
• National information strategies or policies can be arrived at as an aggregation of local information strategies aimed to facilitate the development of information literate and information rich citizens. There is something of this approach already occurring with the learning city/ learning community approaches in the UK, other parts of Europe and Australia. Whilst it might seem sensible that a city with aspirations to be a learning city has as its foundation an information policy and strategy, this does not seen to have occurred so far. It surely should be a responsibility of local municipal governments to concern themselves about how their citizens can function in the information age, but it is a responsibility yet to occur to them. However, there is an opportunity in many communities for librarians in all sectors of the profession to coalesce in initiating local learning communities and information strategies enabled by their resource and information literacy imperatives.

The challenge

The more that librarians and their associations can agree on the terminology, definition, standards for, assessment of, and importance of information literacy at a local, national and global level, the greater will be the prospect of their success in elevating the issue over the next 25 years to one of universal concern and better educational and library resourcing.

If librarians have one single aspiration it is to achieve recognition that a fairer, better and sustainable world cannot be achieved without enabling the information literacy of its people. Librarianship has a critical role to play in leading that enabling. Helping to grow the global community of the informed is ultimately the most profound challenge it, as an international profession, faces in the century ahead.

A version of this paper was presented at the Standing Conference of East, Central and South Africa Library Associations conference, Johannesburg South Africa, April 2002

Notes

1. B Disraeli Sybil Book 1, Chapt v http://www.bartleby.com/100/424.38.html
2. M Herring Ten Reasons Why the Internet is No Substitute for a Library http://www.ala.org/alonline/news/10reasons.html 2001 [February 2002]
3. C Curran 'Information Literacy and the Public Librarian' in A Kent (ed) Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science vol 51 1993 pp257-66
4. C Bruce The Seven Faces of Information Literacy Adelaide Auslib Press 1997 pp2-8
5. C Butler 'Inequality, Global Change and the Sustainability of Civilisation' in Global Change and Human Health vol 1 no 2 2000 pp156-172
6. American Library Association A Library Advocate's Guide to Building Information Literate Communities http://www.ala.org/pio/advocacy/informationliteracy.pdf 2001 [28 July 2002]
7. LIASA http://home.imaginet.co.za/liasa/policy.html [23 July 2002]
8. LIANZA Access to Information http://www.lianza.org.nz/accesstoinfo.htm 1978 [February 2002]
9. LIANZA Towards a National Information strategy 2001 http://www.lianza.org.nz/text_files/nis_9feb01.pdf [23 July 2002]
10. LIANZA National Information Policy Position Paper Information Literacy and Literacy http://www.lianza.org.nz/text_files/literacy.pdf [28 July 2002]
11. D Booker (ed) Information Literacy: The Australian Agenda University of South Australia Library 1992; D Booker (ed) Learning for Life: Information Literacy and the Autonomous Learner University of South Australia Library 1995; D Booker (ed) Information Literacy: The Professional Issue University of South Australia Library 1997; D Booker (ed) Concept, Challenge, Conundrum: From Library Skills to Information Literacy University of South Australia Library 1999; D Booker (ed) Information Literacy: The Social Action Agenda University of South Australia Library 2001
12. C Bruce The Seven Faces of Information Literacy Adelaide Auslib Press 1997
13. P Candy and C Bruce (eds) Information Literacy around the World Charles Sturt University Wagga Wagga 2000
14. CAUL Information Literacy Standards www.caul.edu.au 2001
15. See I Doskatsch 'Immersion in Australia: An Information Literacy Health Spa for Librarians?' (this issue)
16. CAUL Information Literacy Assessment Research Project http://www.caul.edu.au/meetings/caul20012info-lit-assess.doc [29 July 2002]
17. ALIA Statement on Information Literacy for all Australians ALA Presidential Committee on Information Literacy Report
    http://www.ala.org/acrl/nili/ilit1st.html 1998 [28 July 2002]
18. LIANZA National Information Policy Position Paper Information Literacy and Literacy http://www.lianza.org.nz/text_files/literacy.pdf [29 July 2002]
19. P Candy 'Learning for Life' in Information Literacy and the Autonomous Learner Proceedings of the second national information literacy conference University of South Australia Library 1995 p139
20. Library Association of Ireland Libraries and the Information Societyhttp://www.libraryassociation.ie/policy/infosociety.htm [29 July 2002]
21. International Leadership Conference http://www.nclis.gov/libinter/infolitconf&meet/infolitconf&meet.html [28 July 2002)
22. World Summit on the Information Society in Geneva in 2003 http://www.unesco.org/webworld/wsis
23. K Lance et al The Impact of School Library Media Centers on Academic Achievement Castle Rock Hi Willow 1993

Alan Bundy, university librarian, University of South Australia and past president Australia Library and Information Association. E-mail: alan.bundy@unisa.edu.au.nospam (please remove '.nospam' from address).