INFORMATION LITERACY AMONG POST GRADUATE STUDENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF GHANA.

CHAPTER ONEINTRODUCTION1.1 Background to the StudyThe twentieth century may well be remembered for its exponential growth of information and technology. Not only has more information been created in the last one hundred years than the rest of recorded history altogether, but the simultaneous global access to that information could not have been imaginable a hundred years ago. Worry about lack of information has been replaced by information anxiety, the result of information overload and the sense that one cannot manage the information available. The recent decades have been termed the "information age," and the early twenty-first century has given rise to the "knowledge age" with the awareness that information in itself cannot solve problems; it is the effective use of information that promises solutions, therefore people need to be information literate (Farmer and Henri, 2008). The increasingly complex world in which we live in contains abundance of information alternatives which include; print, electronic, image, spatial, sound, visual, and numeric. The issue is no longer about not having enough information, but it is just the opposite, that is, too much information, in various formats and not all of equal value. In an era of more than 17 million Internet sites, three billion Web pages, and more than a million items in a typical medium-sized academic library, the ability to act confidently (and not be paralyzed by information overload) is critical to academic success and personal self-directed learning (Rockman, 2004). Even though students of today have increasing facility with computers and electronic media, yet still they need to develop the skills to locate authoritative information (Lombardo and Miree, 2003; Emmons and Martin, 2002; Maughan, 2001) and to effectively analyze the quality, quantity, and source of the information they retrieve (Majka, 2001). Educating students in information literacy is not only a worthwhile goal but is an essential component in the development of students as lifelong learners (Cooney and Hiris, 2002). The acquisition of information literacy skills in society is a serious issue. Today, the consequences for reaching adulthood with limited information literacy skills are becoming increasingly severe. Individuals who are unprepared to participate in our information-rich society are at an increasing disadvantage. This means that it is crucial to integrate information literacy skills education into both basic and higher education effectively if we wish students to be full participants in tomorrow's workforce. Students need to achieve a level of information literacy that will allow them to find, assess, and use information in order to succeed in school, the workplace, and their personal lives (Gross and Latham, 2007). Information literacy has been defined by the American Library Association, as "a set of abilities requiring individuals to recognize when information is needed and have the ability to locate, evaluate, and use effectively the needed information" (ALA, 2000). In 2005, Alexandria Proclamation defined information literacy which was later adopted by UNESCO's Information for All Programme (IFAP), as the capacity of people to: recognize their information needs; locate and evaluate the quality of information; store and retrieve information; make effective and ethical use of information, and apply information to create and communicate knowledge.Information literacy is therefore the ability to recognize information required, finding that information from a source and assessing the genuineness of that information. It is crucial for lifetime learning and the production of an informed and affluent community. An information literate person is a person who knows how to identify information need, find and critically evaluate how genuine that information is. This skill is, therefore, very essential among students' especially graduate students who will be expected during their courses to do assignments, read about the various subjects under their courses and also write their theses. …