Editorial: Perspectives on Information Literacy

My interest in the topic of information literacy comes from nearly 30 years working with students as a classroom teacher, as a teacher-librarian, and as a university instructor. Although the ages of the students that I work with have changed and the topics they are interested in have changed, there seem to be some common themes related to information literacy-how learners decide they have a need for information, how learners experience the process of inquiry, and how library instruction can best support learners. My own views on the topic of information literacy have changed in the course of those 30 years. Here I try to outline one aspect of my current understanding of this complex topic, and then I highlight the contributions of the authors writing about information literacy in this issue of School Libraries Worldwide. Information in Abundance Information of all types in all kinds of media-picture books, science textbooks, television news broadcasts, video games, websites-are available to teachers and students today in their schools and their homes in the much of the Western world. Being literate in this eclectic resource environment involves two interrelated concepts: being "media literate" (savvy to the processes and protocols of the media) as well as being "literate through the media" (using the media as conduits through which the basic literacy skills of reading, writing, and comprehension are achieved). The Canadian media theorist Marshall McCluhan pointed out in the 1960s that "the medium is the message"-that content is inseparable from and shaped by the medium through which it is carried or presented. I wonder if, in our use of the term information literacy, we have forgotten the importance of the media through which the information is presented. Defining Information Literacy The definition of literacy has changed and continues to change. Teachers and teacher-librarians today need to rethink the nature of literacy in the 21st century, to think about literacy in terms not of particular media or symbol systems, but in terms of helping learners understand and deal with the world of media and information. Media and information are interrelated phenomena. It is hard to think of a media form or "text" without thinking about the information it conveys; it is hard to think of information without thinking of the form in which it is conveyed. Literacy is often defined in terms of reading and writing; it is less often defined in terms of listening and viewing or speaking and image-making. In schools that I am familiar with in Canada, we spend a lot of time addressing the meaning of printed texts, particularly literary texts, but little time addressing the meaning of other media texts that are much more pervasive in young people's lives. As we know, different media have different characteristics. Picture books, textbooks, video, graphic formats, models, CD-ROM, and the World Wide Web bring different kinds of information, and they present information in varying levels of abstraction. Seeing television images of the conflicts between Jews and Palestinians in Israel gives a very different message from traveling through Israel as a visitor to historic sites and green agricultural areas. We also know that different media demand different "reading" strategies: reading a trade information book is different from viewing a video on the same topic. Browsing the WWW is different from browsing a textbook. The WWW holds challenges for evaluating information for accuracy and objectivity that are different from those for a newspaper or magazine. A particular media resource might be selected by a teacher or student because it provides a new perspective on a topic, because it provides more depth of information on a topic, or because it accommodates a preferred learning style. Importance of Understanding Media Why is developing our understanding of media an important part of information literacy? …