Being Fluent with Information Technology
Public-Access Computer Systems Forum
Subject: Re: [Fwd: Being Fluent with Information Technology]
We actually had the main staff person Herb Lin to a National Forum on
Information Literacy meeting. He agreed up front that the issue of
information technology fluency was a subset of information literacy, and
Forum members gave a good deal of input to Lin.
There is one section of their suggestions that sounds close to the critical
thinking aspect of information literacy, but again I think a closer look
reveals that their concerns are focused only as relates to "machinery." So
I can't be as excited as Bernie Sloan was about the match with information
literacy. The report goes from literacy to fluency but only as related to
technology not the search process inherent in information literacy.
Of course, we could consider changing information literacy to information
fluency but that would seem unnecessary given information literacy long
standing emphasis on a dynamic lifelong-learning process and the increasing
buy-in by people outside the field.
What ACRL and/or ALA might consider doing is getting out a press release
underscoring the relationship of information technology fluency and
information literacy. I'm also quite hopeful that National Commission on
Libraries & Information Science may soon start making those differences
known to key policy makers.
I shall put this issue on the agenda of the upcoming National Forum on
Information Literacy meeting in D.C. on May 21st.
At 06:51 PM 4/15/99 -0400, you wrote:
Patricia Senn Breivik
Dean, University Libraries
Wayne State University
Tel:(313) 577-4048
FAX:(313)577-5525