Information Literacy as a Liberal Art

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    Information Literacy as a Liberal Art

    Enlightenment proposals for a new curriculum

    By Jeremy J. Shapiro and Shelley K. Hughes

    Sequence: Volume 31, Number 2Release Date: March/April 1996

    What does a person need to know today to be a full-fledged, competent and literate

    member of the information society? As we witness not only the saturation of our daily

    lives with information organized and transmitted via information technology, but the

    way in which public issues and social life increasingly are affected by information-technology issues - from intellectual property to privacy and the structure of work to

    entertainment, art and fantasy life - the issue of what it means to be information-

    literate becomes more acute for our whole society. Should everyone take a course in

    creating a Web page, computer programming, TCP/IP protocols or multimediaauthoring? Or are we looking at a broader and deeper challenge - to rethink our entire

    educational curriculum in terms of information?

    In responding to these questions, it is useful to return to the 18th-centuryEnlightenment, when thinkers began to confront the relationship between scientific

    progress and the emergence of a free society. It is exactly 200 years since the

    publication of Condorcet's Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the

    Human Mind, the Enlightenment's greatest philosophy of history manifesto, written

    while Condorcet - mathematician, scientist, philosopher, educational reformer,

    journalist - was in hiding from the Jacobin terror of the French Revolution. In hisSketch, Condorcet told the story of humanity as a story of progress, in which "nature

    has joined together indissolubly the progress of knowledge and that of liberty, virtue,

    and respect for the natural rights of man," leading inevitably to humanity's

    "perfection" and "happiness." Condorcet is relevant to us today because he was

    attempting to project and plan for the future at a historical turning point.

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    According to Condorcet, the spread of knowledge through the improvement and

    democratization of education would contribute directly to political freedom andhuman happiness. The Enlightenment's conception of the link between knowledge,

    liberty and happiness - a conception that is reflected in the Declaration of

    Independence and the U.S. Constitution but is now widely under attack by

    postmodernists, technocrats and political conservatives - raises profound questions forthose of us involved and concerned with not only the implementation and uses of

    information technology but with providing for knowledge and literacy about this

    technology.

    Literacy Compared to What?

    What sort of "information literacy" - an often-used but dangerously ambiguous

    concept - should we be promoting, and what should it accomplish? Is it merely

    something that will reduce the number of tech support calls that we have to deal with?

    Something that will grease the wheels of the information highway? Something that, asdefined by representatives of the library community, enables people to be "effective

    information consumers"?

    Or is it, should it be, something broader, something that enables individuals not only

    to use information and information technology effectively and adapt to their constantchanges but also to think critically about the entire information enterprise and

    information society? Something more akin to a "liberal art" - knowledge that is part of

    what it means to be a free person in the present historical context of the dawn of the

    information age?

    In his projection of the human future - of history "after the revolution" - Condorcet

    articulated the Enlightenment view that human progress would continue and lead to

    the "abolition of inequality between nations, the progress of equality within each

    nation, and the true perfection of mankind." Essential preconditions were, according

    to Condorcet, the abolition of inequality in education and the spread of science and

    knowledge to the general population. Providing suitable education to each citizen

    would produce not only enlightenment but liberty.

    Educated citizens would not only be able to manage their lives properly: "They will

    be able to govern themselves according to their own knowledge; they will no longerbe limited to a mechanical knowledge of the procedures of the arts or of professionalroutine; they will no longer depend for every trivial piece of business, every

    insignificant matter of instruction on clever men who rule over them in virtue of their

    necessary superiority." Condorcet believed that this would be made possible not only

    by improving and democratizing education but by simplifying conceptual schemes

    through the integration and unification of science, and the development of graphical

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    representations of logical and scientific ideas and theories. Thus the average citizen

    would be able to master the science of her day (Condorcet was also a firm advocate of

    complete equality between the sexes, so the feminine pronoun is in order here).

    Two centuries later - ironically at a time when between 40 to 50 percent of the U.S.

    population is functionally illiterate in the Gutenberg galaxy of text-based literacy -information, its technologies (hard and soft), and its concepts and structures are

    transforming the production, distribution and consumption of knowledge, from

    network co-authored texts through databases and data-analysis software to multimedia

    network-distributed hypertext. Some, such as the French father of postmodernism

    Jean-Francois Lyotard, argue that this both alters the status of knowledge itself as well

    as the legitimizing principles of our entire society.

    This set of circumstances forces us to ask, what do citizens need to know about

    information and these technologies to "no longer be limited to a mechanical

    knowledge of the procedures of the arts or of professional routine," so that "they willno longer depend for every trivial piece of business, every insignificant matter of

    instruction on clever men who rule over them in virtue of their necessary superiority?"

    - clever men who are likely nowadays to be programmers, systems analysts, networkservice providers, Webmasters, information industry moguls and directors of

    academic computing rather than kings and noblemen.

    These questions are even more important now that some of the most vital questions

    about the emerging phase of our society - some of its most important economic, socialand political issues - are turning out to be about both information itself and about the

    information infrastructure:

    Who owns information? What's the difference between a piece of information and a

    copy of it? Who should have access to it? Is the Internet a public good or a private

    one? Should anyone regulate Internet content, and if so who? What are the

    responsibilities of an institution toward one of its telecommuters in another country?

    What should the property regime of the information economy be? How can wereconcile the international character of the Internet and the emerging global

    information society with the laws of individual nations and the moral standards of

    individual communities? What are the bounds of privacy in information? Could thegovernment fiscal crises be alleviated by a "bit tax"? Is the vision of a wired,

    networked cyberspace perhaps nothing more than (in the words of some recent social

    critics) a "cryptoreligious ideal of our society," an ideological front for a new social

    class, the "virtual class" that is constructing a world of "data trash"?

    At this very moment, such questions - whose answers affect not only information

    consumers but the economic, social and cultural life of society as a whole - are being

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    discussed and decided in terms and venues of which many citizens have little if any

    knowledge. Can an "effective information consumer" or computer-literate officeworker think critically about them, let alone answer them? And, if not, is not

    information literacy a much broader concept? Isn't there a direct connection between

    that browser on my screen, the Internet and these policy questions?

    Information Literacy as a New Liberal Art

    Information and computer literacy, in the conventional sense, are functionallyvaluable technical skills. But information literacy should in fact be conceived more

    broadly as a new liberal art that extends from knowing how to use computers and

    access information to critical reflection on the nature of information itself, itstechnical infrastructure, and its social, cultural and even philosophical context and

    impact - as essential to the mental framework of the educated information-age citizen

    as the trivium of basic liberal arts (grammar, logic and rhetoric) was to the educated

    person in medieval society.

    Indeed, such an extended notion of information literacy is essential to the future ofdemocracy, if citizens are to be intelligent shapers of the information society rather

    than its pawns, and to humanistic culture, if information is to be part of a meaningful

    existence rather than a routine of production and consumption. If organizations, incomputer-scientist Abbe Mowshowitz's analysis, are becoming virtual, should not an

    employee understand something about virtual memory in order to negotiate

    organizational life? And if virtual reality is, in philosopher Michael Heim's words, a"metaphysics," may we perhaps need some "metaphysical literacy" in order to cope

    with it?

    Some will reply that living in a society based on the automobile doesn't require the

    population to learn either auto mechanics or the philosophy of the automobile. But the

    automobile is only a component of transportation; information is a component of

    knowledge, the human mind and human communication. That is why it should be part

    of the expanded trivium for the same reason that grammar, logic and rhetoric were

    part of it originally: it is something fundamental to our humanness.

    Some will assert that it is elitist to worry about information literacy when so much of

    the population, according to the new study Literacy, Economy and Society publishedby the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), is stillnon-functional in the areas of "pre-informational" prose literacy, document literacy

    and quantitative literacy - and when, as professors know, many college students

    cannot even write a passable term paper. But it is equally problematic - and elitist - to

    consign textual illiterates to the educational backwaters and reserve information

    literacy for those already in the know. As more and more information is in

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    computerized form, even elementary general literacy will be partially defined by an

    information-technology component.

    Clearly, defining information literacy broadly, so as to constitute both a liberal as wellas a technical art, and turning that definition into a curriculum are major challenges

    both intellectually and practically, and deserve extended discussion and collaborationamong both educators and information-systems professionals, humanists, and

    computer and information scientists.

    An Information Literacy Curriculum

    Perhaps a brief sketch of such a curriculum, with emphasis on what is needed in

    higher education, will stimulate such discussion. This prototype curriculum attempts

    to encompass the old concept of "computer literacy" (remember "everyone should

    learn to program in BASIC"?), the librarians' notion of information literacy and a

    broader, critical conception of a more humanistic sort. Seven dimensions of literacycan be identified:

    Tool literacy, or the ability to understand and use the practical and conceptual tools of

    current information technology, including software, hardware and multimedia, that arerelevant to education and the areas of work and professional life that the individual

    expects to inhabit. This can be taken to include the basics of computer and network

    applications as well as fundamental concepts of algorithms, data structures, and

    network topologies and protocols.

    Resource literacy, or the ability to understand the form, format, location and accessmethods of information resources, especially daily expanding networked information

    resources. This is practically identical with librarians' conceptions of informationliteracy, and includes concepts of the classification and organization of such

    resources.

    Social-structural literacy, or knowing that and how information is socially situated and

    produced. This means knowing about how information fits into the life of groups;about the institutions and social networks - such as the universities, libraries,

    researcher communities, corporations, government agencies, community groups - that

    create and organize information and knowledge; and the social processes throughwhich it is generated - such as the trajectory of publication of scholarly articles (peer

    review, etc.), the relationship between a Listserv and a shared interest group, or the

    audience served by a specialized library or Web site.

    Research literacy, or the ability to understand and use the IT-based tools relevant to

    the work of today's researcher and scholar. For those in graduate education, this would

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    include discipline-related computer software for quantitative analysis, qualitative

    analysis and simulation, as well as an understanding of the conceptual and analytical

    limitations of such software.

    Publishing literacy, or the ability to format and publish research and ideas

    electronically, in textual and multimedia forms (including via World Wide Web,electronic mail and distribution lists, and CD-ROMs), to introduce them into the

    electronic public realm and the electronic community of scholars. Writing is always

    shaped by its tools and its audience. Computer tools and network audiences represent

    genuine changes in writing itself.

    Emerging technology literacy, or the ability to ongoingly adapt to, understand,evaluate and make use of the continually emerging innovations in information

    technology so as not to be a prisoner of prior tools and resources, and to make

    intelligent decisions about the adoption of new ones. Clearly this includes

    understanding of the human, organizational and social context of technologies as wellas criteria for their evaluation.

    Critical literacy, or the ability to evaluate critically the intellectual, human and social

    strengths and weaknesses, potentials and limits, benefits and costs of information

    technologies. This would need to include a historical perspective (e.g. the connectionbetween algorithmic thinking, formalization in mathematics, and the development of

    Western science and rationality and their limits); a philosophical perspective (current

    debates in the philosophy of technology, the critique of instrumental reason, thepossibility and nature of artificial intelligence); a sociopolitical perspective (e.g. the

    impact of information technology on work, public policy issues in the development ofa global information infrastructure); and a cultural perspective (e.g. currentdiscussions of the virtual body and of the definition of human being as an

    information-processing machine).

    New Goals for a New Society

    Once we start to take information literacy seriously in this multi-dimensional sense,

    we have left far behind us the world of short courses on "Getting Started withWindows," "Surfing the Net" and "Bibliographic Instruction" (although clearly they

    have a role to play). We are really talking about a new curricular framework: one thatequips people not only with a bunch of technical skills but with a broad, integratedand critical perspective on the contemporary world of knowledge and information,

    including its origins and developmental trends, its redefinitions of experience and

    social life, its philosophical justification, biases and limits, its potential for human

    emancipation and human domination, and for growth and destruction.

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    It used to be that, whatever a college graduate had majored in, she or he was supposed

    to know some important things about the emergence of modern society, including thescientific revolution of the 17th century and its major scientific, mathematical and

    philosophical legacies; the rise of capitalist industrial society and its critics; and the

    democratic revolutions. Also, it was hoped, she or he should know something about

    its major cultural landmarks: the literary monuments of secular, humanistic culturefrom Shakespeare through the modern novel, and the development of artistic and

    literary modernism as a response to the technological and social changes of the late19th- and early 20th-centuries. This learning - the trivium and quadrivium of 20th-

    century culture - was supposed to make the individual an educated, autonomous

    member of contemporary society, with some context and framework for making

    meaning out of personal life and for participating in an informed and reflective way in

    public life.

    Isn't it time to rethink what this educational goal means at the present juncture of the

    information society? Shouldn't understanding of network structures and politics be

    part of civics? Shouldn't people learn computer programming as much to becomehumanists as to become computer scientists? Shouldn't Turing's machine take its place

    next to Watt's machine in social science courses? Shouldn't algorithmic simulation be

    studied as a driving cultural force analogous to that of the scientific method?Shouldn't the dilemmas of existence in cyberspace and the media world be seen as

    analogues to those earlier generations confronted in Notes from the Underground, The

    Wasteland, The Stranger and Endgame? We are reconstructing our lived-in world.

    What are we creating? And is anyone paying attention?

    If the information society is to be a free and humane one - especially if we share the

    Enlightenment goals of abolishing unnecessary inequality and creating a society of

    liberty - then let us take up the challenge of Condorcet's vision. Let us contribute toliberty through advancing citizens' knowledge, through democratizing education. Let

    us design a comprehensive, multi-dimensional and thoughtful information literacy

    curriculum.

    Jeremy J. Shapiro is a senior consultant with Academic Information Projects at theFielding Institute, as well as on the faculty of its Human and Organization

    Development Program. Shelley K. Hughes is an information specialist in the Fielding

    Institute's Learning Resources Department. [email protected] and

    [email protected].

    http://www.ithaca.edu/library/training/think.html

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    ICYouSee:

    T is

    for Thinking

    A Guide to Critical Thinking About

    What You See on the Web

    Forfunandgamesandprettypictures, the Web is fine.

    But is the Web a good research tool?

    The answer is a qualified yes, and only if you are careful.

    Using the Web well takes more than just knowing how to google. To use the Web

    wisely and efficiently, I offer for your consideration the following six suggestionswhen examining Web pages:

    1) Make sure you are in the right place.

    2) When in doubt, doubt.

    3) Consider the source.

    4) Know what's happening.

    5) Look at details.

    6) Distinguish Web pages from pages found on the Web.

    In addition to these six suggestions about evaluating sources, here are some

    criteria that are commonly used.

    y Authority: Who are the authors of the Web page, or who isresponsible for it? What gives them their authority orexpertise to write?

    y Accuracy: Do you have good reason to believe that theinformation on the site is accurate? Are the factsdocumented?

    y Objectivity: What is the author's point of view? What is thepurpose of the site?

    y Currency: When was the information on the pageoriginally written? Has the site been kept up-to-date?

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    y Coverage: Does this site address the topic you areresearching? Is the information basic and cursory ordetailed and scholarly? However complex the languagemight be, is the information substantial?

    y Value: Was the page worth visiting? Does the site offer

    anything informative, unique, or insightful? Is the site freeof careless errors, misspelled words, and poor grammar?

    rightplace.

    Make sure you are in the right place.

    Ask yourself why you are using the Web. Don't use the Web because it is fun and

    easy or because it is what you are used to. Websites you find through Google (oranother search engine) may not be the appropriate sources to provide the

    information you are seeking. An hour searching the Web may not get you to an

    answer that you could find within two minutes of picking up an old-fashioned

    book.

    Not everything is available on the Web. Let me repeat: Not everything is

    available on the Web.

    Because of copyright, cost, and demand issues (to name only a few reasons), some materials justwon't be found on the Web. Although some reallyoldstuffdoes show up on the Web, most

    materials written before you were born have not migrated to the Web and might not ever. Morerecent stuff, often the most valuable resources for research, may only be available online if

    someone (such as a school or library) pays for it.

    Questions to think about:

    Arethe sites youare findingdirectlyaddressingthetopicyouareresearching? Werethepages

    worth visiting?

    doubt.

    When in doubt, doubt.

    Almost anyone can put up almost anything on the Web for almost any purpose.

    Look for ambiguity, manipulative reasoning, and bias. Examine assumptions,

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    including and perhaps especially, your own.

    Accuracy is not easy to confirm. As with any research, you must test one source

    against another.

    WhocoinedthephraseQuestion Authority!? Lookat fiveor sixdifferent Web sites andyoumightget

    sixoreightdifferentanswers.

    y Several sites attributethe quotetoTimothy Leary. However,a Webpagewiththeclaim

    thatTimothy Learywas a CIA agentindicates that Dr. Learywas quotingSocrates.

    y Many Webpages creditthebumpersticker,but fromthesixtiesortheseventies? Perhaps it's a

    bumper sticker summationofSocrates'idea.

    y Tocompletethecircle,this pagehas beenused (butnotcited)as anauthorityontheorigins of

    the slogan. Itrepeats thephrase "bumper sticker summationofSocrates'idea" without

    attribution.

    My advice: question the authority of all Web sources.

    Questions to think about:

    Doyouhavegoodreasontobelievethattheinformationonthe siteis accurate? Doauthors

    provideany supportiveevidence fortheirconclusions?

    source.

    Consider the source.

    The Web may have been originally designed as a medium to exchange scientific

    data, but it has become a commercial playground. That makes it all the more

    important to find out who created a Web page -- not just names, but something

    that might indicate they are "good sources." Sometimes pages will generously

    provide information about the author, but usually you will have to dig around.

    It is easy to think that an author wouldnt be writing unless he or she was some

    kind of expert on the topic, but that is not always true.

    Consider this report on the Bay of Pigs. Although the report is found on a university website, theonly source cited is a dead link to a study done by Jared Weiner. A google search reveals that

    Jared Weiner's work, now no longer available, has been cited by more than a hundred Web sites.Who is Jared Weiner? I happen to have some inside information. He is a graduate of Ithaca

    College who is now a production associate at ABC News. However, when he was in one of myclasses several years ago, he told me that he wrote his Bay of Pigs report when he was in the

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    eighth grade. Although being an industrious eighth grader does not qualify him to be a renownedKennedy-era scholar, he told me that he did get an A- on the report.

    Questions to think about:

    Whois responsible forthe site? Dotheauthors haveanyauthorityorexpertise? Dothey

    provideyouameans tocontactthem? Is this acommercial,governmental,personal,or

    academic Web site?

    happening

    Know what's happening.

    Try to identify the reason the Web page was created in the first place. Try to

    determine the site's intended audience. See if you can detect if the main purpose

    is to inform, to persuade, or to sell you something. Keep in mind that marketing

    and opinion can both be disguised. If you know the motive behind the page's

    creation, you can better judge its content.

    Even if a page is simply trying to just provide the facts, simplification can distort them, and

    information presented in too technical or jargon-ridden language can keep the meaning frombeing easily understood.

    An important, if difficult, question to ask is "What is not being said?"

    Political, religious, and social advocacy groups are notorious for selectively presenting just thefacts that support their cause.

    Questions to think about:

    Whatis thepurposeofthe site? Is themainpurposetoinform,topersuade,orto sellyou

    something? Doyouunderstandwhatis being said? Arethe facts documented? Whatdoyou

    thinkhas notbeen saidthat shouldbeaddressed?

    details.

    Lookatdetails.

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    Internal clues can tell you much about a Web page. Check for the obvious things,

    such as good grammar and correct spelling. Is the language simple or technical

    and demanding? Has the page been recently updated?

    Graphicsmayhelpa Webpagelookmoreinteresting,butdothey serveanypurposeotherthan

    decoration?Magazines and Websitewithmanycolorfulads andillustrations generallyhaveadifferent

    purposethan scholarly journals and Websites withlots oftextandnoillustrations beyondcharts and

    graphs.

    ay attention both to how well the links work and what kind of sources are being linked. In

    addition, check to see who has links to the page and what they have to say about it.

    If a Web site is presenting statistics or quoting a person, there should be documentation. Acitation or a link should be provided. Check out online sources as you would (or should) for

    any other research material.

    Questions to think about:

    Is the sitewellorganized? Aretheremisspelledwords orexamples ofpoorgrammar? Dothe

    links work? Dothey sendyoubeyondthe sitetootherreliable sources ofinformation? Does the

    siteofferanythinguniqueordoes ittellyoulittlemorethanyoucould findinanencyclopedia?

    Arethegraphics onthepageclearandhelpfulordistractingandconfusing? Whatopinions do

    others haveaboutthe Webpage?

    Web pages

    Distinguish Web pages from pages found on the Web.

    When people speak ofWeb pages, they usually don't mean books and research

    articles, but books, government documents, research reports, and periodical

    articles are all accessible through the Web, and they can be quite different inscope, focus, and reliability than pages originally designed for the web. That

    makes it important for you to recognize what you are looking at.

    What can be confusing is how publishing has been changing. Some research materials may onlybe available online. Many libraries no longer subscribe to the paper version of some periodicals,

    but subscribe instead to the online version of the journal or rely on full text access through Web-

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    based periodical databases. It is still important, however, to distinguish among magazines, tradejournals, and peer reviewed journals.

    To get an idea of the difference between "regular" Web pages and articles found on the Web,

    compare the results between a regularGoogle search for "flirting" with those resulting from asearch using Google Scholar.

    Questions to think about:

    Doyouthinkthis pagewas designed forthe Web,ordoyouthinkitwas originally something

    else? Ifitwas originally somethingelse,what somethingelsewas it?