Salon.com Technology | From ivory tower to academic sweatshop

I just perused this interesting article from salon.com calledFrom ivory tower to academic sweatshop* by Alex Wright. It gives a very interesting overview of the resurgence of distance learning and its effect of academia in general. Not specifically info lit, but very interesting as we move towards more and more online delivery of library services.

*Subscription or "day pass" (look at an ad for a minute or less) required to view article.

Evidence of the Need for Info Lit

A new report released by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, Search Engine Users, reveals (among many other details) that 62% of Web searchers are unaware of a distinction between paid and unpaid search results. An excerpt:

“While most consumers could easily identify the difference between TV’s regular programming and its infomercials, or newspapers’ or magazines’ reported stories and their advertorials, only a little more than a third of search engine users are aware of the analogous sets of content commonly presented by search engines, the paid or sponsored results and the unpaid or “organic” results. Overall, only about 1 in 6 searchers say they can consistently distinguish between paid and unpaid results.”

Related information and a link to the questionnaire are available.

Georgia Conference On Information Literacy

Blogger ate this the first time so let's try it again!

The website for the 2005 Georgia Conference on Information Literacy is now online. The conference will be held from September 30 - October 1 in Statesboro and was quite good last year. The deadline for program proposals is April 1. The registration link appears to already be active as well.

And for the trouble of posting this 2x here's your obligatory Blind Willie McTell reference! And a link to a (legally posted) live mp3 of the White Stripes playing Blind Willie's "Lord, Send Me An Angel" in Minneapolis. Minneapolis is home of the 2005 ACRL Conference, which should also feature many interesting Info Lit presentations.

Measuring Literacy in a World Gone Digital

Interesting article* by Tom Zeller Jr. from the January 17 New York Times. Apparently ETS is about to start administering a test at selected colleges to try to measure information and technological literacy. The article has a quote from our friend Stanley Wilder, who is predictably skeptical.

Excerpt:
"The Information and Communications Technology literacy assessment, which will be introduced at about two dozen colleges and universities later this month, is intended to measure students' ability to manage exercises like sorting e-mail messages or manipulating tables and charts, and to assess how well they organize and interpret information from many sources and in myriad forms. About 10,000 undergraduates at schools from the University of California, Los Angeles to Bronx Community College are expected to take the test during the first offering period, which ends March 31."

I'll definitely be interested in seeing the results!

*Registration required for NYT or available in FT in Lexis-Nexis Academic.

Search For The Skunk Ape: An Information Literacy Quest

Michael Lorenzen posted a link to this cool information literacy/ library skills tutorial from Florida Gulf Coast University. I went through some of it very quickly and it looks very comprehensive and fun. You can't beat looking for bigfoot!

You need to create a username/ password to look at the tutorial but it worked fine.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year to all our readers by the way! I'd like to take this opportunity to encourage folks to post to the blog or comment on the stuff we post. Jennifer and I will be glad to give any assistance you'd like!

Information Literacy Makes All the Wrong Assumptions

Thought provoking article by Stanley Wilder of the University of Rochester from this week's Chronicle of Higher Education . I'm sure there will be lots of discussion making the rounds.

Excerpt:
"...information literacy remains the wrong solution to the wrong problem facing librarianship. It mistakes the nature of the Internet threat, and it offers a response at odds with higher education's traditional mission. Information literacy does nothing to help libraries compete with the Internet, and it should be discarded."

The above link for the article might be temporary but all campuses should have the Chronicle and it is available in FT from Academic Search Premier and Research Library with a one month embargo.

Update 1/12/05: The temporary link to the article is indeed dead. But it is in the issue of the Chronicle dated 1/7/05. I'll update again when it has served it's time in FT purgatory.

Google Goes Primetime

There was an interesting Google segment on the 1/2/05 "60 Minutes." Read the transcript at http://tinyurl.com/3lsdg.

(It isn't IL-specific, by the way.)