Information Literacy

One of my subjects this semester, Information Provision, is about being able to teach and to share your own knowledge with others. Information literacy is the key phrase here. It's being able to be information literate yourself, and then able to teach that knowledge on.

What is information literacy? According to the Alexandria Proclamation, which was a conference type thing, information literacy 'lies at the core of lifelong learning. It empowers people in all walks of life to seek, evaluate, use and create information effectively to achieve their personal, social, occupational and educational goals. It is a basic human right in a digital world and promotes social inclusion of all nations.' (link is here)

Librarians who are working in the information literacy field need to:

• recognise a need for information
• determine the extent of information needed
• access information efficiently
• critically evaluate information and its sources
• classify, store, manipulate and redraft information collected or generated
• incorporate selected information into their knowledge base
• use information effectively to learn, create new knowledge, solve problems and make decisions
• understand economic, legal, social, political and cultural issues in the use of information
• access and use information ethically and legally
• use information and knowledge for participative citizenship and social responsibility
• experience information literacy as part of independent learning and lifelong learning

All of these bullet points are from Australian and New Zealand Information Literacy Framework: Principles, Standards and Practice. You can find it here, it's quite an interesting read if you're into information literacy business.

It's all basically saying that it's not enough for a librarian to know how to search and do things on the Internet and help people find information; it's important that people are taught how to do these things for themselves. A librarian, it turns out, is an educator as well. Lucky I've got a Dip Ed!

Back at Uni

The semester has started for the new year, thank god. It's too long a break, I really missed it. I didn't do any of the things that I was planning on doing over the holidays. I did do a bit of interesting course-related voluntary work, but I'll discuss that in another post. Instead, all I did was
work, read, lurk on the internet, watch television, and not much else. I didn't start running (still don't have the pants), I didn't do Codeacademy (I feel bad about that one; I really should have done some of that), and whatever else I was planning on doing, I didn't do that either.

So, new subjects for school! I'm doing two subjects this semester: The Information Professional, and Information Provision. The Information Professional is about working in the Information Management world, and for this subject we need to do a three-week placement. RMIT organises the placement for us, which is totally amazing, we just need to submit a preference list. Here's my seven choices:

1. National Gallery of Victoria (NGV)
2. ABC: Archives and Library Services
3. Parliament of Victoria: Library
4. Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine
5. Alfred Health
6. Museum Victoria
7. Supreme Court of Victoria: Law Library

As you can see, I couldn't decide on a particular field that I wanted to do, so I chose a range. I picked the NGV as number one because I have a background in Art History and I really want to be able to have a wander around in the archives. I would be happy to do any of them though, they all would be interesting I think. So now I have to submit my resume and wait for RMIT to organise it for me.