Teaching Students to Swim in the Online Sea

This is an interesting article* from yesterday's New York Times by Geoffery Nunberg that hits on the need for some sort of information literacy instruction, especially in relation to evaluating Internet sources. He references a couple of the Pew Project surveys that Jennifer posted a couple of weeks ago.

A couple of interesting points for discussion: he mentions the "paradox" of librarians taking the lead in Info Lit instruction since most people assumed that there wouldn't be a need for libraries in the "digital age". And this intersting quote:

"More important,leaving information literacy to librarians alone suggests a failure to understand the scope of the problem. Part of it lies in the word ''literacy'' itself. No other language has a word that covers such a broad swath of territory, from reading and writing skills, to a familiarity with culture, to elementary competence in subjects like math or geography. To many, ''information literacy'' suggests a set of basic ABC's that can be consigned to Information 101."

It is kind of a loaded statement but I really do think that including the word "literacy" in describing our efforts in these areas is a misnomer. I can't remember the source, but someone suggested the term "information fluency" in an article a while back. I like that one better. But you can really call it "Fred" as long as the points get across.

*Registration required or article available through LexisNexis Academic.